Cloud Computing: Winding Up for Change

Bear with me, if you will, as I’m going to be a little ham-fisted in this post:

I’m here at the CIO Symposium at MIT/ Sloan and one of the speakers, before a transition into a dialogue on the ‘next big thing in technology’, stated that the ‘elephant in the room’ is cloud computing.

I’m going to hear a lot about cloud computing today at the symposium, and I welcome it, as I believe that Cloud Computing is key in advancement for all of us to consider.  At Wheelock, I get a lot of people who roll their eyes when I talk about Cloud Computing and Virtualization as they hear me talk about it so much they can practically recite what I’m going to say.

You’ll hear me talk a lot about Cloud Computing on this blog, for a number of reasons, one of which in that we have already started to move our backup and Disaster Recovery systems to the ‘cloud’ (see our presentation with Northeastern and MIT here), and because for small institutions, I see Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) as key to putting us on an equal or greater playing field with Colleges and Universities that have resources fifty times the amount then we do.  Yet let me be clear - CC and SaaS are not what we are so excited about, it's this idea of technology as a utility that allows us to excel in ways that were previously unattainable.  We started to see the roots of this change years ago with Virtualization solutions.

My guess is that many of you will want to roll your eyes regarding Cloud Computing – if not now, than the momentum that the topic is drawing will eventually test your patience.  You’ll hear some confusion over SaaS and Cloud Computing, some debate over whether it is refrained to infrastructure or computing majors – and you’ll hear from me on how the idea of it can effect management and innovation in your particular institution. 

So:  I’m a big advocate for Cloud Computing, not because it’s the answer to all of our problems, but that it is a primary indicator in the changes that we are going to instigate at our institutions.   Even if you think that Cloud Computing will not effect your role at your institution, I would argue to keep an eye on it, for it is one of the Trojan horses that will carry with it methodology changes that will enable you or your clients to innovate in some really exciting ways.