Has the cloud crossed the chasm? IDC chief analyst Frank Gens certainly thinks so. One year ago, he said the cloud was poised to shed its buzzword status and move into the mainstream of IT adoption. Now, he says that mission has been accomplished.
Speaking at the IDC Direction conference, Gens argued that cloud computing will be the dominant model of IT for years to come, asking his audience, who will be the Microsoft of the cloud? Datamation has the story.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – At last year’s IDC Directions show, Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst for the firm, said that cloud computing was just on the verge of “crossing the chasm,” that popular meme taken from a 1991 book of the same name that refers to a product making the leap from early adopter phase to mainstream
One year and one brutal recession later, and Gens is back as a keynote speaker at IDC’s annual Directions show to declare that the chasm has indeed been crossed and the cloud is well on its way to becoming mainstream.
Last year, he said vendors needed to make it easier to adopt cloud technologies by offering better and simpler access to on-demand services, better pricing and on-premises options. In other words, do a lot of the work that helps customers get to the mainstream.
Well, that has begun to happen on the software side. Looking at software suppliers, virtually “every major software vendor has articulated a cloud strategy of some form and have offered either cloud-based versions of their products, or in many cases, having something on the drawing board,” Gens told the audience of Silicon Valley workers.
