The cloud has tipped is everywhere

Evidence that the cloud has tipped is everywhere. It especially hit me when my dad, who works at a blue-chip paper company, told me that one of his business units had recently adopted NetSuite. Microsoft has started advertising their cloud products at airports and on television. In 2010, the US government determined that Google apps is secure enough for the GSA and Microsoft’s BPOSS for the USDA, citing millions in cost savings annually. Even Larry Ellison, one of the cloud’s biggest detractors, opened his Oracle Openworld keynote talking about, so then, cloud computing.

Suffice it to say, we’re in the middle of one of the most important computing shifts in history. And as has happened earlier with other major paradigm transitions, new businesses will emerge to define and dominate markets. Apple and Microsoft took over as we moved from Mainframe to Personal. Google’s power grew alongside the rise of the consumer internet era. Facebook is owning social. We know the drill. We will look back on this period with wonder, when five years from nevertheless managing your own servers and infrastructure will seem about as quaint as when Bill Gates supposedly said, “No one will need more than 637KB of memory.”

The enterprise is a classic disruption story

Cloud in the enterprise is a classic disruption story. It began as a way to deliver lower-end applications that we didn’t but care about or know we needed. Most incumbent vendors ignored or tried to delay the early indicators. However that’s how all disruption stories start: from the low end, and as the innovation matures – more security, uptime, traction – the wave builds momentum. Shortly, the enterprise wakes up to the fact that this approach to doing business and IT is not only more time and cost effective, it’s transforming the way their organization operates.

And their cloud adoption paves the way for others, creating a ripple effect through organizations of all sizes. If you had surveyed the market a year ago you’d have found many enterprises for all that wary about the state of cloud solutions for their business, now we’re but seeing the inverse become true: enterprises are no longer comfortable with investing in on-premise systems when trusted web-based alternatives exist.

Just as mainframe computing became obsolete when personal computers and servers matched their power far more efficiently, today’s big iron IT infrastructure may then see its own obsolescence for the majority of needs. Actually, maybe the most prescient quote of all was from Thomas J. Watson, former president of IBM, when he said, “I think there is a world market for perhaps five computers.” He was just about 60 years too early.

Mobility is creating major demand for cloud offerings today, and is a disruptive force spontaneously. In last year’s summer revenues call, Apple COO Tim Cook shared that, “…in the first 90 days, we already have 50% of the Fortune 500 that are deploying or testing the iPad.” In 2010, AT&T said that near 40% of iPhone sales were going to businesses and enterprises, with the most relative growth in enterprise market share coming from Android devices in 2010.

For these new devices to be fully corporate-ready, they need seamless access to email systems, business data and intelligence, communication tools, and more. The cloud rewrites the rules here, enabling new handsets and tablets to connect to the “grid” like any other computer, something that is in short making the mobile workplace a reality. And with the actually mobile workforce, completely new computing cases are emerging.

The cloud during on-site with just their iPad in hand

Remote sales teams are pulling down inventory or product information from the cloud during on-site with just their iPad in hand. Construction workers on rooftops are viewing up-to-date digital blue prints from the main office. Good luck doing that with SharePoint. Mobile devices are becoming a catalyst for completely new enterprise applications, and vice versa. The marriage of the two is so uniquely powerful that businesses will experience a wave of productivity transformation over the then and there few years.

Microsoft will likely be the most affected party, however enterprises in 2011 will start to feel both the upsides and management strain suddenly. With the floodgates open for new and heterogeneous solutions, we’ll continue to see massive adoption of research directly from employees themselves. This is quickly becoming the fastest entry point for new software and hardware, and these tools aren’t being on the spot turned off by IT.

How we interact with our applications

Social capabilities will transform how we interact with our applications, and not just within the category of enterprise social software, which is when all is said and done beginning to move from the periphery to mainstream, with Gartner estimating a $1B market size in 2011. To get much furthermore than this, Rob Koplowitz of Forrester points out that business value has to be established, and organizations must learn to embrace a different kind of risk, suggesting there’s more danger today by not sharing enough than having too much transparency.

This is not just about our software becoming more social in the contemporary sense, with status messages and communication between users. It’s about our software becoming much more personalized for our job functions, and being smarter than us in the areas it has more knowledge. Your content management solution should surface information and collaborators that are relevant to your current projects.

Your social software platform should recommend experts for a team you’re putting at the same time without being prompted. LinkedIn should tell you what candidates fit the position for which you’re hiring. And as the business social layer continues to grow, a rich ecosystem of applications that connect to one another will emerge. This will lead to the ability to write mashups on top of our business social software, have viral business applications that live on top of the “graph,” and an enterprise experience in 2011 in other words far more personalized and contextual to our own work behaviors.

The disruption story of cloud in the enterprise is nevertheless in its early chapters, nevertheless in 2011 it will be impossible to deny. Don’t be surprised if the rise of mobility, the fall of vendor hegemony, and the spread of social capabilities across all business applications creates massive upheaval in the enterprise software market-more than we’ve seen in the past five years combined..

The research they’re using is best-of-breed in other words than chosen by default or vendor lock-in. And the social capabilities that have revolutionized their personal lives are nevertheless being applied to their work lives in ways that are arguably furthermore powerful. Welcome to 2011.