Blue sky thinking, or head in the clouds?

Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS)  is often said to be cheaper, easier, faster, more reliable and even greener, so it’s right that every organisation explores these opportunities.

Put simply, cloud computing refers to a network of computer resources that are located just about anywhere and, for a price, part of this can be yours- short or long term.

The concept of SaaS running in the cloud has actually been around for a long time. With personal email such as Hotmail, being a well known example of SaaS that has been going since 1996, with 400 million accounts worldwide.

The approach can be compared to the potential flexibility of using public transport rather than committing to buying a car - you can choose a different mode of transport depending on your needs for the journey. A train could be faster, a bus could be cheaper and everyone sharing could potentially be more efficient and green.

 You also won’t have the initial outlay or be responsible for the maintenance, but with less responsibility comes less control.

Services might not run exactly when you’d like them to; they won’t get you right to the door; they could be less reliable; or in reality you might find yourself in a taxi (private cloud) every time, paying more for the luxury!

There are a lot of things to take into consideration, including remembering that just as owning a car doesn’t stop you from catching a train when it suits, the use of SaaS is not an all or nothing situation.

Despite clouds gathering on the horizon and talk of a government G-Cloud forecast to rain change on the public sector, it seems clear that we are likely to continue to host some applications in the foreseeable future, but that cloud computing is also genuine option for others.