Cloud thoughts from CIO's

I attended the local CIO Council annual event which is State of the CIO with Gary Beach publisher emeritus of CIO magazine.

Nice attendance, over 150 I guess, many staffing people. A few IBMers, didn't see any Microsoft people, but there were at least 3 Microsoft BPs with tables. I opted not to have a table this year for various reasons and they didn't have any space anyway.

The discussion after Gary's session was a Q/A with 4 CIO's. What was interesting to note for me was 2 of them are large Lotus Notes/Domino shops, one a client of mine. The third was from a large software company based here and the 4th represented some of the local sports teams.

When a discussion about "The Cloud" came up, my client said that it made no sense whatsoever for them, the cost($) was too great. Plus they have their own infrastructure and like managing everything in house. Similar to my discussions previously about this idea that if you have built your own infrastructure why would you drop it now?

The exact opposite came from the software company. In fact they sounded like a company on the verge of death or the verge of being reborn.

They have employees bring in their own private laptops to work, no more company supplied ones. The company does provide some monetary amount in return. Can't imagine they have a hardware help desk anymore, so maybe its just about saving some money.

They didn't say anyone could work at home, which would be a better solution in my mind.

They also started to use their own software for their benefit. This is equally odd since one would expect a company to use the solutions they provide, if for no other reason than to show proof of concept or to help the sales people feel more comfortable in selling the solution.

I couldn't help but feel that perhaps they were barely treading water looking for any life preserver. Who knows.