/ Get Off of My Cloud…?

What’s your take on the cloud?

For me, clouds have been infinitely cool ever since Cloud City Administrator Lando Calrissian decided to doublecross Vader in order to save his old friend. (“There’s still a chance to save Han! At the east [various choking noises] platform!”) It’s just a bonus that the cloud is also a revolutionary delivery model for software solutions.

At the recent Hall of Fame Dinner for the Utah Technology Council, though, I was reminded that there’s still some debate about just how revolutionary that delivery model will be. Mark Hurd, president of Oracle and a very smart guy, was the keynote speaker at the event, and though he talked proudly of Oracle’s release of a number of cloud-based services, he also poked fun at the hype around the concept. “You tell me your problem,” Hurd said, “and whatever it is, I’ll say the word cloud.”

Hurd’s point? That cloud-based services and SaaS applications have a place, but the industry’s love affair with the concept is more fad than fashion. Traditional models – data centers, on-premise databases and the like – will continue to dominate the tech landscape, especially for the largest companies, for a long time.

What do you think? Is the cloud more a delivery model for specialized solutions to specific problems, or as Gartner suggests, will nearly half of companies run the majority of IT from the cloud or on SaaS technologies within the next four years?

Try Domo now.

Watch a demo.