Cloudy disruptions

What if the Cloud really is a disruptive technology?

It’s been called that enough times. Usually, though, those using the term never actually read Clayton Christenson’s seminal work in the field, The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business.

These folks will tell you “disruptive technology” means a technology that disrupts a marketplace. The original and useful meaning is quite different.

Disruptive technologies are useless in the current marketplace because they are less capable than what’s already in widespread use. Instead, they incubate in entirely new marketplaces for which the old technologies are poorly suited.

During this incubation phase their capabilities improve rapidly enough to overtake the more slowly growing requirements of the old marketplace. When the lines representing the new technology’s capabilities and old marketplace’s requirements cross, BLAM! That’s when the new technology disrupts the old marketplace.

Which brings us back to the Cloud, and more specifically what NIST terms “Platform as a Service” and “Infrastructure as a Service,” which are in most respects has the most interesting possibilities.

If you aren’t already convinced that these aren’t ready to take over processing you currently keep inside your carefully managed firewall – either in your own data center or in a contracted one – you should read “5 lessons from the dark side of cloud computing,” (by Robert Lemos, InfoWorld, 8/6/2009) without any further delay. Lemos lists five non-trivial problems with current offerings, just in the domains of security and quality assurance … problems resulting from your lack of ownership and control of your own computing environment.

For these and other reasons already beaten to death in this space — some technical, some in the management domain — few CIOs should consider moving any of their current processing out of their currently-well-controlled computing environments.

Now imagine you’re setting up the information processing environment for a start-up venture, unconstrained by such mundane considerations as your current information architecture. Beyond that, you and the rest of the new company’s executive team see information technology to be more than a way to make the company more effective. You all see it as a strategic enabler that lets you create new and more interesting service offerings that can attract and retain customers, and maintain higher margins than  you could otherwise achieve.

Might you look at the various services available within the Cloud, not as a buy-vs-build question, but as a do-vs-do-nothing question?

The tiny tip of this very big iceberg is Google Maps. Google has shrewdly designed it to be awesomely simple to integrate into your website, and many companies have done so. If Google Maps weren’t available, most of these companies would never even have considered building sophisticated mapping into their on-line presences.

(Speaking of disruptive technologies, Google Maps itself quietly disrupted the directories marketplace, because why would you use the Yellow Pages when you can, instead, search for “Hardware Stores, Yourtown, YourState” and see every business you’re looking for, placed on a map?)

That’s the incubator — the dozens … maybe hundreds … of Things You Couldn’t Do Before that are available in the Cloud, that you can turn into value-enhancing features of your business.

Because you couldn’t do them before, you can find creative ways to live with their limitations. Or uncreative ways, like shrugging if Google Maps goes offline for awhile and not worrying about it, just as you shrug and don’t worry if your mobile phone drops its connection, unlike your landline connection, which you hold to a higher standard.

If you agree with this analysis, here’s what it means to you: Before, you had to decide whether the Cloud is ready for prime time yet — whether it can replace existing capabilities in your technical architecture. The answer: It isn’t and it can’t, so ignore it and get on with your life until it grows up.

Now you need to think creatively about what the Cloud can add to your company’s business, not what it can replace. Remember, fifteen years ago some CIOs introduced their companies to the World Wide Web while others wondered what was happening.

Which ones are your role models?

While you’re introducing the Cloud to your business strategists, keep your eyes open. Because as it incubates, the Cloud just might eventually take over the whole data-center-outsourcing marketplace.

That would be seriously disruptive.