Cloud is the Next iPhone (for IT)
 | It was the year 2006. The year Google acquired YouTube for a mere $1.65B, Pavarotti opened the Winter Olympics and Germany hosted the World Cup. After successfully branching out into music players, Apple is hinting at releasing a phone. The excitement is building, but the smartphone market is dominated by Blackberry. Microsoft's Windows Mobile has been in the market for a few years and is steadily growing in popularity because it's a more accessible developer platform. Then on January 9th, 2007 the world changed. Not just the technology world, but the world as we knew it. Yes, Steve Jobs only showed a product, the first iPhone, but what he really showed the world what it's like to be connected and have access to the internet at all times. |
| The iPhone wasn't the first of its kind. Far from it actually. Microsoft had been toying with the idea of Smartphones for almost 10 years at the time. Mobile powerhouses like Blackberry and Nokia had products in the market as well, but the iPhone had two new things going for it. 1) it was beautiful and desirable and 2) it made things that mattered easy. It was no longer about piling on features. It was about making the important things easy and hiding the complexity of common tasks. Those two factors made the iPhone an overnight success. The philosophy of beauty and simplicity was the perfect recipe to form a strong emotional connection between users and their devices. |
It wasn't the apps. Those came later. A year and a half later, when Apple opened the AppStore. At that point there was no holding back, the success of the iPhone seemed unstoppable. It no longer was about being cool. You simply didn't participate without one.
So what about the cloud?
The cloud is about the same thing. Making things that matter easy. For consumers, the cloud makes keeping things in sync easy. Keeping your appointments, your contacts and files in sync is frustrating problem that was worth solving.
For the IT Crowd it's about making it easy to run apps. No longer do you have to spend time and effort on things you or, more importantly, your users(!), don't care about. The users care about how good you are at racking, stacking and cabling. They don't even want to know how much you know about maintaining and patching an OS image. You may argue that they think you're "wasting too much time" on such "unimportant" things. They care about one thing. They want their apps, fast, consistently and everywhere.
The cloud makes those things easy, because they’re done in different ways that makes users not wait for things to show up. Gratification is instant. Apps show up. New features show while they're still new and exciting. They can show off their new toys before others have them … like people showed off their new iPhones. That's what forms the emotional bond, but there were good business reasons behind it.
Let's look at some other aspects
| iPhone | Cloud |
| iPhone hides complexity to accomplish the important tasks users care about | Cloud hides complexity to accomplish the important tasks users care about |
| iPhone required upfront investment , but the investment paid off quickly in productivity gains | Transition to the cloud is not seamless, but adopters confirm cost savings and transformational capabilities. |
| iPhone shortened timelines because access to information became ubiquitous. Information was accessible before, but the iPhone reached critical mass to drive rapid availability of mobile enabled sites. | Cloud shortens timelines because context becomes ubiquitous, capabilities become available instantaneously and innovation cycles become shorter because IT bottlenecks are eliminated. |
| IT hated the iPhone in the enterprise because it meant change. The iPhone was neither the most secure nor the most enterprise friendly smartphone, but users had it their way. Companies who adopted early gained an edge. | IT hates the (public) cloud in the enterprise because it means change, ... |
That's why I say, the cloud is the next iPhone: Trojanic, Tectonic and Transformational. In other words, it'll creep in no matter how much you think you'll keep it out, it's going to change things and it's here to stay.
The ones that harness the transformational capabilities are going to have the edge because they shed baggage and thus move faster. With tectonic, transformational shifts, it’s important to have a strategy. Thoughts on strategies on harnessing the power of the cloud come in the next posts.