Is the "Cloud" important to your company?

[prwhite]

According to industry consultant, Andy Tribute, “This will be the ‘Cloud’ Drupa”. How important will the Cloud be for you and your company now and in the future?

[gordo]

The Cloud will be the foundation of the post PC era which is just now beginning.

best, gordo

[Greg_Firestone]

The cloud is extremely important from both a vendor and client standpoint.

From a vendor side, we can offer a greater number of products to a wider variety of customers. Instead of outright software purchases which may be cost prohibitive for certain customers, we can offer per-use and subscription pricing models which can be more flexible depending on someone's needs and budgets.

From the client side, besides flexible pricing models, there are lower operating costs. You don't need to worry about buying and maintaining hardware, software upgrades, or having a backup solution. You can also utilize scalability of the cloud if you have have peaks and troughs in your volume; everything can be on-demand so there's no wasted investment.

Regards,
Greg

[Morning Flight]

The Cloud will be the foundation of the post PC era which is just now beginning.

No question, gordo. Helped immensely by the iPad tsunami. It won't be long before the mouse is relegated to a supporting role with a swipe of our index finger.

Until recently, I had strong reservations about the rush to the cloud. Murphy's law says that if anything can go wrong, it will. Imagine what will happen when the internet goes dark for a month, taken down not by a hacker but by a rogue nation that either feels threatened or just wants to send the world a message.

Begs the question: If the internet goes down, won't power grids go down with it? Desktop apps are as useless as the ballyhooed cloud if there's no electricity.

True, but here's the difference: Desktop apps and internal networks can be kept running with a generator. While we're busy reinventing Morning Flight for the cloud, we'll keep producing parallel versions for the desktop.

Hal

[Carl38]

Advantages of cloud based solutions are numerous

From the vendor point of view, we reduce our fixed costs and can therefore lower the investment requirement for our customers.

From the customer point of view, a flexible pricing model more or less related to the usage along with no hassle of scaling, maintaining, upgrading, backuping allows for using up-to-date solutions at the fraction of the cost of an owned maintained infrastructure. In other words, the customer focuses on its core business.

Carl

[almaink]

The cloud is just another nail in the coffin for printing. Between Apple's latest OS and Adobe wanting to sell all apps as subscriptions printing as we know it is just got pushed another step in the grave.

[Lukas Engqvist]

The cloud is still a bit fluffy to me… like sugar candy all sweet n full of promises of instant satisfaction… what's the IT equivalent of the dentist?

[alu]

the dentist herself will never be fully replaced, but some of her services will be..

take an x-ray of your teeth with your ipad mouth scanning attachment, upload to the cloud, crowdsourcing service will determine best course of action, "work order" created for your automagically in the form of a QR code. drop by a "dental processing shop" on your way back from lunch, your code is scanned automatically and someone starts work on you in 5 mins or less.

[Happyprinter]

The one downside I see to the "Cloud" is this. When I purchase a program such as Adobe CS? I can use it as long as I want until I decide to upgrade, several years perhaps. But with cloud technology, Adobe can force me to upgrade every year or not allow me access to my CS programs unless I do. Of course I am using Adobe as an example but any software supplier out their can us the cloud to drive up operating costs for the end user by forcing us to continually upgrade or be cut off. Am I seeing things right or am I missing something? I can see some benefits but overall I see more expense that otherwise I wouldn't have to pay.

[Lukas Engqvist]

There was a discussion about this, in another forum, and I hope they find a system like a "frequent flyers" so that if you tire of having your head in the clouds and want to have your feet touch ground there should be an option to cross-grade from cloud to feet-on-solid-ground versions of the software… didn't get a final answer but there are vibes about trying to find a path for those wanting to descend. That goes for other software companies. I think a programme like "buy out of a leased car" model should be able to apply?