The article written by Barb Darrow April 2nd supports what has already been happening well in advance of Gartner’s “report”. In summary, Garter is recommending to those IT groups who have not embraced cloud services to start doing so before your company hires someone who will. Those that stood and watched the trains leave the station are now getting in line to buy tickets for the last train before it leaves. Watch, we will be reading the same article about being Social.

What I found even more interesting are the comments people posted in response to the article. Some of the comments eluded to a “war on IT’, a “different architecture that has its own pro’s and con’s” and “moving a complex procurement process into the hands of folks that do not understand how to effectively procure technology” (that was my personal favorite). I fear people are missing the obvious.

Cloud Services deliver software to consumers easier and faster than they got it before.

Before you tell me it takes longer to pull a query over the Internet than if you housed the data locally, I’m not talking about query performance. I am talking about deploying a solution that meets the needs of the business before the business finds a less desirable means on its own because it’s tired of waiting.

If you don’t have time to schedule a meeting, do you call or email?

If you need a short, fast, response, do you email or text?

If you want to share something with many people, do you create and maintain distribution lists of who would be interested in what you are sending, or do you post your thoughts in an environment that allows folks to elect whether they want to receive your posts?

If you don’t like lines and traffic, do you drive to the store or do you order online?

Do you mail your bills because you love licking stamps or do you pay online?

If you want to respond to the needs of your business quickly, do you put a request into IT for approval, choose a solution, design an infrastructure to support the solution, procure the infrastructure, deploy and test, and THEN start configuring it for your needs? OR, do you subscribe to a service that provides immediate access to a solution where you can begin configuring it for your business?

Hmmm…

Maybe I am not appreciating the complexity of these issues.

Perhaps Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google did wage a war against the phone company.

Maybe the mobile communications industry saw an opportunity to crush email providers.

Is it possible Twitter felt that it could offer a different type of texting technology with its own pro’s and con’s versus the mobile architecture?

Did Amazon make the terrible mistake of taking the power away from highly trained individuals who can help me find my product and then ring up my purchases and moving that responsibility into the hands of the actual consumer of that product, who has not been trained in the ways of product knowledge and procurement? (this is still my favorite)

No, I don’t think so. I think new ideas that successfully make life simpler, easier, faster, better will always be embraced, until something that makes our lives even simpler, easier, faster, better replaces it.

Which brings me to the “social” revolution. Why do businesses need to become social? Because they will learn about and respond to their customers faster than they have in the past. Customers are different for everyone. From clothing designers to fast food chains to product manufacturers to distribution channels to software developers to government agencies to service providers….everyone has a customer and that customer is social whether you are or not.

Get over it folks. While sometimes painful, change can be good. I don’t keep a buggy whip in my pocket. I used to keep a set of car keys. Now I keep a key fob. It’s done wonders for the durability of my dress pants.