CIOs must fit the cloud into IT strategy

"You think about innovation waves, and every on occasion you get one that you know is meaningful, that in fact changes the way companies spend their money and invest in solutions; it really changes the way the tech industry itself is shaped, and cloud computing is one of those things evidently," said Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Innovation, who moderated the panel.

"It was as well a major driver of open source, where if I could get a server for free in Linux and deploy it, I could as a developer to tell the truth try something out," he said. "The cloud just took that and blew it out on steroids. There's probably not a single startup that comes through my office, and probably not through yours, that isn't deploying on cloud infrastructure. They might keep the customer database in their own data center, however all their storage and all their compute sits on Amazon or it sits on Rackspace or it sits out there somewhere in the cloud. In other words a huge possibility for research, for things that change the way companies work at the same time. You see this now reflected in the investments of the major infrastructure providers. You as well see it reflected in the growth of companies like Salesforce and Google. Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Government, that's a billion dollar business today."

Top of mind consideration for most

Schadler noted that Forrester's discussions with CIOs indicates that cloud computing is a top of mind consideration for most. And he said that most organizations are not looking to the cloud as a method of cost management, nevertheless for "extension"-the capability to take their business in new directions faster.

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