Cloud computing and collaboration

Cloud computing is definitely one of those buzzwords that is currently found all over the Internet and the concept has nearly as many definitions as there are people to write about it.  So at the beginning of this post, let me explain what I understand by the concept. I recognize two different concepts behind the term cloud computing.  First, it consists in a number of IT resources that are made available in near real time over the Internet.  These resources can be compute cycles or storage space or combination of those.  Second, a set of services are made available over the Internet and can be orchestrated together by the user to perform a particular functionality.  Software as a service, often referred to as SAAS, is one instance of such services.  However where things really get interesting, is when services on the Internet can be integrated with proprietary services running within the enterprise IT infrastructure.  The two categories described in my mind represent cloud computing. The first category has appeared  a couple years ago and is being proposed by companies like Amazon and others.  What is really interesting from a collaboration perspective is when we will see the second one appearing.  Today there is not really a valuable collaboration offer.

What I am looking for is an environment that allows companies to quickly create business processes using available services, that low them to do the key collaboration activities they require. These go from planning & forecast collaboration, to inventory collaboration, status information sharing, sales & order planning (S&OP), master data management and the management of orders and invoices. What I envisage may happen is that cloud computing is first used to do things that are not done today. This could be hazardous material reporting, CO2 emission reporting or tracking of counterfeiting. What is important in each of those is for companies to make available proprietary information in return of obtaining a grander picture. However, they would like to keep that proprietary information as much as possible under their own control. Cloud computing and its capability to approach distributed data as if it was an integrated database, is ideal for such type of reporting. But we need standards, and standardized ways to approach the data.

If I am looking at Amazon ACS tools, they are proprietary and incompatible with other environments. As such they do not allow applications to address multiple environments in a seamless and transparent way. It’s what limits the current generation of cloud environments. A lot has still to happen for truly integrated and collaborative environments. But its worth looking at what will be needed as this is the only way we will get people looking at how to address our needs.