Hmm, what about companies that are expected to be stronger-than-average in computer science & software engineering, and might not yet have as much competitive advantage in business momentum or financial resources to begin with?
Would it be better to leverage the strongest area of expertise or not?
Tough decision, which I would be very conservative about making.
Decade 0 of The Cloud didn't obscure very much of the heavens and it remained sunny with only a slight chance of scattered data.
Now on first pass (decade 01) it looks like the cloud is ideal if you have huge amounts of data that needs to be shared with just about anybody anywhere at any time 24/7.
I know I'm not in that league, so I can't speak from a position of expertise, but after this much dust has settled it does look like it would be most widely useful mainly for data which is not the least bit confidential.
Especially data which is completely public, or intended to be public more so than was possible any other way.
And then only as long as the ongoing cost is "virtually" insignificant compared to the fully amortized on-premises in-house alternative.
Seems like it would really make sense to do this kind of financial analysis before deciding how to best handle the data that you want the world to have access to.
Probably a good idea to consider how to best handle the other kind of data that you don't ever want to share with the world at all, which is a whole different equation. Any cloud in the way and it may be more challenging to break through the ceiling for the sky to be the limit on that one.
At least this seems to be the kind of thing that has been consistent since the overcast started rolling in.
But what do I know?
I'm just an earth-bound observer ;)