The Cloud vs. the Platform: What's Best for the Enterprise?

Lost amidst the hype of the latest iPhone launch was the “consumerization” of cloud computing by Apple. Its MobileMe service enables users to sync email, contacts, and calendars to a wide variety of devices. Thankfully, Apple is trying to end the painful tasks of syncing information between desktop, mobile phone, and Web sites. This “simple” service showcases the allure of cloud computing, the popular buzzword for software as a service (SaaS) and web services. The idea is to “rent” a service and let the technology company take care of the rest. You do not have to worry about the hardware, software, bandwidth, wires, security, and the other myriad issues that come with a typical software purchase.

In addition, once you have information stored online, it is much easier to disseminate and use in other applications. To young people, the thumb generation, this is second nature. They have grown up having their data stored online and having their daily activities, even scandalous ones, getting sent as RSS feeds to their friends. They have never had to deal with such mundane tasks as archiving their Outlook data file, a task that can consume an entire hard drive. (I just stopped carrying around all of my Outlook email on a thumb drive.)

However, to enterprise users, the benefits of cloud computing are still a hazy dream. When my wife accesses her corporate email from home, it is a maze of proprietary software, VPNs, logins, and separate windows that can cause mass confusion and support issues. Bless the other attorneys out there who have to deal with such processes from their hotel rooms, coffee shops, or airports.

Why is there such a discrepancy between cloud computing and how most of us still work? The concept of cloud computing is not new and has been championed, at times…