I was in a meeting today with a Microsoft customer considering about moving to the cloud. They have deployed Exchange 2003 many moons ago and are considering strategic options for the business around cost reduction, business continuity, and delivery surrounding user experience. A common theme that comes up is just help me get to the cloud. The reasons are all described differently but follow a basic storyline. In this decade I am assuming that the "Consumerization of IT" will accelerate the migration of corporate business processes bring moved to the cloud.

When you think about it - everyone has had corporate email essentially since they entered the workplace. But now comes services like Hotmail.Com helping individuals separating their personal identity and communications with their professional delivery of services to their organizations where they work. Enter the catalyst for change - smart devices. So now decision makers in IT and delivery of service line applications scratch their heads and say to themselves "Why am I concerned with moving my mission critical applications to the cloud when the executives travel and intend to collaborate with a device unprotected with compliance policies the company governs.

All of the sudden the IT delivery staff of mission critical allocations such as email say "Why not move a commodity based corporate support function like email closer to the internal users consuming it"? Enter the executives consuming services on their tablets and other devices and ask if a scenario like this is secure? After a security discussion with the executives it is amazing how fast the conversations turns from "That seems unsecure" to "I want the new technology to differentiate my business". This is making my job easier to deliver technology discussions for cloud services as a subscription.