The benefits of the Cloud Computing model were readily apparent this past week as the mid-Atlantic, North East and now the South all experienced significant winter storms. Vast areas of commercial and business districts lost power for extended periods of time. Many regions had repeated outages. Climate control units on roofs of these buildings frequently became clogged with snow which caused further data-center outages.
Numerous Aptaria clients were directly impacted by these outages which directly affected the ability of these organizations to run their businesses due to their continued dependence upon on-premise solutions.
The good news is that these organizations run significant portions of their businesses In-The-Cloud. CRM and custom apps built on Salesforce.com's Cloud didn't miss a beat. Salespeople around the nation (at least those outside the immediate path of the storms) were unaffected by the outages that hamstrung other critical apps.
The benefits of the Cloud model have never been more apparent. Its unfortunate that it can take an act of God before doubters see the light. There is no turning back. Business people took note that their sales teams enjoyed uninterrupted access their CRM apps but had no access to e-mail because their on-premise Exchange server at the office data-center had no power. These business leaders will have less patience for IT departments that insist on keeping significant infrastructure behind their firewall.
I expect Aptaria be busier than ever developing plans to Cloud-Source more and more critical business applications in the coming quarters. I also expect less and less resistance from the doubters and those that spread FUD.
