IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: The Tipping Point – When Things Changed for Cloud Computing

Shawn Moore, CTO of web experience platform, Solodev, speaks to IT Briefcase about the rise in cloud computing and the challenges cloud migration posed for businesses—particularly the enterprise.

• Q. Do you think cloud computing still has a ways to go as far as mass adoption?

A. When it comes to the rise of the cloud, I like to refer to Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point”, which looks at the major problem all products face: How do you reach mass-market adoption? In his book, Gladwell uses a bell curve to demonstrate the trajectory that generally occurs. At the bottom of the curve are the innovators, joined shortly after by early adopters, and then a growing number of early mainstream at the very top of the graph. Once the graph reaches its steepest point on the right side, it has hit “the tipping point”. This is where I believe we are now in regards to cloud adoption. Global organizations have finally come to trust this technology and understand the significant value of running a completely cloud-based company.

• Q. Where does Amazon Web Services (AWS) come into play?

A. It’s impossible to talk about cloud computing without AWS, the true catalyst that helped open the door to mass adoption of cloud computing technologies. There are a number of competing providers today, but in 2006 when AWS was founded, Google and Microsoft hadn’t even considered building cloud solutions. Despite Amazon being the first player to go all-in with their offering, it took years for their technology, particularly their EC2 server offering, to reach a level of maturity where early adopters would dip their toes in the water. At that time, the technology simply wasn’t ready and the business world viewed the cloud as unreliable if they even considered it at all. That all changed with a few visionaries who paved the way for the rest.

• Q. Who were these early cloud visionaries?

A. Let’s go back to Gladwell’s bell curve. A few years after the founding of AWS, a number of startups tried to disrupt their respective industries by experimenting with cloud computing. These were the innovators. They were joined by the early adopters, startups of cloud computing technologies such as Spotify, Netflix, Airbnb, and Twilio, which showcased the benefits of cloud computing to the world through the massive adoption of their respective products. Even with this success and attention, it was still too early for widespread cloud adoption, even by Fortune 500 companies.

• Q. Did the rise in IoT impact the cloud’s adoption rate at all?

A. Certainly. Large organizations started to incorporate IoT, but what these mega corporations didn’t know at the time was that these new technologies were all cloud-based. Suddenly the cloud became much more appealing.

• Q. Can you identify the match that ultimately started the mass cloud adoption fire?

A. The match that lit the fire in the race to the cloud was the ability for organizations to configure their cloud environments using fully scripted architecture, as well as the evolution, price reduction, and availability of server redundancy, namely across multiple regions. What previously took organizations months to complete could now be done in minutes or with the simple click of a button. While IT departments across the globe began their research into the cloud years beforehand, they now had the data to prove the value of the cloud to the decision makers at their organizations.

• Q. What about legacy technologies?

A. There is a clear correlation between mass cloud adoption and the outdated technologies and data centers built during the early days of the Internet. As these data centers began to age to obscurity, organizations faced a major decision. Should they renovate their data centers, requiring a massive investment, and keep everything on premise? Or should they move to the cloud where they could scale as needed? The answer, at this point, was obvious.

• Q. What do you foresee for the cloud over the next few years?

A. Now that cloud computing has finally reached the tipping point, Fortune 500 companies are racing to catch up to smaller, more agile organizations already operating in the cloud—like Solodev. We were part of the early majority of cloud computing, beginning our efforts to rebuild our web experience platform for the AWS Cloud in 2013 once the technology had fully matured in a way that was scalable, reliable and affordable. Despite being a relatively small software company, Solodev’s experience with cloud computing has provided us with the expertise and agility to help larger organizations move their massive ecosystem of products, services, websites and applications to the cloud. One way or another, everyone is moving to the cloud. Now, the real focus is on how to truly build a cloud-based business rather than simply making your product or service available on the cloud.

About Shawn Moore

Shawn Moore is the founder of Solodev and the driving force behind the Solodev web experience platform and Solodev Launch digital marketing services. A visionary leader, Shawn has strategically grown Solodev from inception to a successful company that services clients across the nation and has been named to the Inc. 5000’s fastest growing private companies for the past two years in a row. Winner of several industry awards for Best CTO and CIO, Shawn is changing the CMS landscape with Solodev, winner of the 2016 People’s Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS.

Company Website – https://www.solodev.com/

Shawn’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mooreshawn/