Making The Cloud software compliant is like harnessing a moving target

Investment in the Cloud is expected to grow by 25 percent in 2009 to US$7.9 billion (5.6 billion), according to new research by The 451 Group revealed at the Software as a Service conference, organised by FAST IiS, Grid Computing Now! and Intellect, held in London last week.

Licensing this booming IT service and making software applications compliant were the major discussion points by leading IT experts at the event.  John Lovelock, Chief Executive at FAST IiS said: The conference was a collaborative effort to get the entire IT landscape including software providers and enablers, law firms, government agencies and regulators together to talk about compliance and open up the licensing issues.

Essentially the question for the industry is, how will software as a service be licensed? At the moment its not clear and the event was vital in raising the challenge before its too late.  We need to make the transition from PCs to Cloud as smooth as possible for the sake of the industry and the end-user. The Cloud is still evolving so its like trying to harness a moving target, said John.

Despite the current economic climate, spending on IT cloud services is forecast to grow in 2010 to US$9.9 billion (7 billion), according to The 451 Group.

Jon Pyke, keynote speaker and Chief Strategy Officer for Cordys, the leading provider of software for business process innovation, said: The entire field of Computing is fast becoming a cloud a collection of disembodied services accessible from anywhere and detached from the underlying hardware.

There will be many ways in which the cloud will change businesses and the economy, most of them hard to predict, but one theme is already emerging. Businesses are becoming more like the technology itself: more adaptable, more interwoven and more specialised. These developments may not be new, but the advent of cloud computing will speed them up, he said.

Equally important is that we must not neglect the industrys responsibility to be compliant in the use and promotion of legal software.   The chasm between standard business productivity and the Cloud is still taking shape.  The conference was an encouraging step to bring the important challenges of compliance and licensing to the forefront, added Pyke.

To learn more on the responsibilities and risks associated with the use of software, but also the benefits that can be achieved from managing it effectively, visit wwww.fastiis.org.