Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud adoption in Enterprise IT will largely emerge hand in hand with the development of web based or mobile based apps to replace traditional “brick and mortar” hardware stacks and legacy apps. After operational cost savings, “enterprise agility,” and “IT bringing value to the business” are often cited as justifications for Enterprise IT shops moving to a Cloud model. I support the point that IT needs to become more agile in support of the Business, and possibly this provides value, but agility gets to the point of this post: that Cloud adoption is hard on the people and process side of IT, and if adoption of Cloud appears slow in the traditional Enterprise, it may be due to the Business not yet driving the need. I submit Cloud adoption is stalling waiting on Enterprise Mobile app development.

Transformation takes two forms: Revolution and Evolution.

Revolution comes to Enterprise IT in two forms: revolutionary thinking by a strong C-Level executive sponsor and/or a visionary new business model driving new IT requirements. Big Data analytics may fall into the revolutionary category, but only time will tell. Revolutions seem to happen within individual IT shops, not generally to the industry as a whole.

Evolution in IT happens much more pervasively, without a compelling event, and as IT assets age and are replaced. The shift happening today is to replace traditional Distributed Systems and PC interfaces with Cloud infrastructures and Mobile interfaces.

It’s the transition from the PC Age to the Mobile Age that will herald Cloud adoption in Enterprise IT. As major software vendors develop mobile interfaces and as the Business develops new applications with better customer engagement, achieving the value of making data visible to web mashups, mobile workforces, and end customers on a global scale will require a scale-out capable infrastructure to support it.