Phil Brown looks at the impact that Cloud-based computing is likely to have on business and HR.
The rise of Cloud-based computing is widely predicted to have a significant impact on organisations of all sizes in the next few years and it's something that those responsible for HR strategy and policies need to be aware of and planning for.
Research group Gartner recently identified Cloud computing as one of the top priorities for CIOs in 2010 and also predicted that by 2012, 20% of firms will own no IT infrastructure whatsoever.
The term 'Cloud-based computing', (sometimes referred to as ‘Software-as-a-Service' or ‘on-demand') refers to the use of computing resources (i.e. software, storage, hardware) that are based out in the internet (‘the Cloud') and accessed by users on a subscription or ‘pay-as-you-go' basis. This is a big change from the traditional computing model where companies pay upfront to buy everything themselves and then have the associated costs and hassle of owning, managing and supporting that infrastructure.