Sometimes vendors should remain quiet and not throw stones unless they have some real-world experience to back-up their assertions. In this case, let's see what Google has to say after they have had to provide life-cycle support, and maintain services for, line-of-business systems with transactional aspects, for applications and associated repositories that are 10+ years old (e.g., financial, accounting, ERP, CRM). Legacy systems are a pain. A real pain. And they do distract from investing in initiatives that can grow the business or transform the business. That's very true. But "stuff happens" - let's see how the SaaS model handles 10+ years of history, changing requirements, shifting prorities, moving systems on and off different service providers, or inter-connecting service providers, and so on.
And I wonder if outsourcing security is as easy as Google portrays -- when "stuff happens" - will Google be up in front of the judge or in front of whatever regulatory board is taking action against an organization? Or will they dump the issue back to the customer, shifting the security onus onto them? If not, then come out and tell people that Google will take responsibility (financial and otherwise) for any security breach. If not ... then perhaps silence is a more secure position.
Speaking in Boston at the Mass Technology Leadership Council’s annual meeting, Google’s Dave Girouard said the “insane complexity” of technology is leading companies to spend 75% to 80% of IT budgets simply maintaining the systems they have already. Besides a shortage of money, Girouard notes CIOs face strict regulations and an impending brain drain with many IT officials approaching retirement.
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“A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities],” he said. “Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organizations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?”
Source: Google exec says IT 'crisis' preventing business innovation - Network World
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