Have been hearing quite a bit about cloud portability recently. This also came up a recent panel at the SIIA NetGain conference. Here is my take:
- Customers think of information technology as a means to an end.
- When they are making IT related decisions (technology and vendor) they are generally making them for the long term.
- Technology decisions are based on many issues like skill availability, how it fits into the technology, standards – portability as it related to standards.
- Vendor decisions are also based on many issues like track record, area of focus/expertise etc. Leverage is also on the list. Portability helps with issue.
At the end of the day, customers are looking for standards based technology that they can work with vendors to implement. Standards not only help them with technology related issues, but also leverage with vendors.
