Vision of the future: all data centers will be green and no company will have its own data center

Implications: Google's team edition of Google apps seems like an IT worst nightmare: all the company documents on a public server. But is it really that bad? What about having all your sales leads on a public server, wouldn't that be even worse? Oh wait isn't that what salesforce.com is all about? Completely outsourced IT services will be the future. Why have your own data center if you can rent the services on a as needed basis? Companies do not have their own power generators so why have your own data center or your own IT staff? What needs to happen before we can get there?

Analysis: Google's team edition of Google apps seems like an IT worst nightmare: all the company documents on a public server. But is it really that bad? What about having all your sales leads on a public server, wouldn't that be even worse? Oh wait isn't that what salesforce.com is all about?

So we can argue that maybe salesforce.com's security model is better than Google's but how do we know this is true? It could only take one serious security audit of Google's service offering to convince companies to start using this new service. And for a lot of small companies or start-ups what Google has to offer is simply good enough (and cheap enough).

Once these small companies grow into big companies, Google will have some big company customers. And that is how it will happen: established big(ger) companies will not switch over from having their own data center and own IT staff overnight. It will take a lot of small companies to lead the way and maybe a few big companies will follow once they do the "math" and once new legislation comes about that forces data centers to be green. In other words once data centers are considered to be "bad" things will go online: Software and Storage as a (online) Service.

Completely outsourced IT services will be the future. Why have your own data center if you can rent the services on a as needed basis? Companies do not have their own power generators so why have your own data center or your own IT staff?

Can we really just turn off our company data centers and get rid of our IT staff? Think about it: right now the average office worker uses a desktop PC for email, web surfing, Instant messaging (if allowed inside the company), word, excel and powerpoints documents.  For all of these basic IT needs Google has you covered. Also once your email/data/documents are stored online you will no longer need to worry about backups, archiving, disaster recovery plans and compliance regulations. Because all of these things will be covered by the online service supplier you select.

The question remains who these online software and storage service providers will be, will it be Google? Microsoft live? Yahoo? Even though these 3 do a good-enough service for consumers they are by most not considered to be enterprise-class online service providers. Unless of course they want to be ...