alyptus, OpenNebula, IBM SmartCloud, and Oracle Cloud all joined the bandwagon. The advantages of the cloud include the following: Sharing – economies of scale Dynamically reallocated by demand OPEX vs CAPEX Applications set up faster Improved manageability/less maintenance Agility, API, device and location independence, virtualisation (migration), peak load capacity, utilisation and efficiency, reliability, security. A new language has now evolved which I have coined “The AAS’es”. Saas – Software as a service Paas – Platform as a service Iaas – Infrastructure as a service Haas – Hardware as a service Eaas – Everything as a service As with most things there are also disadvantages: Reliability Availability Security Complexity Costs Regulations and legal issues Performance Migration Privacy The jury is still out on the cloud, but is seems to be gaining steam. A TechInsights Report last year stated, “Cloud implementations generally meet or exceed expectations across major service models”. The future ? Gartner says that cloud computing has reached a maturity that leads it into a productive phase and adds that most of the main issues are resolved, while cautioning that not all problems have been solved. The future is a little foggy, but for many retailers who are notorious for watching the pennies, the most appealing aspect is being able to fund their IT solution as an operating expense over a period of time rather than a one off capital expense. Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702.