Hmmm

I haven't tried Chrome but will comment on Gears. The idea of being able to use your apps, wherever you are, is appealing. However, for most organisations, apps other than 'productivity suites' are complex beasts, developed or configured specifically to support business processes somewhat unique to the organisation. There are exceptions, and many businesses have found bog-standard SaaS CRM suites like salesforce and SugarCRM to meet their needs.

The hassles come when you want to provide integration between applications, such as in workflows, and when you grow beyond the capabilities of SaaS tools to support your processes.

The former issue is both a technical hurdle and a security risk, and the latter is a limitation that requires going back to a bespoke or customised solution. There are other issues also, such as security of your data in the 'cloud'. The simple rule is if it's available over the internet, it's at risk. The other aspect of security is that of access. Currently, if there's a DDoS attack on (say) Salesforce.com, people at my organisation can still access the inhouse (and mission-critical) CRM system. I'd also be worried about the potential for the 'guardian' of my outsourced data to be bought and sold, arrangements over which I have no control.

I believe that these hurdles and issues can be overcome, but doing so will drive the costs up and reduce the benefits of adoption. The sweet spots for this stuff are then SMEs and home users. Government and big business will probably still find it more cost effective, secure and efficient to have their own systems tailored to their own needs, housed in known data centres. As the article pointed out, it's all about risk. But it's not about risk of not having the future these days, it's about the risk to your business of outsourcing control of key elements of your business.

Mine's the one that's mine - not rented