The weather is changing and the clouds are rolling in and in a few years time nothing will be the same. Cloud computing promises the same powerful computer use model a business normally obtains from its IS group but obtained directly from a provider, cutting out the middle man. Currently the IS groups of the bigger companies put a lid on this controlling through FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) and through ultimate control of the networking pipelines, but this will change. 4G LTE technologies will make network speed access to any device possible utilising only devices that can be bought easily from any supplier making the network open. At the same time cloud vendors will be ensuring your CEO is "up to speed" with the benefits of the cloud and particularly its low cost and high SLA's.
Soon departments will start to use these services despite the IS group, who will of course try and shut them down. Initially they will succeed but over time the pervasive nature of the cloud will mean these services get a hold and expand, this will be supported by critical products that become only available through the cloud. The truth is that the future is cloud and only small residual IS groups will exist, managing cloud accounts and attempting to extract best value from the cloud contracts.
I know I will get a flame of people who will tell me this will not happen, much as the centralised data processing group told me that distributed PC's would never catch on more than 20 years ago.
