As cloud computing matures, it’s become pretty clear that the heaviest use of the technology is around Software as a Service, or SaaS. Many business functions are provided by SaaS, chief among those sales management, accounting and human resource management, including payroll. While many organizations wrestle with the decision to go to the cloud, one tenet of IT remains true: Business needs are the primary driver when choosing technologies.

When evaluating whether to go to the cloud, businesses and government agencies need to identify their required functionality and other requirements (budget!) and compare those against all the possible offerings in the marketplace. This includes both cloud and traditional offerings.

For example, if a cloud offering only hits 20 percent of your business needs, and a traditional solution covers 80 percent of your requirements, you probably should not go to the cloud. Of course, this is a simplified example, and clearly, costs factor heavily into this equation.

Cloud offerings typically tout significant cost savings. This includes tangible costs at initiation — no need to buy hardware and/or software — as well as operating costs during the life of the project. Without a doubt, the initial outlay for a cloud solution will be less expensive than starting from scratch.

Cloud vendors tell you that they will take care of the care and feeding of the software, at a cheaper price than you would pay if you had your own staff involved. This claim, however, is sometimes tough to confirm.

Today the greatest concern expressed in consideration of a cloud solution is security. That is, folks are concerned about their data being safe in the hands of a vendor, typically passing over the Internet. However, the vast majority of cloud vendors are typically more secure than your average business or government agency. Of course, some organizations have a business requirement for their data to be extremely secure, but again, the business requirement drives the technology.

In some cases the decision to go to the cloud is simple — it’s the only solution. While we expect to continue to see cloud-only solutions emerging, there will be relatively fewer solutions that don’t have an option to go to the cloud.

Currently the general ratio, at least in larger organizations, is 40-40-20. That is, 40 percent of software solutions are cloud based and are typically horizontal market applications such as those described above (accounting, sales management, etc.). Another 40 percent are traditional solutions but still horizontal market applications. The remaining 20 percent is vertical, industry-specific software that is largely noncloud.

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John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 20 years of information technology experience. Reach him at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.