IT Leaders Forum: Desktop-weary consumers will drive cloud adoption

Proliferation of cloud-based consumer devices will lead to seismic changes in the enterprise

Top CIOs and IT directors at Computing's IT Leaders Forum yesterday insisted that it will be the death of the desktop in the consumer space that will drive cloud adoption.

"The death of the desktop will be the big driver for cloud services - customers will start to have pervasive access to what they want, when they want it," said Maurice Martin, director, server and cloud platforms, Microsoft UK.

"I think the principle of reducing friction and finding new ways of working will have more of an influence than any specific new 'killer app'," he added.

Dan Simms, IT director at law firm Browne Jacobson, agreed and argued that cloud uptake will be driven by consumers, and the big driver will be the emergence of "cloud-based desktops in the consumer space".

Dave Foster, IT director for nuclear research company CERN, agreed with Simms, and suggested that the IT industry could have done more in the past to make this happen.

"I think we have failed in the computing industry to make IT totally obvious and totally manageable to the average consumer. I consider myself a bit of an expert and I spent most of my time fixing stuff - I don't know how people at home manage their PCs," said Foster.

"With cloud desktops, all the traditional problems are taken away from the end user. They would have a very simple device that doesn't require any maintenance at all, and yet they can use it and the applications as though they are running on a local machine," he added.

"Once there, we'll no longer have to worry about backups, or viruses. There will be a new era of business models for computing.

"If we like an application we can have it for a year; if we want to try an application we pay for a set amount of use. I think when we get to this stage we will see widespread adoption."