Moving Accounting into the Clouds

My personal cloud computing "buzz-o-meter" hit an all time high this week.

The Wall Street Journal had a front page story on cloud computing - which started with Larry Ellison calling it "Gibberish" last year and ended with him announcing his new "cloud-computing ready" products on Oracle's earnings call last week.

Then I picked up Business Week which ran not one but two separate cloud computing stories - one encouraging IBM to acquire Sun to get more into cloud computing, and the other trying to educate consumers about being smart in using the cloud. NPR got into the act too, with another consumer focused story.

I've been having lots of meetings with thought leaders from the accounting profession lately - in one last week I heard that Intacct should start talking about "cloud computing" instead of SaaS or on-demand or Internet and in the other that the best way to describe Intacct was to call it "Cloud Accounting."

Then yesterday I heard through my network that our new president wants to learn a lot more more about cloud computing too.

So what does it all mean?

Just about everyone in the technology profession (and apparently now even Larry Ellison) agrees that Cloud Computing is a disruptive new shift - even a bigger deal than the last major architectural transition from mainframe to client server computing. But our industry is full of buzzwords that come and go, so it's sometimes hard to sort out real vs hype.

My week above says that cloud computing has moved from a Silicon Valley buzzword to becoming something that has capturing the attention of mainstream consumers, government and business. I think the major factor driving this wide level of interest is that Cloud Computing is pervasive across our experience as consumers as well as in the business world.

And when multiple thought leaders from the CPA world, one of the most conservative professions of all, start talking about moving CPA firms to cloud computing and Intacct as "Cloud Accounting" - that says to me that we are really on to something.