The low cost products and services are here, either at supermarkets, airlines, holidays, automobiles, hotels, food-chains, etc., and we use them because, sometimes, we really don’t need all the features of the non low cost products and services.

In my opinion, the Cloud Computing, in a way, is the “low cost” for IT business.

Let’s take the example of Traditional CRM software versus CRM as SaaS:

• Traditional CRM software : They earned a bad reputation by bringing with it integration and customization demands that easily spiraled out-of-control. So as a result, there was the feeling that CRM software was a huge head-heck and a huge waste of money with no practical results.

 

• CRM as SaaS: what have SaaS vendors done? they provide just-enough customization in a very easy way, and they shifted integration responsibility from the clients. So as a result CRM as SaaS is simple to use, economic and with practical results.

Or the example of infrastructure such as Amazon’s S3 and SimpleDB versus conventional enterprise counterparts (distributed file systems and relational databases) : they can’t be compared to their conventional, however they offer the basic features that everyone needs  (and also one huge advantage: vast scalability)

In other words, we can say that the use of the 80/20 rule is actually a common theme across cloud technology, and what might appear to be a limitation is actually a secret to success: it gives customers what they actually need in a very easy and cheaper way.