Mark Rousell <mark.rousell@???> wrote:

> As I see it there are only two USPs for a service like this:
>
> (1) It's accessible for anywhere you have Internet access and a computing device.
>
> (2) It is (I presume) backed up so you don't need to run your own backups... well, in theory. In practice that should not be relied upon but people definitely will give up doing their own backups due to systems like this.

You missed what is possibly the most important for many businesses :

(3) It's able to be bought as Opex rather than Capex.

Put another way, someone, somewhere, in the organisation can buy this on their expenses and cut out the IT department. They don't need to create a business case and go through an approvals process to spend on a capital asset - it just hides away in the operating budget for the department.
That in part is behind the rapid rise of a number of "something as a service" offerings - they can be hidden in departmental operating budgets instead of having to go and get capital approval, and allowing the IT dept to veto it.

So some middle manager somewhere who's got a crappy old PC can get themselves a nice juicy one in the cloud as long as they can cover the cost in their expenses. The fact that it ends up costing the company more than if they actually bought him a better one is besides the point - he's presumably doing this because they asked for a better PC and that request was turned down.

Simon