What cloud computing music services can teach us

How will a new era of online music services impact the business world?

As cloud computing matures, different approaches are evolving regarding how applications use cloud-based resources. Each approach has its merits and reflects the characteristics of the application to which cloud computing is being applied. Lately, the migration of music services to the cloud has been gaining a lot of media attention. This is an application that is used by most people and it’s interesting to see the industry giants moving to their corners. There’s Google with their fully cloud-based solution and of course Apple with a hybrid approach using the cloud as a linkage between user’s devices.

Sections of the media reporting this as a battle over cloud philosophies that will determine the future success both companies.

Of course, in reality things are never that black and white. Both strategies will be successful for different market segments. Like with all things, there is no single perfect universal solution when it comes to cloud computing. All customers have different preferences and requirements.

To be successful, cloud computing vendors need to recognise these differences in their customer base and cater not only for the different requirements that their customers have today, but also for the changes in their customer’s requirements over time. Cloud computing is a new concept, and the attitudes and expectations of how to deploy cloud computing will change many times before the industry settles on a reduced set of deployment models that it deems “best practice”.

For those of us delivering solutions to the cloud computing market, we can learn a lot from the evolution of cloud computing  models for the delivery of music services to the general public. After all, music services are used by more users than most commercial IT offerings. It is an area where almost all users have an opinion or will be forced to make a choice long before they may be using cloud computing services at work.

By watching the trends and understanding the reasons users have made their decision when selecting a cloud-based music service, we can identify the trends and influencing factors that are likely to drive decision-making in the business world.

So where are the learnings going to come from? Well, it won’t be in the final choice selected by music lovers. After all, the handling of music is different from many business applications. The learnings will come from understanding the way users make their choices. Insights will be gained by understanding the drivers that sway customers one way or the other in the context of the application and the market opportunity.  These insights are transportable to other industries and other applications because fundamentally we make decisions in the same way, whether it’s for work or for personal interests. I’m sure that the rise in popularity of cloud based music services will provide us with material case studies and research for many years to come.

                 - Fausto Marasco