Is the Construction Industry ready for the Cloud?

Probably most of you have heard the term: "The Cloud" in the last few months in all technology related web sites or Blogs, and publications. The Cloud is the latest technology buzz, like virtualization was couple of years ago.
Before we start talking about it can be used in the Construction Industry, let's define what it means:

If you google the phrase "Computer Cloud", you will probably get hundreds if not thousands of hits with a lot of different definitions, for simplicity sake let's define it as: Delivering IT computing and services over the Internet

Now if we perform the same search, this time using the words "Cloud" and "Construction Industry" you will not find more than a few hits, probably because of the slow adoption of newer technologies in this Industry. Cloud computing is composed of many different components and offerings, I will refer in this post to SaaS

SaaS – (Software as a Service) - one of the components of Cloud Computing is being adopted at a very high pace in the following technology spaces

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  
• Business Intelligence (BI)
  
• Email
  
• Collaboration.
  

And companies are leveraging Cloud Computing frameworks as a strategy for growth, higher scalability and agility although there are still some issues to address like security threats and control of the systems.

Some of the major players in the Cloud Computing space are:

• Amazon.com
  
• Google
  
• Microsoft
  
• Salesforce.com
  
• VMware
  

Major adoptions of the Cloud that I see emerging in the near future for the Construction Industry are Project Management Applications, which will allow in my opinion better collaboration between all the stakeholders of the construction process thus guaranteeing agility, productivity, predictability and efficiency.
Some governmental Agencies like the NYCT are implementing this Approach with the introduction of Constructware and making sure through contractual obligations that Contractors also use these tools.

There are some other mission critical applications that I think will get moved to "The Cloud" like Messaging Systems, HRIS and others. Also many companies will adopt services like Google Apps and Microsoft with ample offerings in the Cloud space.

Check this article on Constructech to read for about SaaS in the Construction Industry

Keep tuned, I will keep blogging about this.