Cloud Computing and the Future of HR Tech

An article in this week's PC World highlights possible future impacts of Google's Chrome OS. The writer points out that while it is very debatable whether or not Chrome OS will have a measurable impact on MS sales, it will impact the future of in house computing.

What Google is proposing, is essentially to make all programs a SaaS. If Google succeeds in their quest to ruin on-computer software it could completely change the nature of HRIS. As people become more and more comfortable with doing all of their computing online, they will become more amiable to the idea of doing their business computing through a browser. I honestly feel that one of the factors that is holding back SaaS is peoples' inate feer of doing their computing through a browser. We like what we are use to and we're use to having the program on a hard drive that we can see and that we can control.

In a previous job I was part of rolling out a company-wide program that was exclusively over the internet. I had a close friend and coworker that was absolutely terrified of the idea. Even though he had countless problems with the old program causing his computer to crash he still liked that better than having a server based program. He exclaimed many times, "what if the internet goes down?" "What if the server crashes?" "What if someone hacks the server?" All of these points were relevant, but none made the new program any less reliable than the old. Eventually he warmed up to the idea, but this illustration shows how fearful we are of the idea of internet computing. It's completely irrational

Google's Chrome, if it does nothing else, will help us all to become more comfortable with the idea of cloud computing, thus allowing our companies to be more comfortable with the idea as well. I think as Chrome becomes more popular, we will all see the end of in-house HR computing solutions. Maybe Oracle sees it coming, maybe not.