Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, + Website

Summary

The last few decades have seen the demise of the view that we humans are rational decision makers, always perfectly assessing options and their probabilities, determining a mathematically optimal course of action, and pursuing it based on correct economic valuation of sunk costs and appropriate discounts for the time value of money. Instead, we are a mix of bounded rationality; predictable irrationality; cognitive, emotional, and financial decision-making anomalies; and other various biases.

Some of these biases may hinder cloud adoption whereas others, such as the special appeal of “free,” work in favor of the cloud.

Prospects considering cloud services should become aware of their own biases and incorporate that knowledge into their decision-making processes. Service providers marketing to those prospects or existing customers should be aware that there is more to decision making than return-on-investment calculations.