Guardian News and Media steps into the cloud

Writing last month in Silicon.com Tim Ferguson tells the story of Guardian News and Media move to Google Apps.  Andy Beale, Technology Director, explains that "the main driver was to support collaboration and find a suitable tool."  The main applications being used by the Guardian are Google Chat, Google Docs and Google Sites - Beale is also working on piloting Google Mail which he aims to complete by this summer.  Nicholas Carr, in the Big Switch, seems to have called this right - we are moving to the cloud and market forces will continue expedite the transfer.  What is interesting for me about this article is that Beale states "It means we can get on with more valuable stuff and less commodity things like running email services."  Bingo!  There you go that is CIO 2.0 thinking, moving to the more valuable strategic end of the spectrum and sending commodity IT to the big boys that can do it far more cheaply.  The savings, once mail is moved into the cloud, for the Guardian will be some 15 servers and 4TB of storage, that does not mention the opportunity cost of the time given back to IT providing more strategic services.