Who said that an organization needs to be on top of IT technology so to consider and implement cloud computing solutions? Well, it doesn’t have to be this way: for example, take a look at the link at the bottom of this article about the 100-year-old hospital in Wyoming that has embraced cloud computing. We all know how vigilant people who work in hospitals have to be and how busy all the staff are, so they won’t necessarily have the time to go through a major IT change.So let’s look at the situation here: the 207 bed hospital only had a 4 person IT team – and while it was more than common for the old in-house IT system to break down, it also had some major limitations that needed altering before the demand for storage capacity of the in-house servers increased.This hospital has made the choice of going through a cloud-based e-mail system via a major player (Google Apps), and found it a very positive experience. What’s really interesting in this story is that they relied on an experienced partner to do the transitioning. Now that’s what will make the difference. Organisations don’t necessarily need to rely solely on their own IT team to perform the change, experts exist for that. If we take Hosted Exchange solutions, for example, most cloud providers perform the function of making the transition go seamlessly.But this Wyoming hospital isn’t the only organisation that has successfully taken the leap into cloud computing. In the UK, St Helens and Knowsley teaching hospitals trust turned to cloud storage as their need for bigger storage space as well as near-end in-house infrastructure didn’t satisfy their need anymore. As you can see, this is a very different scenario where the major concern was about storage capacity. Moreover, this is a typical example that showcases that cloud computing solutions actually address specific issues: in this case, the hospital now has access to 80TB of storage: this would have been a daunting task to host and manage in-house.In a totally different department, specifically in the education and university field, cloud has also been adopted in order to address specific IT concerns. In the UK again, a £12million fund from the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) is available for helping UK universities to adopt cloud share services. So you can see, the cloud has gone mainstream in the UK education field too and chances are that students who will benefit from these cloud services will be the ambassadors of cloud computing once they go into the professional world.Up until recently, the main organisations targeted by cloud service providers has been small and medium businesses along with startups; most of these businesses are now benefiting from cloud services or have plans to in the near future. My goal here is to give you, the reader some examples where a cloud-based solution is a perfect fit to address specific and individual IT issues.And yes, there are some concerns that need to be addressed when it comes to moving to the cloud – no matter how advanced a technology there will always be skeptics – but with adequate expertise to accompany every organisation, most are now enjoying the benefits of having moved to the cloud.Links;Wyoming Hospital