More than a third of all enterprises now have some form of cloud computing technology in their organizations. That percentage is growing rapidly, with most experts suggesting that more than half of enterprises implementing cloud solutions by the end of 2013.

Cloud computing has had an impact in the marketplace, and the entertainment marketplace is no exception. Why is this important to IT professionals? Well, when C-level employees start using cloud solutions in their personal lives, they begin to wonder about exactly if and how cloud solutions could improve the enterprise.

Streaming video
Let’s take a look at one of the ways cloud computing has dramatically changed the way we consume entertainment: Streaming video. It’s not just the geeks down in IT that stream Netflix anymore; often it’s the CEO. Pervasive adoption of streaming video technology is bound to have people at your organization wondering whether or not these types of technologies would be useful and cost-effective.

Streaming video is replacing DVD and even Blu-ray technology. Physical disks are becoming a thing of the past. This naturally raises questions about how we’re doing business in the enterprise. This is especially true around budget time. Do we really need all of these storage appliances, a SAN and massive arrays of hard disks? Can’t we simply “put it in the cloud?”

The changing role of IT
In a world where enterprises source many or even all of their applications through the cloud, IT looks a lot different than it does today. It means fewer systems admins, fewer network engineers, and a different type of service desk. Organizations adopting cloud technologies may find themselves with loyal but essentially useless legacy staff, and that’s a big problem.

Of course, not all cloud technologies are external. There are internal cloud options, too. Yet, in either case, IT moves its role from provider of services to a gatekeeper for service providers, keeping the service providers honest and ensuring that standards and service levels are met.

The more we see massive and popular cloud implementations like we’ve seen with streaming video services, the more questions your organization is going to have.