Heath Brownsworth

Just back from Amsterdam a and very well attended HRTechEurope Conference with some 800 plus HR practitioners and vendors in attendance. This was the second annual iteration of the European version of an event that is in its 15th year here in the United States and regardless of continent this is the premier technology conference for anyone who is remotely interested in Human Resources. The event was held at the Amsterdam RAI and was certainly more intimate than the US event two weeks earlier at McCormick Place in Chicago. However, the conversations were very similar and the words cloud, mobile and social could easily be overheard in the exhibit hall and were actually featured in many analyst, vendor and customer sessions.

As an attendee who’s primary focus is cloud as opposed to HR, I was particularly interested in seeing if there were any discernible differences in the cloud discussions between Chicago and Amsterdam. While the level of interest and excitement were similar, the next level conversations tended to revert back to a very long standing challenge in Europe, nationalism. On paper the European Union looks like a market of over 500 million, but when standing in Europe your definitely feel the constraints of country borders as opposed to state lines. While theree is no challenge grasping 21st century cloud computing technologies in Europe, relinquishing centuries of conflict and trusting that your mission critical business systems and data can be run and stored in a country that was a former enemy is not as easily accepted.

The question “Where is your data center?” comes much quicker in Europe. Followed, instantly by a disapproving glance at your response and then a litany of questions on security and data privacy. Although in every conversation, there was an overwhelming sense that the cloud is an inevitability from those asking these questions. Probing further to understand why, all roads lead to economics. “The cloud and SaaS, just make sense, we will have to figure it out.”, said one attendee from Germany, “We need the solution and it is only offered as SaaS, we cannot afford to to do it ourselves.”

For the cloud to continue to make economic sense, the borders will have to fall. Not just in Europe, but in North America, South America, China etc. The cloud is based upon efficinesies and economies of scale. In the end, logic (and money) will trump emotion.

Heath-