It is often said that Europeans are more conservative in their outlook with regard to change.

There are occasions when this is a useful cultural trait, like limiting the rampant commercialisation of fine heritage sites or taking care to uphold a traditional method for creating a really good cheese. But when it comes to technology resistance to change it only brings disaster.

Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to cloud computing. The “readiness for the cloud’ debate is so bound up in what we think it is today NOT what it actually delivers and the clear and unambiguous direction it is heading towards – That if they keep debating instead of doing, swathes of business will still be pontificating in empty boardrooms as the bailiffs come to take their chairs away.

For many the ‘cloud’ means re-writing their apps, putting their data somewhere outside, and in some cases it will …