The corporate data center was long the defacto vehicle for all application deployment across an enterprise. Whether reporting to Real Estate, Finance or IT, this relationship served both data centers and their users well, as it allowed the organization to invest in specialized skills and facilities and provided the enterprise with reliable and trusted services.
The first major shift in this structure occurred with the success of Salesforce.com in the early 2000s, where Salesforce removed a significant hurdle for their key target, the VP of Sales, by providing the application “off premise”. VPs of Sales typically have no significant relationship with their IT organization, so this hosted offering allowed the VP to authorize the purchase fairly autonomously.
