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Microsoft is Working on Technology That Would Eliminate Cashiers and Checkout Lines From Stores, Says Report (reuters.com)
Microsoft is working on technology that would eliminate cashiers and checkout lines from stores, in a nascent challenge to Amazon.com's automated grocery shop, Reuters reported, citing six people familiar with the matter. From the report: The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is developing systems that track what shoppers add to their carts, the people say. Microsoft has shown sample technology to retailers from around the world and has had talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration, three of the people said. Microsoft's technology aims to help retailers keep pace with Amazon Go, a highly automated store that opened to the public in Seattle in January. Amazon customers scan their smartphones at a turnstile to enter. Cameras and sensors identify what they remove from the shelves. When customers are finished shopping, they simply leave the store and Amazon bills their credit cards on file. Amazon Go, which will soon open in Chicago and San Francisco, has sent rivals scrambling to prepare for yet another disruption by the world's biggest online retailer. Some have tested programs where customers scan and bag each item as they shop, with mixed results.
I don't know who Microsoft think they are. First the murky telemetry in Windows 10 that cannot be switched off. Then Microsoft Office becomes a cloud only tool. Next, Microsoft's CEO is pushing all sorts of "YOU OWN NOTHING" cloud crap - your games, apps, software all go cloud-only. And now I go to a bricks-and-mortar store and Microshaft of all companies tracks what I'm putting in my shopping cart? F you, Microsoft. Privacy invaders. Data thieves. Conscience free arm-twisters. Cleptomaniacs. I am not shopping at ANY store that has the Microsoft system in it.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
How about solving problems that actually exist? We already have "self checkouts". Is that a major problem that needs addressing?
Maybe the stores will just refuse to accept cash? It's becoming more common.
One more way for Walmart to not pay employees...
CyberKender
Apparently Appointed Lord Mayor of There
So customer takes two items off the shelf together, scans one, and puts them in their bag. Super difficult to catch.
Put a RFID tag with a UUID on every package that comes into the store. Sign customers in via various and/or appropriate methods, whether their phone or just an RFID sticker they can place on something else in their wallet. Scan customers aggressively on their way out, perhaps making them walk a circuitous path to enhance scan time and opportunity. Perform inventory scans frequently; since you can do them by just walking around, they can actually be done continually.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cashiers rank among the top jobs in the US by numbers employed. Is Microsoft also working on technology that will eliminate the problems they're planning on creating when they make millions of jobs obsolete? Not to mention the fact that a lot of consumer spending and business revenue depends on millions of people being employable.
Once again, Greed is doing what Greed does best; doing whatever it takes to create revenue quickly without giving two shits about any long term impact.
I pay for things with cash. If a business doesn't take cash, they don't get my business.
I don't respond to AC's.
We have had it in the UK for at least a decade. A supermarket called Waitrose allows you to take a hand scanner and scan your stuff as you put it in your trolley. They are still doing it so the fraud must be at an acceptable level, as with self-service checkouts.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"I am not shopping at ANY store that has the Microsoft system in it"
I hate to break the bad news to you mate, but you won't be shopping anywhere then. 99.9% of point of sale front end systems (known as tills to non geeks) are microsoft windows based and have been for decades. Before that it was DOS with the occasional OS/2 based system. The backend could be linux or something else non windows, but tills almost exclusively run Windows.
This is Microsoft talking about, so look forward to randomly not being charged for your purchases up until about version 3.
Unfortunately, you'll also sometimes be double-charged for things, too.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Can we work on eliminating shoppers from the stores? They're the real problems.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
like buying meat and produce by the pound? Or taking stuff out out of place?
except maybe in the ultra high end where you're paying so you can tell the girl you're dating there's a real chef. Heck, we've already replaced most Sports & Finance writers with algorithms.
I keep saying this, but we're heading for another industry revolution, and there was 70 years of unemployment, poverty, social strife and wars after the last one that didn't end until new tech caught up with new jobs. It's easy to destroy something, it's harder to create. Jobs are the same way.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, that would not seem wise, to be voluntarily shutting yourself off from a large amount of potential business, just to not take cash.
And hey, not everyone has a smartphone, you know?
Not everyone has a credit card...
I myself prefer to use cash, I take out my weekly amounts I plan to spend on normal expenses (food, etc)....and like to do this so that I have a very good idea on my spending for the week. Credit Cards abstract you from your money much like casino chips do and makes it easy to overspend or buy crap you really don't need.
I have plenty of credit...I could use, but I also would rather buy with cash and not have my purchases associated with my identity as much as possible.
I"m certainly not alone with wanting to use cash for one of any number of valid reasons, and I can't imagine a business wanting to bar itself from a large amount of potential revenue.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
About the smartphone part... it will probably require an application, so I guess they're going to shut out people with old, not-up-to-date smartphones too?
#DeleteFacebook
So J Random Doofus picks up item A then later on decides that item B is better, and so puts item A back in the wrong place. Doubles my shopping time because I have to double-check that what I've picked up is actually what the label on the shelf says it is. If MS can solve this one (maybe by giving JRD a shock at the time) I'll sign up.
Garry Knight
it's not Walmart's job to employ anyone...if you don't like their employment practices don't shop there. but be quiet already.
nothing to see here - move along
They're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, there's a big difference between progress and changing something and calling it modern just to line your wallet.
The items tend to be a bit pricy:
https://thetab.com/uk/2017/08/...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The only thing you can't buy these days is the 11" MBA, Apple dropped it in 2016.
#DeleteFacebook
Didn't RTFA or even RFTS but it's teh MiKKKRO$OFT so therefore bad!
I was curious about the legality of refusing all cash payments, so I did a little research.
Apparently, so long as the policy is stated *before* any debts are incurred, any business may set any monetary policy it desires. That's why it's legal to say things like "no bills larger than $20" or whatever. The only time this isn't the case is if there's a state law in place that requires businesses to accept cash or something along those lines.
The more you know, I guess
..more tracking, more data-mining of personal information, and since it's inherently 'cashless', more opportunities for data breaches stealing your payment information and identity information. Fuck that, fuck Microsoft, fuck 'cashless', fuck having every aspect of our lives 24/7/365 cradle-to-grave surveilled, logged, tracked, analyzed, scrutinized, and monetized. Get the FUCK out of our lives.
Still needs ID checkers!
You are a minority. And one banks and government would like to eradicate. There has been a concerted effort for the last 20 years if not longer to eliminate physical cash. If you search "war on cash" you'll find an abundance of articles over the years on it. There are numerous reasons for this. First, the government wants to know your every move and tracking your spending is one of the easiest ways to do this. They say it's to root out illicit activity but who's to say HOW they actually use it? Second, if you have physical cash you don't need a bank. You can transact directly with anyone without a bank getting a percentage of the transaction like they do when you use a credit/debit card. It's also why banks and governments are fighting blockchain currency tooth and nail as it is digital but it removes the two reasons they wanted to go digital in the first place.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Cashiers rank among the top jobs in the US by numbers employed.
when will they do something about that goddamned water so it doesn't run downhill all the time
you are just bitching, ignorant fool
There's not a damn thing you can really do to prevent water from running downhill, so your analogy is stupid and irrelevant. There is something that can be done to ready ourselves for a considerable shift in human employment. It's called proper planning. And you can bet your ass Greed will bypass any step that gets in the way of making money quickly.
And once again, people should learn from history. We've gone through several revolutions before. What everyone conveniently forgets is none of them were painless and easy transitions for those employed in industries made obsolete. People struggled. Many died. The ignorant fool is the one who fails to learn from this. Not everyone is cut out for higher education or even retraining, and automation and AI are also targeting educated jobs, so the old "go get an education" fallback is also become obsolete, which is the main difference with this revolution.
Paying cash is perfectly doable in such a system. You have a bill acceptor in store that "refills" your account after you touch your smartphone or smart card. Same as a contactless transit card or even refill systems for pre-paid phone accounts.
Since it refills the account and isn't a means of payment, it can be very simple -- it doesn't have to give change, just take 5's, 10's, and 20's.
so what if you dont plan on coming back again? bring a pocketful of excat change? oh no change is too hard so i guess it is better not to go in the first place
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Doesn't it say something on our cash about how it is valid for all debts both public and private. I guess if I go into the store and get stuff and they don't take my completely valid cash, then the stuff is free then! Sound good to me!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
This isn't the same thing. You don't 'scan' anything. You come in, you take some things and put them into your bag, and you walk out.
The premise - at least at the Amazon Go store - is that you must first identify yourself to the store ( using your Amazon account ) and it then tracks you as you move through the store using machine vision. A combination of machine vision and shelf sensors watches as you pick stuff up and adds it to your virtual cart.
By the time you are ready to leave the store your virtual cart is full - you can optionally check it on your phone - and you then simply walk out and Amazon charges you in the same manner as they would for an online order.
That might be one of the attractions of having such a bill acceptor (for stores) -- keeps customers coming back. Or just use a pre-paid debit card bought with cash linked to the account.
his isn't the same thing. You don't 'scan' anything. You come in, you take some things and put them into your bag, and you walk out.
The premise - at least at the Amazon Go store - is that you must first identify yourself to the store ( using your Amazon account ) and it then tracks you as you move through the store using machine vision. A combination of machine vision and shelf sensors watches as you pick stuff up and adds it to your virtual cart.
By the time you are ready to leave the store your virtual cart is full - you can optionally check it on your phone - and you then simply walk out and Amazon charges you in the same manner as they would for an online order.
This is an idea as old as RFID tags! Seriously, when RFID first came out, this is what they said it would be used for.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You can't pay in cash in the Amazon Go store. You can't even walk into the store unless you have an Amazon account.
Well, that would not seem wise, to be voluntarily shutting yourself off from a large amount of potential business, just to not take cash.
That depends heavily on what you are selling and who you are selling it to. I guarantee the Apple Store isn't doing a lot of cash transactions. Amazon seems to be doing alright and the vast majority of what they sell doesn't involve paper money at all. Other companies like McDonalds or Walmart do rather a lot of cash business. Cash isn't inherently good or bad but companies shouldn't be obligated to handle it if it reduces their profits.
And hey, not everyone has a smartphone, you know?
No but the number of people who do is a huge number - presently around 77% of Americans. It's plausible that the money saved by not having to handle cash more than makes up for the lost customers. Honestly I don't know anyone in my personal life who dogmatically uses cash. Most I know use it when they have to but don't prefer it.
I have plenty of credit...I could use, but I also would rather buy with cash and not have my purchases associated with my identity as much as possible.
That's fine as long as you recognize that the vendors are under no obligation to sell to you if they prefer to be paid with credit cards or some other form of payment. I think you are being a little paranoid but I understand valuing privacy and respect the impulse.
I"m certainly not alone with wanting to use cash for one of any number of valid reasons, and I can't imagine a business wanting to bar itself from a large amount of potential revenue.
It's not about the amount of revenue. It's about the amount of PROFIT. Not all revenue generates equal profits. Cash transactions tend to be small in value so you need a lot of them to make handling cash worthwhile. Many businesses fit this profile but many others do not. For my company cash would be a LOT more hassle than checks or credit cards since most of our transactions with our customers are thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars.
While I agree with you on why govt's would want this....which countries have gone this way in enough of a manner to show up on the radar?
I've heard on /. about the Swiss being in this category and moving fast there, but where else...isn't this more of a EU thing?
I've not seen this manifest in any meaningful way in the US wherever I've traveled.
I've yet to encounter a non-cash business in meatspace.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Microsoft is not in the business of data mining.
Bullshit they aren't. Bing gets its revenue from ads. Linked-In gets lots of money from data mining. Microsoft sells data mining tools. Your faith in Microsoft on this topic is wildly incorrect.
Purchasing goods at a store isn't paying a debt - you are not paying for goods or services after delivery. If you are in a restaurant, the bill comes after the delivery of the goods/services so there is a debt. The restaurant can accept the cash or they can consider the debt paid if they don't. Notice how bars and restaurants still accept cash? This is part of the reason why.
How about solving problems that actually exist? We already have "self checkouts". Is that a major problem that needs addressing?
Yes it is a major problem because it's a major cost for retailers. Most retailers have fairly thin margins and anything they can do to reduce headcount and other costs in the checkout process is something worth considering. There is NOTHING value added about the checkout process. It's necessary but it does not add value to the customer or the product. If anything it makes the shopping experience notably less pleasant. It's a cost center for the retailer which they would happily get rid of if they could.
Sort of . $149.99 (one-time purchase) gets you Office Home & Student 2016 for Win7 and later, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote but doesn't include Outlook or Access.
Cashiers rank among the top jobs in the US by numbers employed.
It is true that a lot of people are employed as cashiers. This is unfortunate because the job of cashier is not a value added job. It doesn't make the product better, it doesn't improve the shopping experience, and it's a large cost to both the retailer and the customer.
Is Microsoft also working on technology that will eliminate the problems they're planning on creating when they make millions of jobs obsolete?
No and nor should they. You're typing this on a computer and you don't see the irony in your argument? Should Microsoft have been subsidizing Smith Corona typewriters because PCs reduced the need for clerical staff? Should Ford have been worrying about what happened to people who ride horses? The job of cashier adds NO value. It's necessary to ensure the transaction takes place but it doesn't benefit the customer or the retailer and it certainly should not be maintained as a jobs program if we can do away with that task. All it does is add cost to the transaction for everyone involved. That is not a job worth protecting.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of consumer spending and business revenue depends on millions of people being employable.
They remain employable - they'll just be doing something else.
They do that in several supermarkets in Belgium. Double winner, because people must use a storecard, so they can see you buying habbits and they can fire some people.
Fraud it defeated by checking people at random. Toomuch failure and you probably are nit allowed to use it anymore.
I do not use it sopeople keep their job and my data is more valuable than my time. And the more vallue my time is, the more my data is valuable.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yeah. The premise is great! But seeing as we're a mostly "service based" economy now, what's the consequences when we only need to hire a fraction of the people currently working *IN* services?
I pay for things with cash. If a business doesn't take cash, they don't get my business.
Really? You never write a check? Never use a credit or debit card? You make your house payment in cash? Pay your utilities in cash? You purchased your PC in cash?
Yeah I don't believe you are telling the truth. If you are then I kind of pity you.
The Swedish government is trying to have cash as an option. Too lazy to find the recent /. Story on my phone.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I am not sure I understand how this would be different from the Sam's Club 'Scan and Go' app I used the other day. I scanned each item (who really needs a 2 gallon jar of mayo??) and put it in my cart. When I was done, I told it to pay with my credit card and it generated a upc code and a receipt. The person at the door looked at the receipt, scanned the code and I was gone. No waiting in line. Yes, there is the risk of putting an item in you cart without scanning. I would assume that if you are buying an iPad or other expensive item (that could possibly be hidden) they would do something like 'Hey, let me scan that for you to make sure it comes up with the correct price."
Per my other post....I've yet to see in the US, a non-cash business in meatspace.
Yes you have but I think you mean retailers. Most (though not all) retailers accept cash but many other businesses do not as a general practice and the number is increasing. Heck my company pretty much never deals in cash. We could in principle but it would be wildly inconvenient and cost a lot more because we aren't a retailer.
It may take over..but I don't see it going fully that way in my lifetime.
I would agree with that though I do think you will see increasing numbers of businesses that find cash to not be worth the bother. It really comes down to whether the increased revenue and profits offsets the added cost of handling the cash. For most businesses it does but not all. But if companies could do away with checkout counters and their costs in exchange for not handling cash anymore I think some of them will take the plunge.
I tend to think this move, so far, is mostly outside the US, I mean, we still write and take checks here.....you know? While that isn't exactly cash, it is cash equivalent and doesn't require a network connection to accept and deposit.
Writing checks sort of speaks to how backwards our system is here in the US. And yes checks do require a network connection at some point albeit not necessarily at the point of sale. Many retailers will not accept them unless they can verify them electronically. Frankly checks are hugely annoying and expensive to the retailer. Younger people tend to use a lot less of them. I can't remember the last time I saw someone under the age of 50 using a check at the grocery store.
You'd think someone would push for some laws to put a stop to this kind of keep-the-poor-out-of-it feedback loop by now.
Hahahahahahaha. You must be new to the US. In the US, the corporations write the laws and pay the politicians to vote on them. Visa/MC and the banks get up to 3% of every single card use. That's at least a percentage point or two of the GDP. That's more money that I can imagine. Unless we get money out of politics, we'll be cashless soon.
I don't respond to AC's.
What's wrong with that steak?!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's part of the globalist agenda so any place that wants a one world government/economy is on board. The first place I heard it was implemented was South Africa IINM. To spur the countries adoption of electronic cash One of the banks handed out cards to anyone who wanted one. Everyone wanted one because the first year's purchases would be forgiven at the end of the year! This was well over 20 years ago. Stronger economies are using a slowly introduce the idea until most people are desensitized to its implications approach. Once they reach critical mass they will simply force anyone not on board to get on board or go off the grid.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
at the self checkout lanes. You can still pay with cash.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah. The premise is great! But seeing as we're a mostly "service based" economy now, what's the consequences when we only need to hire a fraction of the people currently working *IN* services?
They move on to new services, which people can now afford because other things are cheaper. There are successful startups now for (internet shopping-style) lawn mowing, car washing, dry cleaner pick-up/delivery, all sorts of recurring business like that. Stuff you could easily do yourself, but hey, if it's cheap enough, why not have someone else do it?
As with every historical displacement of workers, new jobs are created because the middle class can afford more, normally goods or services that only the rich could afford before. There are lots of well-funded start-ups getting investor attention right now for just such services. Guess what will be popular and make your own millions from your start-up.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
they can free in store ones to rent like the self scan stores.
cash what about WIC, food stamps, EBT?
I already avoid the Self Checkout Lanes like the Plague that they are.
Any store that tries this will loose me as even a potential customer.
No sense in going to a store that will likely be having me stock the shelves as I browse next.
Frankly, I can easily see Amazon buying out a Goliath like Walmart, and having a fleet of delivery drones, small cars and vans, with minimal store staff, and a discount option of "pick it yourself" for keeping the Brick and Mortar part of the store open to the people that just have to see an item before they purchase.
'Nuf Sed.
studen loans with no bankruptcy, trades being push down by schools, and to many jobs that want an college degree but then say people with college degrees don't have the right skills.
The impact of this tech is always exaggerated.
Basically, they are just saying they can automate check out at 7-11 and other convenience stores and delis.
Meanwhile, people like me will continue to pay with cash and if you automate my checkout, you lose me as a customer.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They should go ahead and also eliminate the concept of money, finally getting us to a star-trek like society where no one is either hungry or homeless !
I suspect they don't care. If you can make your goals without servicing particular segments of the economy why bother? Especially if not serving that sector saves you money.
Not taking cash means not having to worry about robbery or keeping money in a safe. No night deposit, with the risk of getting robbed. And of course in this case not needing cashiers at all. No cash registers, receipt printers, or change. It also keeps certain segment of the population out of your store (though cheap, available pre-loaded credit cards do expand the number of people who can live without cash.)
Mall*Wart tends to cater to the same "segments" most likely to use good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash, though.
It's ridiculous how concerned people are about eliminating the most horridly unpleasant jobs in a time of historically low unemployment. Get rid of those supermarket checker jobs nobody actually enjoys and either the freed labor will go to something more pleasant or -- in your nightmare scenario which there's no evidence of whatsoever in all of history and so much evidence against in the present -- we can all work 30 hours weeks to share the miraculously decreased need for work.
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"no bills larger than $20"? They are just opening themselves to me paying for my $100 grocery bill in pennies. Don't think I won't do it...
What makes you think they'd accept it?
>>Microsoft is Working on Technology That Would Eliminate Cashiers and Checkout Lines From Stores, Says Report
Yeah. The report doesn't say it also eliminates customers from the stores.
Perhaps they try to sell windows phones, and transform the surrounding of these stores into a Ghosttown.
aaaaaaa
>>You come in, you take some things and put them into your bag, and you walk out.
Works for me.
Then some cashiers with strange uniforms and weapons come and put you down on the floor before taking you to the nearest prison.
aaaaaaa
To be able to renegotiate that sort of deal, Walmart would need to be able to walk away. This would be very difficult once invested in a particular technology. If you go 'big bang' and move away, the risk of failure and loss of revenue is too great. Trialing other technologies means adding complexity and cost in the medium term. Designing things to be platform agnostic is a large upfront cost, even assuming the technology is sufficiently well-developed to create something that is platform agnostic. So it's not as simple as you suggest for a company to renegotiate, which is why we see a lot of expensive legacy items in production.
Is Microsoft also working on technology that will eliminate the problems they're planning on creating when they make millions of jobs obsolete?
We already have the necessary technology. You split the people into two groups and give them shovels. The first group digs holes and the second group fills them back in.
We have those, and have had them for some years.
In both supermarkets and department stores.
I detest and avoid them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Our Nespresso shops already do most of this. You walk in, grab a paper bag, then place all the covfefe sleeves you want into the bag. Then you put the bag in a scanner bin which reads the RFID info on each sleeve and tells you how much you will pay. Then you swipe or tap your smartcard, get a receipt printed out and walk out. Obviously, the next step is to have your phone recognised as you walk in, and an app automatically activates which informs you how much your're buying. Once you walk out of the store, your purchase is registered and your account is debited. The receipt appears as an SMS. You might probably have to scan each sleeve to make sure you're buying your own items and not the person near you.
The consequences are simple... people will either have to create new jobs based on vanity as we'll cover necessity. Or we'll have to work towards some form of communism.
There is such a thing as an "eye brow plucking shop"... no shit... it exists.. they're all over and they exist because we ran out of jobs that meet the needs of the people and now we focus instead on making people into social workers for the elderly and unemployed.
Try another store somewhere else. Maybe you might even find someplace which accept paper checks.
Were you talking about food stamps or cash? Weren't food stamps moved to using some sort of card now?
I wonder if these stores will have payment systems in place to support food stamps.
I have 6,000 one krone pieces in a some jars. That's about about $800 US. I've been tempted to buy a computer using them
I already designed and setup this very type of system. I demoed it to Wal-Mart about 10 years ago. They thought it was too-far ahead of its time, customers would not like it, and were not interested at that time. Time to dust off paperwork. Microsoft and/or Wal-Mart better not be stealing what I showed them!
Yes, computers can be programmed to handle many scenarios like that. There will also be a few people in customer service that can deal with the issues that arise.
Drive it like you stole it!
I've been in IT for 26 years, currently at a consulting outfit.
Most established companies are not happily moving themselves into the cloud "to save money", in fact I have worked on two large scale projects to return cloud-migrated services back on site because the costs associated with cloud are high, the pricing is opaque and the service and support is awful.
I deal with a lot of customers who *want* to go to the cloud, but in a wishful thinking way because they have zero idea of the cost and don't understand that their work processes are bound to complex interdependencies that require multiple complete systems to be moved to some kind of virtualization host at minimum, if not complete re-engineering of applications, migrations to other applications, etc.
Usually the motivation seems to be driven by short-sighted managers who merely look at potential cost reductions related to staff and/or capex -- they count those savings without understanding the costs they will no absorb, every month for every user, essentially forever and at the whim of their provider.
Email is the one service that seems to have the most cloud traction, despite the fact that it's generally cheaper over 50 users to run it on-premise given the now-standard assumptions of on-premise virtualization (ie, the marginal infrastructure cost is zero) and reasonably competent IT staff.
Cloud does make sense for organizations adopting a new application which is expansionary, with all of the usual cautions about cost stability, vendor stability and the extreme lock-in and difficulty in not using that platform in the future should a change become necessary.
It probably also makes some sense for entirely new businesses that are built around the web or mobile, where core infrastructure and processes are tied to the web anyway and the systems can be engineered for cloud and cloud limitations. It's a lot easier to start a business and ramp it up quickly when you can add demand-based infrastructure vs. on-premise infrastructure.
You'll only get one chance before a new policy is in place.
unless you ban technology this is inevitable ... the only solution is to stop breeding or to actually colonize space ... but if i were evil as "them" i'd derive some pleasure from seeing all those "hard workers" going down into a zone theyve never been before . I'd almost say
KARMA'S A BITCH BITCH
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?