Do you keep lots of soup in your pantry, or eat out when you’re hungry? If your car breaks down, do you fix it yourself or have it towed to the shop? When you’re looking for a mate, do you hire a matchmaker or just start asking people out?
The relationship between keeping your IP inside the tent (very secure, lots of control, known situation) to having someone store it down the road in a dark, mysterious cave has always been a balance. And I suspect that it will continue to be a balancing act for many years to come.
You’ve done a good job identifying many of the issues that confront enterprise buyers as they think about whether or not to rely on someone “outside the tent” of their network to support their IP. But probably the biggest question is “What happens when it goes wrong?”
INTERNAL
Your e-learning system won’t work, and you can fire the network admin and hire a new one. This is the “Blame The Dude” model of employee management, practiced by many companies.
EXTERNAL
Your e-learning system won’t work, and you have to pay $100,000 to move your content, it takes six months, and might not even all belong to you — depending on the TOS that you have in place.
This is one of the first conversations I have with a client when they want to talk about where their precious IP will live. Once they’ve gotten over the philosophical hurdle, it’s all downhill from there.
