Scoble has an intriguing post up today about the unconscious urge of consumers to make “safe” tech purchases, where “safe” is defined as “decisions that won’t make me look dumb”.

At Daylife we’re seeing firsthand the trend of publishers and content marketers adopting cloud services, in the process making technology decisions previously reserved for their IT departments. Now, we have a LOT of happy clients and if there’s any internal friction caused by this evolution, we aren’t privy to it. (Though there are good reasons to think that IT might lament all the sunk costs they may now have to write off, even as the advantages to their firms ultimately outweigh the losses.)

But Scoble’s point about safety is an interesting one, especially as it regards those IT pros who’ve worked so hard and at such huge cost to build their infrastructures.

“Safety” means different things to different people (and departments). The ground beneath the publishing world has been shifting so much and so quickly that, over time, it stopped seeming safe to the content and marketing people to wait while IT built out the next big system. Putting 18 months’ worth of eggs into the “new CMS” basket may make sense if that’s how things were always done, but the cloud has brought new alternatives and new expectations from the other departments in a given firm. The “safe” calls that IT might have made in the past no longer seem so to many on the content side.

In turn, those non-IT departments are subject to a new set of professional and social pressures, namely that they adopt cloud technologies and the nimbleness and cost savings they bring. This shift in mindset has been going on for a while, and shows little sign of slowing (though some see a downside that also can’t be ignored).

IT folk have been a bit blindsided by the onrush of cloud services, but there’s every reason to think they’ll adapt like the savvy technologists they are. There’s been a growing movement on that side in favor of making IT more holistic, encompassing all layers in this new, cloud-enhanced stack and becoming more fluid and responsive than they were able to before. This seems like a way forward that would accomodate all interests (which aren’t really competing, or at least shouldn’t be).

What about you? How is your firm dealing with the advent of the cloud? Is your IT department rolling with the changes or fighting a rearguard action against them? Curious to hear your thoughts (especially if you’re in IT).