Jay Manley talks about Competing Against NetSuite and the confusion they spread around the Cloud. According to a Slashdot story that popped up right after I saw Jay's post, 51% people in a recent survey thought that stormy weather interferes with cloud computing.
Clearly we all have a lot of work to do.
[To pontificate briefly, accounting is accounting. we did it for 500 years on paper, by hand, apparently wearing little green eye shades. We can automate the rote pieces with computers just as engineers can automate calculations when designing a bridge and doctors no longer have to wait weeks for lab results. However, like Engineering and Medicine, Accounting remains a profession and no amount of automation (on premise, in the cloud or up someone's behind) can replace the judgment and expertise required to ensure proper control, accuracy, timeliness and usefulness of financial information. If anyone tell you differently, run. I've cleaned up too many messes created by someone playing accounting.]