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mechanical process that arises simply from the balance of societal forces,
but an organic one that emerges, changes, and can wither, disappear, or
thrive depending on the extent to which key participants continue to
actively afirm its importance. McKinsey's change of view may represent
simply the recognition that it once misread the cloud or did not appreci-
ate the extent to which it could improve in a short time. But one can also
see it as a key turn in the development of the cloud's promotional culture
because a major participant in one of its key sectors, the private research
and consulting community, overwhelmingly afirmed the dominant view
after having raised signiicant concerns three years earlier.
Promoting the Cloud to the World
In addition to advertisements, websites, and the reports and forecasts of
private research and consulting irms, it is important to consider the work
of global research organizations that take a further step in building hege-
mony in support of the cloud. An excellent exemplar is the World Economic
Forum (WEF), whose
Global Information Technology Report 2012
(Dutta
and Bilbao-Osorio 2012) focused on cloud computing as the essential
new ingredient in a networked world. The forum describes itself as “an
independent international organization committed to improving the state
of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of
society to shape global, regional and industry agendas” (World Economic
Forum 2013). It is best known for the annual Davos conference, which
brings these leaders together to discuss global issues and build consensus
in support of policy initiatives. In the last two years, cloud computing has
attracted the forum's attention and the report is its irst effort to mobilize
international support for a common approach to the cloud and give it
the stamp of approval from a major global economic organization. The
forum report contains a number of individually authored chapters writ-
ten by people who work for some of the most important corporations in
the information-technology and telecommunications industries; private
research organizations (a group of researchers with McKinsey wrote one
chapter); international bodies, including the WEF itself, the UN's Unesco,
and the International Telecommunications Union; and universities. There
are two chapters about the cloud, including “The Wisdom of the Cloud:
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