Different, not better in many situations
I think there are inherent problems in the model. There are security issues with giving your data to a third party. There are backup issues. Maybe the third party can manage these issues effectively but many companies cannot afford to or are not allowed to make that assumption. And there are connection and bandwidth issues. If the internet connection should fail for any reason, the company may have hundreds or thousands of workers being paid to do nothing until it comes back.
These problems have been around for a long time. Lately it has been marketed as "the cloud" as if is something new and the old problems don't apply. I think that is dishonest. It's not new and the problems still exist.
For small companies without sensitive data I can see it working.
