Smart Enterprise Exchange held our live, interactive discussion with subject matter experts, Timothy Chou and  Dave Hansen, and Legg Mason's Dan Greller, on November 11. Many questions were sent during the broadcast and here are a few of the answers... More will be posted in coming days. Members are welcome to add your comments or personal experiences as well.

• Question from Kevin Kenny, Global Product Manager at Fike Corp.:

How long will it take for public cloud computing to reach critical mass in terms of adoption?

Answer from Tim Chou: We are in the very early phases of mass adoption...maybe we are year two of a 20-year adoption cycle. You could say "we've just been given fire..."

• Question from Robert Soles, KPMG:

Will adoption rates vary depending on vertical industry sectors?

Answer from Dan Greller, Legg Mason: Whether you adopt private or public clouds will depend a lot on your sector. However, while it's true that highly regulated industries like financial services and health care are more cautious, these sectors are really doing surprising things with the Internet, so it's not clear they won't move ahead quickly...

Tim Chou: The challenges are not about technology, they're about domain expertise in each industry. Many tech guys have no idea about their business sector. That has to change.

• Question from Joshua Hui, IBM:

Have you heard about any big failures or breaches associated with hosted applications?

Answer from Dave Hansen: Surprisingly no, but perhaps businesses do not want to discuss these incidents outside their own enterprise...

Dan Greller: A business would have to share that with its auditors or regulators, but not necessarily with others.

Tim Chou: I did hear about a large consultancy whose data was accidently posted on a social media site for a very short time...it was unusual, but can happen.

For more about the videocast, read the blog here.