THINK IT Services

I had an opportunity to speak to the Mid-Atlantic CIO Forum at Towson University last week about new strategies and tactics for fully capitalizing on today’s Cloud alternatives. Because the group is composed of CIOs primarily from mid-size and large-scale enterprises with a lot of custom built applications and systems already in place, their biggest challenge is determining how to integrate the latest Cloud services into their legacy operations. Managing ‘hybrid’ Clouds is becoming a common challenge.

I had spoken to this group a couple of years ago when the concept of Cloud computing was just emerging. At that time, they were primarily interested in better understanding what the concept meant and why they should consider it. Like many CIOs, the attendees of this session are now trying to determine where, when and how to deploy Cloud services to meet their day-to-day needs and achieve their long-term corporate objectives.

Although some debate continues to swirl around the merits of public versus private clouds, most industry observers agree that the vast majority of organizations will utilize a mix of on-premise and ‘on-demand’ applications and computing resources to support their business operations. Therefore, the key to success is properly managing this hybrid operating environment to get the maximum value from the new Cloud resources will extending the life of existing on-premise systems and software.

While most IT organizations have been managing mixed environments for a long time, the advent of Cloud-based services adds a new wrinkle to this age-old challenge. Rather than simply acquiring and installing a traditional on-premise system or software application into a traditional computing environment, capitalizing on a leading Cloud solution entails a new set of considerations.

Beyond evaluating a Cloud solution’s ability to meet the organization’s functional requirements, the IT team must thoroughly assess how well the Cloud vendor can deliver on its promises.

This means determining how it has architected its service delivery infrastructure to ensure maximum availability and optimal performance. It is also important to investigate the vendor’s customer support capabilities and policies to fully understand how the vendor will respond if there is a service delivery or other important support issue. This means determining what service level assurances the vendor provides and how it compensates the customer if it fails to meet these obligations.

Equally important is determining the financial viability of the vendor. As a relatively new market segment, the Cloud is attracting a growing assortment of relative start-ups. This “Cloud Rush”, can’t sustain all the players and an industry shake-up is likely. Therefore, many vendors will either fail or be acquired by others. Considering how these scenarios could impact an organization’s dependency on a Cloud service is important.

IT and business decision-makers can also take advantage of a growing number of Cloud vendors that are providing unprecedented transparency regarding the reliability and performance of their services. Many are offering online ‘Trust’ sites that show the availability and latency levels of their services real-time.

A widening array of Cloud-based management tools are also coming to market which provide a ‘single-pane of glass’ dashboard that can help CIOs and their IT teams more easily deploy, monitor, measure and maximize the value of their hybrid Cloud resources.

Disclosure: This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

We are less than a month into the new year, and the Cloud Computing marketplace is already attracting more attention than ever. There have been more acquisitions, alliances and other activities surrounding a widening assortment of Cloud opportunities.

In addition to continuing to contribute commentaries to Datamation, E-Commerce Times, Internet Evolution and Sandhill.com, among others, I’ve been asked to also lend my perspective to two more online publications, APMdigest and TechWeb/UBM’s new IT Services site.

Here are my latest commentaries in these publications,

IT Services: Outsourcing Failures Drive More People to the Cloud, 01/20/12 

APMdigest: Three Tiers of Analytic Possibilities in the Cloud, 01/14/12 

E-Commerce Times: Building Synergistic Alliances in the Clouds, 01/13/12  

Internet Evolution: Google Goal for 2012: Changing You, 01/09/12 

You may have noticed that I’m also blogging on behalf of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Let me know if your company would like to leverage my writings, presentations and perspectives to capitalize on the rapidly evolving Cloud market.

The concept of “shared services” has been bandied about the IT industry for over 50 years. Yet, past iterations of this concept have often failed to meet the needs of corporate executives and end-users from a functional and economic standpoint.

This is because previous generations of shared services were too often built upon cumbersome and costly systems and software which could not scale to give corporate customers greater cost advantages or added features than they could gain from optimized inhouse resources. As a result, only highly specialized shared services, such as payroll processing and basic hosting, prospered in the past.

I was recently prompted to think about what sets today’s Cloud services apart from past versions of shared services when I was interviewed for a SearchCIO article.

Today’s rapidly evolving Cloud services are permitting a growing number of mid-size and large-scale enterprises to gain the full benefits of shared IT and software services. These Cloud services are even expanding the meaning of shared services.

What sets today’s generation of Cloud services apart from previous forms of shared services are the following factors:

• Changing Enabling Technologies: Virtualization, automated self-provisioning, greater security and more scalable service management technologies permit a broader cross-section of users to leverage more economical and flexible resource pooling from public and dedicated Cloud services. Layered on top of these resource pools are more user-friendly applications and data access systems which make it easier for organizations to take advantage of today’s shared services.
• Changing Economics: The rapidly evolving enabling technologies, along with rapidly maturing service delivery business models, permit leading Cloud providers to deliver their services at a fraction of the price of shared services in the past and more attractive bundles.
• Changing Customer Attitudes: Economic and competitive pressures, combined with workforce/workplace requirements are driving organizations to seek more cost-effective software and system alternatives. In the past, businesses either handled their technology and communications requirements internally or outsourced the entire their operation to a third-party. Today, they prefer to ‘out-task’, or selectively source, specific aspects of their IT and business process needs to specialized providers.

These forces are not only changing the nature of third-party shared services from various Cloud service providers, they are also enabling IT organizations to achieve the ideal of becoming internal service providers to their internal and external constituencies, including corporate executives, end-users, customers and business partners. Inhouse IT organizations can build data centers (i.e., private clouds) which emulate the best practices of the leading Cloud service providers. Or, they can serve as the ‘traffic cop’ for their constituents and manage the distribution of Cloud services to meet their needs.

Either approach can also take advantage of another dimension of today’s Cloud services – crowdsourcing. The best Cloud services capture valuable usage statistics to drive continuous enhancements to the functionality and quality of the services. In addition, these services encourage user feedback and peer sharing of best practices in the same way users share their experiences and code in the Open Source arena.

These technological advancements and behavioral changes are changing the way organizations view and utilize shared services.

Disclosure: This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

THINKstrategies announced today that independenceIT has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

independenceIT (iIT) enables organizations to rapidly transition from traditional, on-premise IT to realize the cost savings and operational advantages of the Cloud. iIT gives users secure, high-performance access to systems, applications and data from any Internet-connected device. iIT also provides supplementary IT processes such as automatic applications upgrades, maintenance, data security, backup and recovery with SSAE 16 security compliant process controls and infrastructure. iIT provides a centralized platform for managing multiple locations and supporting dispersed workforces.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which have earned independenceIT the latest BoSS Award.

For more information about the rules for applying for a BoSS Award or to find a list of previous winners of the BoSS Awards, go to http://www.cloudshowplace.com/awardprograms/boss.html.
 
Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies has launched the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program to recognize companies which are delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions producing measurable business benefits for their customers. For more information regarding the CCBV Awards, see http://www.cloudshowplace.com/awardprograms/ccbv.php.

If you don’t subscribe to my newsletter updates, you may have missed the recent Strategic Thinking profiles which were published by THINKstrategies over the last few months. Here’s a quick list with links to where you can find the profiles posted:

• Attivo: The explosive growth of data, which is very often core to the value of today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud-based applications, is becoming an increasingly difficult issue for SaaS/Cloud vendors to economically manage to meet the escalating needs of their customers. This profile details how Attivio’s UIA platform has become increasingly attractive to SaaS/Cloud vendors seeking to keep pace with users’ escalating data access requirements.
• Dell-Boomi: As Cloud-based, SaaS business applications become more popular, the demand for more powerful, yet easy-to-use, integration solutions is also growing. Today’s integration solutions must not only tie together a rapidly expanding array of SaaS apps, but also pull them together with legacy applications, systems and data sources. This profile examines how Dell-Boomi’s latest features respond to rising corporate demands and customer expectations.
• Informatica Cloud: The proliferation of Cloud-based, SaaS business applications have created a growing challenge for organizations of all sizes trying to tie them together with their legacy applications, systems and data sources. Compounding the data integration challenge is the need to ensure the quality of the data traversing today’s Cloud/SaaS applications. This profile examines how Informatica’s latest Cloud-based data integration and quality capabilities are designed to address these increasingly important issues.

I hope you find these profiles useful and welcome your suggestions regarding other companies you think we should showcase.

The data access, integration and quality management issues which these companies are attacking will be the focus of THINKstrategies’ Cloud conferences in 2012.

Click here to sign up for our newsletter to learn more about these events, keep up with our latest profiles and read our perspectives on today’s rapidly evolving Cloud industry trends. You can also follow our updates via Twitter @thinkstrategies.

This is the time of year when we reflect on the year past and year to come.

I provided a scorecard of my past year’s predictions which I published a year ago in E-Commerce Times in my previous blogpost.

I’ve been given the privilege of publishing this year’s predictions for 2012 in Datamation. I hope you like them and they serve as a guide for leveraging the unprecedented businesss opportunities created by today’s exciting new Cloud innovations.

Based on the success of THINKstrategies’ Cloud Channel Summit this past November, we are not only planning to have another one next November, but also plan to host two new events in 2012. We’ve announced that one of the new events will focus on Cloud Analytics. We will announce the focus of the other new event in early January. All of these events will be one-day forums for senior executives that will take place in the Bay Area of California.

Stay tuned for more information about these events, or contact me at info@thinkstrategies.com if you’d like to learn more about speaking and sponsorship opportunities.

Thanks for your support and interest in my perspectives over the past year. Let me know if you need any help capitalizing on the new business opportunities being generated by the Cloud.

If you are like me, you’ll probably spend some of the downtime during the upcoming holiday week catching up on a pile of reading which you didn’t get a chance to digest over the past few weeks (months?) because of daily distractions such as work, family, survival, etc.

If you have spare time to read more of my perspectives regarding important industry trends which are impacting businesses of all sizes across nearly every industry, here are my recent writings from other online outlets since my last listing of commentaries regarding channel issues related to our Cloud Channel Summit back in November:

• Internet Evolution: Human Capital Management Heads Cloudward, 12/21/11 
• Datamation: Cloud Computing: Show Me the Analytics, 12/12/11 
• E-Commerce Times: Standing Out in the Clouds, 12/09/11 
• Internet Evolution: Big IT Vendors Try Buying Their Way Into Cloud, 12/06/11 
• Internet Evolution: Why Google May Not Win in the Enterprise, 11/22/11 
• Sandhill.com: Market Implications of Salesforce.com’s Acquisition of Model Metrics, 11/16/11  
• Sandhill.com: Building Effective Channels in the Cloud, 11/13/11 
• E-Commerce Times: The Hard Part About Rolling Up Clouds, 11/11/11

In total, I published 43 commentaries outside of this blog. You can find a complete list of these commentaries here or here.

I hope you find my perspectives provocative and worthwhile. I look forwad to sharing more thoughts with you in 2012. In the meantime, have a good holiday week and best wishes for a safe, healthy and prosperous new year!

Despite some skepticism from industry analysts about the ability of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors to deliver viable business intelligence (BI) solutions a few years ago, today’s Cloud-based analytic tools are increasingly demonstrating that they can quickly generate tangible benefits to organizations of all sizes, especially mid-market companies.

The growing interest in Cloud-based analytics is easy to understand given the escalating pressures facing businesses contending with rising customer expectations and intensifying competitive. Businesses not only have to synthesize a widening array of internal and external data sources, they must also make timely and useful analysis available to an increasingly dispersed workforce so they can make better day-to-day business decisions.

The Cloud is the perfect enablement platform for analytic tools to respond to these demands. THINKstrategies sees the Cloud responding in three ways.

First, every leading Cloud solution includes a basic set of analytic tools to satisfy users’ rudimentary needs, including activity tracking and reporting capabilities.

Second, every leading Cloud vendor is tracking usage rates and behavior patterns to better understand how their solutions are being utilized so they can continuously fine-tune and enhance their Cloud offerings.

Third, a growing number of Cloud vendors which have gained a critical mass of customers are beginning to examine how they can package the aggregated metadata they are accumulating to produce useful benchmark statistics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that help users understand how they compare and contrast to their peers. This is a unique value-add which only Cloud-based solutions built on a shared, multi-tenant architecture can provide.

IBM’s recent acquisition of DemandTec is the latest example of the growing focus on Cloud analytics in the marketplace. DemandTec delivers Cloud-based analytics software businesses use to track customer online and in-store buying patterns to identify trends so they can make better pricing, packaging, and other marketing decisions to generate higher revenues and profits.

The DemandTec acquisition comes about year after IBM closed another acquisition of a Cloud-based analytics company, called Coremetrics, which focuses on Web analytics which enable users to develop more targeted online marketing campaigns.

As CIOs’ fears about data security and privacy in the Cloud subside, they are being replaced by a growing interest in utilizing Cloud-based analytics tools and the computational power of the Cloud to attain better insight into business effectiveness.

The most appealing aspect of the new wave of Cloud analytic solutions is that businesses don’t have to invest millions of dollars to build costly data warehouses, implement complicated BI software, or hire an army of expensive consultants to try to gain a competitive advantage.

Instead, a growing number of enlightened IT and business decision-makers in mid-sized enterprises are recognizing that they can take advantage of a widening array of Cloud-based analytic tools to achieve their corporate objectives at a fraction of the cost, in far less time, and without the risks associated with legacy BI systems.

This is particularly important to mid-size organizations which lack the skills and financial resources to make major investments in BI systems. Cloud analytics gives these mid-market enterprises tools they otherwise could not afford, and levels the playing field to enable them to gather and interpret real-time data to better compete with larger players and start-ups.

Disclosure: This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

A year ago, I published a series of 10 predictions regarding how the Cloud Computing marketplace would evolve in 2011 in E-Commerce Times. Here’s a recap and assessment of my predictions:

1. The Cloud Computing market will grow more rapidly than analyst firms forecast as organizations move from asking “what is Cloud and why is it important” to “where and how can I capitalize on the Cloud today.”
   • I think I did ok on this one, although there remain plenty of organizations who are still trying to define the Cloud and determine why they should seriously consider employing it.
2. This accelerated growth will occur despite a major cloud computing service disruptions and/or significant security infractions, which will heighten customer concerns but won’t discourage wider adoption.
   • This certainly was the case as we watched Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) crash, jeopardizing numerous start-ups and other companies dependent on its Cloud capabilities, yet failing to dissuade more businesses of all sizes to adopt AWS and other Cloud services.
3. A wider array of appliances and applets will be offered by a growing number of Cloud vendors, which will permit users to “download” the functionality they need so they can work offline or deploy cloud-based solutions behind the firewall to satisfy their reliability and security concerns.
   • This wasn’t as prominent a trend as I expected. However, salesforce.com did acquire Navajo Systems, an Israeli-based startup with unique encryption capabilities that are the basis of salesforce.com’s new Data Residency Option (DRO) that permits users to retain control of their data behind their firewall, which could exponentially expand the addressable market for Cloud vendors.
4. Community clouds aimed at specific vertical markets and supply chain relationships will become more prevalent, as various organizations recognize the value of sharing cloud resources and services with their peers.
   • Although the number of community clouds grew in 2011, they didn’t proliferate as much as I expected as most organizations focused their attention on more binary public vs. private cloud alternatives. 
5. Corporate decision-makers will shift their focus from reliability, security and integration concerns to strategic and tactical governance issues, ranging from planning, selection, deployment, monitoring and evaluation to optimization and monetization of cloud initiatives.
   • This trend was more subtle because most corporate decision-makers continue to have serious reliability, security and integration concerns about the cloud, but are also developing corporate policies and procedures to govern their planning, selection, deployment, monitoring and evaluation processes.
6. The rate of cloud company failures and M&A activities will escalate as many startups are unable to keep pace with rising customer expectations and intensifying competitive pressures, and established players attempt to accelerate their development efforts via acquisitions.
   • The magnitude of the Cloud movement permitted the vast majority of startups and established players to prosper. M&A activity has escalated as the year has gone along, capped off with SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors, Oracle’s purchase of RightNow and salesforce.com’s recent Rypple buy.
7. Vendors that provide cloud integration tools and professional services, in particular, will be key acquisition targets because they represent a critical component in pulling the various cloud piece-parts together. The acquisitions of Cast Iron Systems and Boomi are just the beginning on the tools side. Consolidation among cloud integration service firms will occur in the coming year.
   • A series of acquisitions by Appirio were the clearest example of this trend on the professional services side of the integration world. But, the number of Cloud integration and consulting companies continues to increase in response to growing demand. The lack of integration tool vendor acquisitions was a bit of a surprise.
8. Social networking will become a required component of enterprise applications, driven by the success of Salesforce.com’s Chatter. By offering Chatter free to a broader population of end-users within its existing accounts, Salesforce.com is not only raising the bar for its direct competitors, but also expanding and redefining its role within the enterprise.
   • Salesforce.com’s intensive marketing campaign promoting the virtues of the ‘Social Enterprise’ have brought broader attention to this idea. It has not only forced other Cloud vendors and established players to promote their social networking capabilities, it helped fuel Jive’s IPO.
9. Datamarts will become a cornerstone of a new generation of cloud-based Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) solutions, as well as industry benchmark services.
   • Salesforce.com rebranded Jigsaw as Data.com and unveiled Database.com, but examples of BPaaS didn’t get as much attention because they are taking shape within specific vertical markets.
10. New channel programs will be introduced, new channel partners will emerge and new revenue streams will be established. Ironically, the leading cloud vendors — such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com — will continue to have the toughest time building successful channel programs because of their direct sales heritage.
    • The success of THINKstrategies’ first Cloud Channel Summit is an indication of the level of interest in building successful partnerships in the Cloud. Although, channel executives from Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com were prominent speakers at this event who have made significant progress with their channel development programs, they all readily admit they are still searching for the right formula for success.

Despite numerous market research forecasts predicting that small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) would be in the vanguard of adopting today’s rapidly expanding array of Cloud-based services, the truth is that most mid-sized businesses have been slow to join the migration to these ‘on-demand’ alternatives.

In too many cases, it has been hesitancy or even overt resistance among IT decision-makers within mid-sized businesses which has let to these organizations staying away from Cloud services.

THINKstrategies believes there are 5 reasons why it’s time for CIOs in mid-sized businesses to move to the Cloud,

1. It’s Safe: Too many IT decision-makers in mid-sized businesses continue to be afraid of the perceived security, reliability and performance risks associated with the Cloud. The fact is that the leading Cloud service providers have more stringent security precautions in place and far higher uptime records than most mid-sized businesses can boast. 
2. Your Corporate Executives Want a Change: Today’s escalating business challenges are driving a growing number of corporate executives to seek more nimble and cost-effective alternatives to the legacy, on-premise systems and software which they believe have become obstacles to success. 
3. Your End-Users Are Already Making The Move: The consumerization of IT is real and far more pervasive than many IT organizations realize. It became increasingly commonplace for corporate end-users to acquire their own smartphones, tablets and laptops as more businesses adopted “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies to appease their employees’ demands. In many cases, these policies unintentionally opened the door to broad-based, albeit clandestine adoption of Cloud-based applications as well. In the same way Salesforce.com won over salespeople without corporate authorization, others throughout mid-sized businesses are being enticed by free, ‘try and buy’, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors.
4. SaaS/Cloud Solutions Work and Deliver Benefits Fast: Over the past three years, THINKstrategies has issued nearly 100 awards to SaaS and other Cloud vendors who offer solutions which are delivering measurable business benefits to their customers.  In many cases, these benefits are gained quickly and at a fraction of the cost of previous legacy systems and software. As a result, the return on investment (ROI) in the Cloud is proving to be considerably greater and quicker than was ever possible in the on-premise environment.
5. You Can Be a Hero: Every CIO I’ve talked to who has moved to the Cloud has told me that it has changed their image within their organization. Instead of being perceived as a bottleneck or obstacle to success, CIOs who embrace the Cloud and help their corporate executives and end-users leverage these third-party resources are viewed as enablers and facilitators who are helping to improve employee productivity and operational efficiencies. And the most open-minded of these CIOs are even seen as catalysts for change and incubators of innovation who are helping their businesses gain a competitive advantage in the market.

CIOs have historically been the targets of executive edicts and end-user demands which have made it impossible to succeed. As a result, CIOs have had short tenures in many organizations. However, the life-expectancy of CIOs has been going up in recent years as a growing number of them are leveraging more cost-effective and user-friendly Cloud solutions to support their corporate executives’ business objectives and end-users’ day-to-day needs.

Disclosure: This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.