Archive for Cloud Computing
by Joe McKendrick
February 1, 2009 at 12:32 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0
Over the past year, I’ve been exploring the potential for Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0-oriented services to not only pull both enterprises and individuals through the rough-and-tumble economy, but also to change the way we approach work and business.
Dion Hinchcliffe has just published an overview of some compelling options Enterprise and Web 2.0 approaches offer organizations in the current economic climate and upcoming recovery; far smarter than the rip-and-replace approach to workforce and knowledge management we’ve known in the past.
Move to lower-cost online/SaaS versions of enterprise applications; move IT infrastructure to the cloud. Dion cites statistics that show moving to SaaS versions of applications can save organizations up to 40% in their IT budgets. “Recent reports say that moving to a SaaS version of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system will save the average firm 25% to 40%, a number that likely translates well to other types of business applications given the core nature of CRM to most enterprises.” Dion cautions, however, that a move to SaaS for strategic applications is not a trivial undertaking, and it’s best to start with more peripheral applications. However, cloud computing provides much greater agility as business shifts — reducing underused capacity and investments in one part of the business, and straining resources in another part.
Use Enterprise 2.0 to capture the knowledge and know-how of employees. A couple of months back, Harvard’s Andrew McAfee speculated that the auto industry could benefit immensely by tapping into the collective knowledge of its workforce.
Dion is of the same mind, warning that companies that engage in layoffs risk losing “tens of thousands of years of built up expertise and capability, largely untapped; the knowledge residing in inaccessible places such as e-mail accounts, file servers, meeting notes, and most devastating of all, in the minds of the departing workers.” He urges organizations to take a different tact, developing networks that can learn and accumulate knowledge. “Enabling open, persistent, freeform collaboration amongst far-flung workers allows vast amounts of institutional knowledge to pour out into visible places on the network where that information can then be studied, reused, and learned by others including (perhaps especially) new workers down the road…. Making your intranet a vibrant, ever growing, worker-powered, two-way social media landscape is one of the surest investments you can make in your organization.”
Embrace new low-cost models for production — such as crowdsourcing. “Crowdsourcing — in which organizations tap into the knowdledge, innovation, and vitality of social networks — represents and new frontier for management. The advantages, Dion points out, include “using the vast audience of people on the network as a primary source of innovation, research, and product development as well as customer support, sales, and marketing.” However, he cautions that crowdsourcing requires a certain set of skills “that is very different from traditional corporate hierarchical command-and-control.” Managers need to understand how to leverage social networks.
Lower customer service costs by pro-active use of online customer communities. Related to crowdsourcing, greater efficiencies and knowledge can be gained from creating or tapping into the collective wisdom of online customer communities. However, Dion points out, few companies have mastered this capability yet. There’s an urgent need for this kind of resource: “With the rank and file of the customer service and account representative ranks of organizations shrinking rapidly in many cases, now is time to provide your customers an entirely new and largely superior channel for communication, collaboration, and working together and amongst themselves.”
Open your supply chain to partners on the Web. This could be one of the biggest growth areas over the coming year, Dion says. “If you want double-digit growth during the downturn in whatever otherwise staid industry you are in, there are few more powerful 2.0 techniques for doing it than turning your business into a strategic open platform on the network.”
by Joe McKendrick
September 29, 2008 at 10:56 am · Filed under
Cloud Computing
Analyst firm Gartner just issued a statement that it believes there is “confusion” in the market over the definition of “cloud computing,” and wants to set the record straight.
Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.”
However, the consultancy’s analysts say, there have been different perceptions of what is included in cloud computing. ”The term cloud computing has come to mean two very different things: a broader use that focuses on ‘cloud,’ and a more-focused use on system infrastructure and virtualization,” said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “Mixing the discussion of ‘cloud-enabling technologies’ with ‘cloud computing services’ creates confusion.”
Gartner says some commentators and vendors have applied the “cloud” label to internal initiatives, such as virtualization and automation. However, in the broader context, cloud computing applies to “the perspective of the Internet/Web/software as a service (SaaS). The focus is more on cloud than computing with the emphasis placed on access to services from elsewhere (that is, from the cloud).”
Gartner says the internal aspects and the external Web-based aspects are related, but that the internal definition is more of a “subset” of the larger phenonemon.
Is Gartner getting too picky on this? By employing the same standards and principles, organizations will be supporting their own, secure internal “clouds” as well as relying on the global cloud. In many cases, the overlap will not even be apparent to end users.
by Joe McKendrick
September 11, 2008 at 10:09 pm · Filed under
Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0, SaaS
Web services guru David Chappell has published a think piece on “cloud platforms,” which he defines as platforms that “let developers write applications that run in the cloud, or use services provided from the cloud, or both.” Cloud platforms are also referred to as on-demand platforms and platform as a service (PaaS).
David says there are two forms of cloud platforms: cloud infrastructure services and cloud applications services. Cloud infrastructure services include on-demand storage, integration, and identity. Cloud application services include Software as a Service, search, mapping, and other application services.
David notes that we’re only in the early stages of this evolution, and “cloud platforms aren’t yet at the center of most people’s attention.” However, he continues, “the odds are good, though, that this won’t be true five years from now. The attractions of cloud-based computing, including scalability and lower costs, are very real. If you work in application development, whether for a software vendor or an end user, expect the cloud to play an increasing role in your future. The next generation of application platforms is here.”
by Joe McKendrick
August 22, 2008 at 11:48 am · Filed under
Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0
Will integration issues dampen the enthusiasm around cloud computing? What are the role of data environments in these new scenarios?
The folks that manage data integration have some interesting observations to make on this topic. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Chris Boorman, chief marketing officer with Informatica, and Ron Papas, senior vice president and general manager for Informatica On Demand, about the enterprise data management implications of this growing trend. (The interviews are posted here and here in this two-part series.)
As cloud computing engagements increase in sophistication and edge ever closer to the mission-critical core of the enterprise, recognition is growing that there are enterprise data management issues that still need to be worked out. “Our belief is that cloud computing or on-demand computing is simply a way of further fragmenting data, because customers are absolving themselves from responsibility for the management, storage, security, and backup and recovery of the availability of that data,” Chris pointed out. However, he emphasized, “you must never, ever, absolve responsibility for the quality and the ownership of the data, and having such quality and ownership as part of your core business processes. And that requires integration.”
Cloud computing hands off many of the aches and pains associated with systems and application development and management to someone else. But this does not relieve enterprises of the requirements and responsibilities around effectively managing enterprise data. Many observers, in fact, are concerned about the implications of cloud computing on enterprise data management and integration, since much of the processing and storage of information shifts to outside providers.
As Informatica’s Ron Papas put it, technically, there isn’t a lot of difference between on-site systems and data stores and cloud-managed systems and data stores. However, there’s a big difference in the ownership of these applications:
“What’s that’s doing is it’s bypassing the traditional process of having IT design the whole integration processes into the solution. So, before you know it, you could be up and running with Salesforce.com without having put much thought into integration, because it’s really being led by the line of business side. You could have someone in the sales and marketing unit that somehow bypassed IT and went up and implemented Salesforce. All of a sudden, they realize they need access to that data. they need it synchronized.”
More companies are emphasizing their ability to compete on analytics, and the ability to integrate and leverage enterprise data is key. Whether on-site or in the cloud, effective data integration is a must.
by Jon Husband
August 5, 2008 at 1:09 pm · Filed under
Business Model, Change, Cloud Computing, Community, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile Phones, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Stuart Henshall, Trust, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Thanks largely to Rob Patterson’s previous posts on the issues and opportunities, regular readers of the FASTForward blog will know by now that Twitter (and other similar services like Pownce, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Identi.ca and Kwippy) have strong potential for practical use by project teams and connected networks of knowledge workers.
These services can be used to keep people aware of fast-moving issues, events and changes, and bring the strengths of IM and online presence together in useful ways.
Here comes another dimension to group instant messaging … one which promises to further close the gap regarding utility and the ability to reach into a network and connect with someone to whom you want to discuss whatever it may be that interests you or what you may need to know or find out.
A friend who is well-known to many in the Web 2.0 arena, Stuart Henshall, and his colleague David Beckemeyer (TelEvolution / PhoneGnome, Earthlink), have just launched Phweet, a service whereby a user with one click can ask someone who has just twittered (or pownced, or jaiku’d, or fed a friend or kwipped) whether or not they will accept a VoIP call. Once accepted, voila ! Connection is established and the voice conversation begins.
In terms of how it operates technically, this service effectively eliminates the need for dial-tones (arguably the last remaining communications bottleneck the telcoms "own") in order to talk to someone else via voice. Powerful stuff !
Please note that this service is alpha, and applies only to twitter at the moment, though I believe there plans to enable it for the other similar service I have mentioned.
Of course group IM users can already connect with someone they "know" and ask about / initiate a VoIP call in any number of ways, but this service makes the functionality available during the course of using the group IM service, thereby enhancing existing online presence and creating what some are calling ambient intimacy.
Go ahead, sign up and try it out. I have … it’s easy, fun and potentially very useful, especially for project teams or private networks of people who are connected together on some issue or other.
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Tags: Stuart Henshall, David Beckemeyer, Phweet
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