I had an interesting discussion the other day with a fellow marketing manager about cloud and business transformation. The conversation centered around whether or not cloud was a discussion that should begin within the IT department, or should it come from the C-level down. It’s a great question, because as much as I like to think it’s a top-down discussion, it really comes down to the fact that cloud will affect the IT department in several ways, including a fundamental redesign of the IT department as a whole. Let me explain. Continue reading
Month: March 2012
If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited.
The other day I was asked about what I thought about the whole iCloud solution, and how all of a sudden it seems that everything is cloud-based, including consumer applications. iCloud isn’t the only version of this type of model, personally I use Dropbox to sync all my files, but this type of model is a great example of where cloud is going, and how enterprises should view cloud. Cloud is quickly becoming the basis of collaboration, and more and more it’s becoming incredibly important to streamlining how organizations function internally and externally. In other words, if you’re not using cloud for your sales and marketing departments at least, you’re missing one of the most important changes cloud has made to the business landscape. Continue reading
To ensure ongoing quality of service, your death may be monitored for training purposes. Thank you.
I was recently attending a cloud conference and had the chance to talk to several of the key technology vendors that were in attendance. One of the major vendors seems to be working closely with just about everyone in the cloud and virtualization space, and it made me question what kind of benefits to solution providers and other vendors these types of relationships provide. Suddenly the main cloud players are building partnerships to develop solutions for attached security, storage, asset management, performance monitoring and other operational technologies within virtual environments. But what benefit is there to have such tight integration with one or two key cloud platform vendors? Continue reading
Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.
When it comes to cloud, the usual way for service providers, in Canada at least, has been to wait and see what the market is asking for and what other service providers are doing. Usually then it is followed by some kind of white label agreement. The problem is that the longer we wait, the further behind we seem to fall, especially when you have some stiff competition coming out of left field. In this case, it’s a new cloud service provider created from the merger of Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne. Why should you care? Continue reading
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
For mid-market organizations that want to build their own internal cloud environments to support their IT objectives, the biggest barrier has always been the capital costs associated with purchasing infrastructure and security solutions to support the initiatives. Traditionally, the large server manufacturers haven’t really targeted mid-market because they never saw a large revenue stream potential, or they assumed these organizations never had the in-house expertise to manage the equipment. Now it seems like every vendor is suddenly touting the latest mid-market solution as if they just realized this market segment exists. Why the shift? Continue reading
You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Clause!
I know I spend a lot of time talking about mid-market and cloud and all the great things that cloud affords these organizations to do. I also talk about how cloud providers love cloud models because it allows them to build huge self-managed services that involve the same types of provisioning models, resulting in streamlined and very profitable services that their customers can use to build their own corporate services. And the fact that these services are multi-tenant, the cost savings for both providers and customers means they can invest in services that utilize modern technologies and security controls without huge capital investments. But why would enterprises then build their own clouds? What benefits are there for their internal and external customers? Continue reading
My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
I came across a great article from CSO Online that talked about how cloud has created a new movement called DevOps. Normally when you think about how cloud is affecting the way businesses operate from an IT perspective, the usual culprits at the centre are the security folks, and maybe the IT infrastructure guys. What we tend to forget is that these groups aren’t the only ones who are looking at how cloud can make business processes more nimble. The DevOps movement is showing organizations how changing the way they run development can lead to some astounding results. Continue reading
I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code
The cloud has forced a shift in the way organizations operate. It allows them to take risks and innovate in ways that never would have been possible before. Startups now have the ability to utilize cloud services to build new solutions without having to search for venture capital, and then provide investors with a near-finished solution to raise additional funding. This is why we see tons of investment in providers such as Google and Salesforce whom are viewed as the key to running next generation business systems. So why haven’t service providers started thinking this way? Continue reading
What can I say, I failed sharing in preschool.
After spending several hours this weekend formatting and reinstalling my Linux distribution on my laptop, I came to realize something. If it wasn’t for cloud-based services, it would have been a lot more painful. Between my cloud-based email client and dropbox account, I was back up and running in no time. In fact, if it wasn’t for these types of services, in particular cloud storage services, just the day to day running of this blog would be a lot more painful. I’m probably not alone in saying that these services have become critical in ensuring access to files from multiple devices. So why aren’t organizations using an enterprise solution for the same purpose, such as the latest release from OpenText, Tempo? Continue reading
If at first you don’t succeed; call it version 1.0.
If someone asked you what the biggest problem with cloud is, how would you answer? Would it be security? Complexity? Personally, I think it comes down to the fact that cloud involves so many systems, data centres, networks, security controls that it’s almost impossible to create clear segmentations of where cloud environments begin and end. Cloud is a global entity made up of fenced-off clusters of information. Continue reading
Tinder Stratus 