Tag Archives: management

Five Questions Boards Of Directors Need To Ask About Cloud Governance

BOD-cloud-questionsThe many benefits of cloud computing include helping enterprises become more efficient, agile, innovative and flexible, but achieving those benefits depends on a number of factors, including the involvement of the board of directors. ISACA, a nonprofit, independent association of more than 100,000 governance, risk, security and assurance professionals worldwide, has issued new guidance outlining key questions for boards of directors to ask to ensure their enterprise’s cloud initiative is in line with business objectives and the organisation’s risk tolerance.

“Board members need a clear understanding of cloud computing benefits and how to maximise them through effective governance practices,” said Marc Vael, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, CISSP, an ISACA board member and chief IT audit executive at Smals.“This requires the board to see cloud computing not as an IT project, but rather as a business strategy.”

According to ISACA’s Cloud Governance: Questions Boards of Directors Need to Ask, boards should address the following five questions to determine the strategic value that cloud services are expected to provide and the impact that the cloud may have on resources and controls:

1. Do management teams have a plan for cloud computing? Have they weighed the value and opportunity costs?

2. How do current cloud plans support the enterprise’s mission?

3. Have executive teams systematically evaluated organisational readiness? For example, are the right skills available? Do cloud processes conflict with other established processes? Do cloud plans conflict with enterprise culture?

4. Have management teams considered what existing investments might be lost in their cloud planning? Does the adoption of a cloud service nullify already-made technology investments that have not reached their planned end date, and is that noted and approved?

5. Do management teams have strategies for measuring and tracking the value of cloud return vs. risk?

“The answers to these questions will help determine the enterprise’s readiness to adopt cloud computing and also help ensure that the necessary governance is in place,” said Vael. “The COBIT 5 framework for governance and management of IT can also help enterprises manage investments such as cloud services. COBIT 5 helps ensure consistent practices to maximise value and manage risk.”

ISACA’s white paper, “Cloud Governance: Questions Boards of Directors Need to Ask,” is available as a free download at www.isaca.org/cloud-governance. The COBIT 5 framework is a free download at www.isaca.org/cobit.

 

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Days Of Authoritarian IT Departments Are Over

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Today, it is no longer a question of when IT will align with business leaders, but how. That is the conclusion of a new report from Forrester Research, which describes the policies and procedures for implementing cloud computing in the corporate environment.

These are required, according to Forrester, because the traditional model of IT management under the rigid control of the IT department has now become restrictive and outdated. Business managers want the power to rapidly procure and provision the technology they need, unhindered by the diktats of an “authoritarian” IT department, say the firm’s analysts.

“Underlying this new model of business and IT is a shift away from rules – IT specifying exactly what and how all technologies are adopted and applied to overcome business problems – to one of business working within a series of ‘guard rails’ that provide softer guidance on how best to select, choose, and consume cloud services,” writes Forrester analyst James Staten in the report.

IT will maintain its strict rules for the technologies that matter at the core of the business, but will “bend” to enable the introduction of new private and public cloud technology. That will give the business executives that need it the greater autonomy that they seek.

There are three essential elements to this new approach, argues Forrester:

1. Create policies and rules based on what matters and where;
2. Revise lines of accountability and share responsibility in alignment with the policies and new rules;
3. Coach, collaborate and inspect to make sure that the new approach is effective and respected.

The rules for different applications will be grouped into “zones” based on risk – hence, rules governing the use of Plaxo or Linkedin will be very much less prescriptive than rules for using Salesforce.com. These zones will be based on:

1. Business opportunity;
2. Business impact and risk;
3. Technology complexity and risk.

Clarity on accountability and responsibility will bring the right level of control, believes Staten.

He says that businesses need to start today in order not to be left behind in the unfolding revolution over the next decade.

“Technology may be pervasive, and business execs know that, but to them, the IT organization is a drag on time-to-market and closed to their new ideas. But because technology is pervasive, your business will want to use it to succeed in a market of empowered customers, globalized competition and pricier resources,” writes Staten.

“You want to help them succeed at this, and that means empowering them with greater ability to execute on their own, but to do so safely for the overall enterprise,” he concludes.

Author: Graeme Burton
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How To Buy The Cloud

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Next month – all being well – the UK Cabinet Office will lift the lid on what form the UK public sector Cloud Computing strategy will take.

Notably absent from the national ICT strategy announced back in April, Cloud has not been forgotten, but the grandiose plans for an over-arching G-Cloud that were being formulated under the New Labour administration have been scaled down.
Exactly what form the revised Cloud thinking will take remains to be seen, but the broad sweep commitment to Cloud as a cost-effective, scalable delivery mechanism has been articulated by both Government CIO Joe Harley and his deputy Bill McCluggage as well as being cited by Prime Minister David Cameron and other members of the political establishment. So a continued identification of Cloud as the way ahead seems like a safe bet.

In the US, the Obama administration – when not having to wrestle with keeping the bailiffs from the door – has been an enthusiastic supporter of Cloud Computing – even if some of the more died-in=the-wool Federal CIOs were not quite as keen. But the Obama ‘Cloud First’ policy has put the US federal government sector on a clear path to mass adoption of Cloud technologies, hand-in-hand with data centre closures on a mass scale.

Such is the inevitably of the Cloud advance in the US that the TechAmerica Foundation, made up of Cloud providers and academics, has now issued a Cloud First Buyers Guide for Government to provide easy, best practice steps for procurement officers in the government community to purchase and deploy Cloud services and technologies.

In its preface to the Guide, the Foundation notes: “To spur government agencies to take advantage of the benefits that Cloud Computing enables, the Obama Administration has issued a Cloud First policy. This Buyer’s Guide is designed to assist government agencies as they evaluate and purchase Cloud services and solutions in response to that policy.”

While the specifics of the Buyers Guide are inevitably highly geared to US government structures. the basic principles at their heart are eminently replicable across other nations, including the UK.

Step One: Business case

The report begins by recommending the creation of a business case – which may seem unusual given the mandated nature of the Cloud First policy, but the business case is needed to establish priorities. The report notes:

“Defaulting to a particular Cloud deployment or service model rather than using agency performance objectives to define the approach will result in missed opportunities to benefit from available Cloud services. In making the transition to the Cloud…first focus on workloads and Cloud services and solutions that have already been widely deployed in the Cloud in the private sector and government.”

In other words, don’t stick the tried and tested (and failed) practice of reinventing the wheel at every given opportunity. The Foundation identifies three main categories of Cloud offering that have proven track records already:

  • Infrastructure as a Service e.g.: storage web hosting, and backup.
  • Platform as a Service e.g. database services, identity management services, security services, geospatial information systems and customised application in areas of IT management.
  • Software as a Service e.g. email, CRM, collaboration, payment processing, and service centres.

Step Two: Establish priorities

Next, map your priorities and map them against the technology solutions on offer. Everyone will have a different set of priorities that matters, but among the most common aspects to take into consideration are:

  • Automatic upgrades and patches
  • Collaboration
  • Compliance requirements
  • In-house development and customisation capabilities
  • Ease of use
  • Sustainability and energy considerations
  • Integration with existing systems
  • Interoperability and open source
  • Portability
  • Pricing
  • Scalability
  • Security
  • Transparency of provider performance


Step Three: Think about security

The inevitable objection raised in both private and public sectors is the bug bear of security. The Buyers Guide notes: “Cloud services are not inherently more or less secure than in-house IT implementations. In both cases, security depends on technology, policies, and practices. A robust implementation of Cloud services is capable of meeting a variety of security requirements.”

But it observes that what does change is the question of responsibility: “One of the differences between cloud and in-house IT implementations is the degree of control for who manages and controls the security processes. Agencies should focus on managing the agreements between the agency and provider to ensure that a consistent security posture is maintained independent of who is responsible for the various layers of the system.”

Step Four: Implementation considerations

These are essential if the essential principle of sharing resources is to be adopted successfully. To that end, procurement officers need to ask:

  • Is the Cloud service easy to configure?
  • Does the Cloud service exist elsewhere within government and can that service be shared elsewhere within government?
  • Does the Cloud service provider enable portability of user data through an effective combination of documents, tools, and support for agreed-upon industry standards and best practices?
  • Are there third-party solutions to provide access to the data in the Cloud service?
  • Will the Cloud service provider, the government body, or third party integrate Cloud applications with in-house applications to ensure seamless end-to-end processes?

Step Five: the RFP

The topics and sections of the traditional RFP still largely apply, including background descriptions about the provider, client references, startup and ongoing cost models, and required certifications, but it is important to streamline the RFP process to reflect the rapid deployment of Cloud services.

Step Six: Take advantage of government’s scale

Are there government-wide initiatives that can help on price or best practice?

Step Seven: Don’t forget the people aspect

The Guide warns: “Cloud technology will not deliver the desired return on investment without addressing the people and process issues that are needed to manage effective systems.”

Step Eight: Look for a common approach to supplier evaluation

The Guide urges: “Use a data- driven approach to evaluate Cloud offerings.”

Step Nine: It’s all in the timing

Consider various factors to determine when is right for you to make a move to the Cloud. Factors can include:

  • Need for legacy system replacement
  • New systems upgrades that will require additional ICT investment
  • A need for testing platforms to support new development
  • A desire to run a pilot project for a programme or initiative

Purchasing Cloud services is all too often approached as a difficult new practice, but the Buyers Guide concludes: “Although the shift to Cloud Computing raises new issues that must be considered, existing Federal government procurement practices are flexible enough to enable acquisition of the new capabilities.”

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Companies Ill-Prepared To Achieve Cloud Goals

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The majority of large organisations are migrating internal virtual infrastructure to the cloud because they believe it will reduce costs, according to a recent survey. The survey finds that only 17 per cent of organisations achieved their utilisation and ROI goals with virtualisation and yet, they intend to use similar planning and management approaches for their move to the cloud.

The survey interviewed 94 executives responsible for virtual and cloud infrastructure decisions at organisations with more than 25,000 employees. It revealed that many organisations are ill-prepared to make the move: 77 per cent of respondents plan to use cloud-vendor supplied tools or spreadsheets to plan the migration of workloads to the cloud and only 48 per cent plan to implement new solutions to manage cloud infrastructure.

While cloud operating models have the potential to reduce spend, it is more likely that infrastructure costs will increase if these initiatives are poorly planned and managed. Virtualisation provided many organisations with some quick hits in terms of cost savings on hardware, but the reality is that few have fully met their objectives for utilisation and ROI. Despite this, the majority of organisations are betting on the cloud without dramatically changing the approach to planning these environments.

Cloud operating models can naturally increase inefficient use of capacity and the amount of “excess” capacity an organisation has on hand in internal clouds by their very design:

  • Providing users with self-serve access to capacity can result in buffet-style over-indulgence as application owners request more capacity than they actually need to safe-guard against risk.
  • Pre-defined instance configurations and sized “buckets” of capacity may enable easier management, but they can also result in built-in excess capacity in allocations vs. customising allocations for each workload’s true requirement.
  • Increased responsiveness requires a supply of excess capacity to be held as a demand buffer for new workloads. Sizing this capacity requirement, however, is tricky and teams could end up with unnecessary idle capacity taking up room on the data centre floor.

Key findings from the survey reveal that organisations will face a direct conflict between high hopes for cost reduction and poor planning and management methods:

  • 39 per cent of respondents felt that virtualisation costs were higher than expected or delivered an uncertain ROI.
  • 70 per cent of respondents felt that moving to cloud infrastructure would decrease costs and 42 per cent cited cost reduction as the primary reason they would move systems off of internal virtualised infrastructure to the cloud.
  • Despite the hopes for cost reduction, a total of 77 per cent planned to take a very basic and biased approach to migration planning, using a cloud vendor-provided tool or spreadsheets to plan the migration of their workloads to the cloud.
  • 75 per cent planned workload movements using spreadsheets in currently virtual environments, which not only slows response times, but also takes a very simplistic approach to sizing and placement in internal cloud environments.

According to Gartner analyst Alessandro Perilli, in the June 9, 2011 research paper “The Big Mind Shift: Capacity Management for Virtual and Cloud Infrastructures”:

“Gartner defines “optimised” as a virtual infrastructure where the workload placement satisfies all of an organisation’s technical, business, and compliance constraints and the capacity is allocated to avoid resource wasting (i.e., rightsized),”

Perilli also recommends:

“The capacity management tool should allow for the definition of complex, multi-dimensional placement rules according to the technical, business, and compliance constraints inherent to each service that the infrastructure is hosting.”

Strategic workload placement is critical to achieving savings, particularly in internal clouds. Taking a manual approach to planning cloud migration, like many organisations have done with virtualisation is a recipe for inefficiency and reduced return on investment. There are simply too many factors to consider in placement and capacity sizing decisions to be able to do so efficiently and accurately using home grown tools.

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Ten Ways Cloud Computing Can Help Your Business

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By now you’ve probably been barraged with messages about the value of cloud computing – so much so that you may be losing sight of the forest for the trees. The meaning of cloud computing seems to vary based on who’s describing it and where that person’s paycheck comes from. Hardware companies emphasize the hardware aspects of the cloud and software companies define it based around software.

Here’s a definition of the cloud designed for actual users: it’s a global, virtualized on-demand computing infrastructure and the software designed to take advantage of it. In many ways it’s like a computing utility; you pay on a monthly basis and for what you use.

That definition is helpful – but what does it mean? Is the cloud simply a technology trend, or is it also a business trend that can help you gain an advantage over your competitors? The reality is that it’s the latter. If you’re aware of the power the cloud can confer upon you, and you actively take advantage of its beneficial aspects, you can run your business better with the cloud as part of your business toolbox.

Here are 10 ways that your business can be more effective and more efficient thanks to cloud computing:

1. Reduction of Up-Front Costs –for You and Your Vendors

Unlike on-premise software, the price of deploying CRM, ERP and other applications in the cloud is far less. Not only are there fewer hardware costs but the model allows you to buy the number of seats you need from month to month.

“Because it’s less expensive for vendors to create the infrastructure needed to deliver cloud-based CRM, they are able to keep the cost of their service in check,” said Brent Leary, president of CRM Essentials. “And they are able to scale their operations more easily when their customer base grows beyond its current needs.”

2. Universal Access for Remote Employees

On-premise software isn’t quite in step with the trend toward people working remotely or from home. In order to allow these remote workers to access the applications, you have to manage dial-in systems, security, VPNs and the other technical requirements of connecting outside of the Internet. However, since the cloud essentially connects users to their application through an Internet browser, it takes all these management tasks off your table.

3. Built-In Business Continuity

In a catastrophe, every business will have 99 problems, but your cloud-based applications ain’t one. Of course, you need to have a set of practices and procedures in place for restoring your business, but the data and applications you access through the cloud don’t reside where you do, so any local emergency is unlikely to permanently impact these aspects of your business. Even if the main data center where your application runs is damaged, it’s likely the data and applications are mirrored in another datacenter somewhere else in the world. All you’ll need to do is re-establish a connection to the Internet (from anywhere in the world) and you can use those applications and that data right away.

4. Always Up-to-Date Software

Here are two scenarios. No. 1: you hear that a new version of your software is coming out from a software sales rep, then you hear that it’s out, then you debate about whether to buy it and whether you have the assets to install it, then you hear from the sales rep some more, then you finally give in and battle through the transition with your IT department, then you go back to your office and realize the clock’s running until you repeat this process. No. 2: you come into the office and your software’s been updated via the cloud. Which one sounds like more fun?

From a business standpoint, the ability to rapidly update software means that your cloud software provider can convert user feedback into new features more frequently. There’s no need to store up new functionality for an annual or semi-annual release; that functionality can be added whenever it’s available. And many vendors also allow you to okay changes, making sure you retain control over your software.

5. More Options, Less Lock-In

The cloud has cost savings not just for businesses but for vendors as well, allowing smaller software makers to enter the market. These developments, said Leary, have also allowed a number of new players to enter the market, such as Nimble, BatchBlue and JitterJam. “These newer companies can add functionality quickly and transform customer feedback into desired tools and services that, along with lower prices, attract smaller companies looking for easy-to-use apps that allow them to see immediate benefits.”

And, said Leary, they also keep the traditional vendors honest, “forcing them to keep up with the more socially-aware services built with Facebook, Twitter and other services in mind.”

With more options available – and without the risk of wasting a large investment, as there would be with an on-premise solution – cloud users have flexibility to experiment, and to switch vendors if the need arises (as long as they clearly define data formats with their software vendors ahead of time).

6. Allows IT Staff to Become More Strategic

Granted, the Cloud may mean fewer IT people in your organization – but those who remain will have a new and more important role. Instead of simply being the mechanics who make sure things are working (which, to a degree, they may remain), IT people will need to become the in-house experts to whom the people making business decisions will have to consult. Rather than being relegated to a strictly tactical role, IT can become strategically oriented and think about ideas like integration, adoption, data sharing between departments and in finding the best combinations of applications. They will need to help make the call of which applications can go to the cloud and which must remain in house, and then they need to tie these two groups of applications together. This strategic role will require IT workers to break out of the traditional limitations of the role and start to become real partners with the rest of the business, but those who can make the intellectual jump will have a far greater impact on their businesses than the IT pros of previous generations.

7. Breaks Down Barriers to Entry

If your business has competing factions battling for budget, getting sufficient dollars in place for an on-premise deployment can be tough – you’re not just buying the software, you’re also buying hardware, administrative costs and, potentially, new IT staff members. Add that up and you get a pretty large number – not to mention the ongoing maintenance fees that you pay with on-premise software anyway. If that sum means you lose the internal battle with other departments, the Cloud provides an option that demands far less up-front investment and can overcome the apprehensions of your CIO, thus getting you into the CRM game earlier than you would have been able to otherwise. That earlier entry into managing your customer relationships can make the difference between getting ahead of competitors, or falling behind.

“The cloud also has accelerated the adoption of more favorable payment options, as many services now offer pay-as-you-go options that don’t lock businesses into long term deals that acted as a barrier in the not too distant past,” added Leary.

8. Faster Implementation

If speed is your need, the Cloud is an invaluable resource. It allows you to go from negotiation to actually working with the application in a fraction of the time needed for on-premise in most cases. In order to really take advantage of the Cloud’s faster implementation capabilities, though, it’s crucial that your data is in good shape – free of format inconsistencies, duplicate entries and other frequently-seen glitches that can slow you down. If you’re starting from zero, that won’t be a problem; if you’re migrating from another application, you should give your data a quick once-over to make sure you can get to full speed as fast as possible.

9. Scales as Needed, When Needed

The Cloud is unmatched in its ability to scale with your business needs – and not just in giving you extra software as you grow. It also allows you to reduce the size of your deployment should your business need to shrink – or, more strategically, to flex with seasonal variations in usage. For example, most retail companies do a major percentage of their business during the holiday season. In the past, that’s meant building out customer-related software infrastructures to accommodate the maximum expected volume for that one time of the year. Once the holidays had passed, much of that infrastructure sat dark until the following year. Alternately, an adventure travel business might see peak business during the spring and summer.

With the cloud, users can subscribe to what they need when they need it. In other words, in these seasonal situations, companies don’t have to pay for resources they don’t need – they can develop subscriptions that allow their payments to flex with their usage.

10. Green – Both Environmentally and Economically

It costs a lot in energy costs to run on on-premise data center – not just to run the hardware but to cool it and pay for the real estate. The Cloud uses data centers, to be sure, and they use more energy than the average in-house operation – but, because of the economy of scale a Cloud data center can achieve, the average amount of energy needed for a computational action in the cloud is far less than the average amount in an on-premise deployment.

How much less? A study sponsored by Salesforce.com and WSP Environment and Energy found that cloud computing services produced 95 percent less carbon on average than a deployment running comparable software on on-pemise servers. While some dispute the precise numbers, the cloud’s greater efficiency is unmistakable – and, the less energy you use, the less money you’ll be paying.

There’s also the matter of what happens when you have to retire your old servers. In an on-premise arrangement, you’re the one finding an environmentally-correct way to recycle them. With the Cloud, it’s your provider’s responsibility –and he’ll be recycling fewer of them than his customers would be recycling had they gone with on-premise. That means fewer harmful materials into landfills.

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Survey: SMBs Crave VoIP Switch

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The SMB market for VoIP services is about to explode and service providers unprepared to meet that demand risk losing a hefty chunk of that key customer base, a new survey commissioned by Metaswitch Networks reports.

The 2011 version of a regular survey of U.S. SMBs conducted by market research firm Inzenka showed that 27 percent of the 700 companies surveyed are already using VoIP and another 50 percent are planning to deploy it in the next two years.

What’s more telling for service providers, however, is that three quarters of the companies that adopted VoIP did so with a new service provider, and over-the-top vendors of VoIP have the highest recognition factor among the SMBs surveyed.

When all the survey numbers are crunched, Metaswitch found that almost half (48 percent) of any given incumbent’s SMB customer base is at risk, states Marketing Director Chris Carabello.

“We are using this as a call-to-arms among our service provider customers,” Carabello says. “Businesses are aware that there are better answers out there and they are not waiting for the service provider to come knocking on the door.”

Of course, as a vendor of softswitches and other gear designed to enable service providers to offer IP services and make the transition to an all-IP world, Metaswitch has good reason to sound an alarm that will push incumbents faster in that direction.

But comparing this year’s data to a similar 2007 study shows major momentum behind VoIP adoption as SMBs face some of the pain points familiar to larger corporations and see a much higher number of their employees go mobile. Aging voice systems are expensive to maintain and ineffective in bridging mobile devices, such as smartphones or laptop soft clients, with existing fixed-line services.

“We used to think of mobile employees as top execs or road warriors, but now everyone is mobile,” Carabello says.

Sixty-two percent of those surveyed have employees who work at home and 70 percent have mobile workers, with 95 percent of that group using smartphones. That’s why features such as portal access and softphone features rank second and third in popularity in the survey, and are rising rapidly.

Other key findings include:

* VoIP interest increases with the number of business locations and number of employees.
* Lowering monthly expenses and easier system management were the top two purchase criteria.
* Almost 90 percent of SMBs are interested in fixed-mobile convergence and 70 percent are willing to pay for it.
* Two-thirds of SMBs surveyed want their VoIP gear deployed on-premises, even if they outsource management of it, because of their need for control.
* The one-third who opted for hosted services are much more interested in add-on offerings such as hosted storage and security.

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Look for New Shapes in the Clouds in 2011

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The tremendous growth of the cloud computing market, despite shortcomings in some areas, is a testament to the level of pent-up frustration that exists within organizations of all sizes across nearly every industry with legacy on-premise software and systems, and the tangible benefits today’s leading cloud vendors are quickly delivering to their early adopter customers.

As the year winds to an end, it is incumbent on all industry pundits to make predictions about what they envision for the coming year. Since I’m often lumped into this category, I’m obliged to offer my views about how the world will evolve over the next 12 months from a cloud computing perspective.

First, I’d like to quickly review the pivotal opportunities and challenges I identified in this space for 2010.

The Opportunities

Back in January, I identified six areas of growth:

* International Expansion
* Inter-Enterprise Applications
* Enterprise-Oriented Social Networks
* IT and Service Management
* Communications as a Service (CaaS)
* eHealth and Energy Management

I think we can agree that there has been substantial activity in all of these areas, with plenty of additional opportunities still to be realized in each.

The Challenges

However, much of this growth has come despite the fact that many cloud computing vendors are still grappling with how to cost-effectively address the following challenges, which I also outlined last January:

* Deliver strategic value, not just incremental cost-savings;
* Avoid competing on price alone and further commoditizing cloud services;
* Convince enterprises to move more core business applications and operations to the cloud;
* Fend off escalating security threats to prove the cloud is a safe place to put corporate data;
* Address growing integration complexities to show how the cloud can complement legacy, on-premise systems and software;
* Resolve potential channel conflicts as more resellers, integrators and other third-parties vie for a share of the market; and
* Improve management visibility and governance to provide greater user control and compliance.

The tremendous growth of the cloud computing market, despite shortcomings in some of the areas I identified, is a testament to the level of pent-up frustration that exists within organizations of all sizes across nearly every industry with legacy on-premise software and systems, and the tangible benefits today’s leading cloud vendors are quickly delivering to their early adopter customers.

So, what is in store for 2011?

The Road Ahead

Here are 10 trends you can expect in the coming year:

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!?!”
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. (The recent Cyber Monday sales success despite Comcast’s (Nasdaq: CMCSK) Internet service outage the night before is an example of the resilience of the cloud.)
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.
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. IBM (NYSE: IBM) is moving aggressively in this area.
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.
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.
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.
8. Social networking will become a required component of enterprise applications, driven by the success of Salesforce.com’s (NYSE: CRM) 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.
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. Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) recent offerings and D&B’s new 360 capabilities are examples of this important trend.
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 (Nasdaq: AMZN), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Salesforce.com — will continue to have the toughest time building successful channel programs because of their direct sales heritage.

The Bottom Line

Cloud computing is quickly becoming an essential part of the day-to-day business operations of organizations of all sizes, just as e-commerce has become a readily accepted part of our personal lives.

As a result, it will be a high priority for IT and business decision makers to establish tight-knit cloud strategies to respond to the opportunities and challenges in 2011.

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About – meshIP Cloud Computing Blog

meshIP, Cloud Computing in Dallas, TX

The meshIP blog is a curated compendium of news, opinion and information about cloud computing, virtualization, VoIP and hosted PBX technology for our clients, prospects and the cloud curious. It is managed by Brian Byrne, the founder and a Managing Partner of meshIP. We are a Dallas, TX firm offering cloud computing, hosted applications, virtualization, hosted PBX and specializing in company formation, business plan development, funding and growth strategies.

Brian is an accomplished executive with senior management experience in all facets of the technology, telecom, cloud computing, SaaS, CRM and social media industry. He has proven success in developing, financing and executing strategic plans as well as launching new ventures. His credentials include an MS from the School of Computer Science at DePaul University as well as an MBA in Marketing and Management Strategy from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Specialties:

His experience and expertise includes cloud computing, hosted PBX, virtualization, social media, business formation, venture funding, technology services go-to-market strategy development, SaaS, CRM, product development and launch, financial modeling, new market entry, sales, business development, and sales management.

To learn more about our approach to technology strategy, check out this video presentation where you will learn how the consumerization of technology has made it possible to run an entire organization from a simple internet connection.