“A whole new computing paradigm” Marc Benihoff
“Cloud – the biggest innovation since the Internet” Mark Taylor, Microsoft
My invitation to the Business Cloud 9 summit was timely. We had been discussing the concepts of using the Cloud to deploy our CRM systems globally, merging 13 databases into one and parking the lot somewhere above California. There had also been a number of articles in the UK press reporting organisations embracing Google Apps over MS Exchange and a visit from A Salesforce.com salesman extolling the benefits of the Force.Com platform.
I was suffering from too many ideas and not enough fact.
Business Cloud 9 was organised by Sift Media who promised the “foremost cloud computing thought leaders, both from the vendor world and the end user community”. They certainly had the vendor space well covered with Netsuite and Salesforce taking platinum sponsor roles and a healthy dose of Microsoft, Oracle, Goggle, et al to add further weight to the event.
Marc Benioff was due to speak, but was replaced by a video interview where he spoke of Cloud being a “Whole new computing paradigm” with the ability to build “any kind of system”. Marc was positive we had seen the end of computing as we know it and the death of mainframe applications. “We are going to build for the future”.
Rebecca Wettemann was next, in real life. Rebecca’s a VP at Nucleus Research and was present to talk about the economics of developing in the Cloud. Her research was overwhelming pro Cloud. So much so I found myself wondering at times if she was a shareholder in a Cloud provider. That said, she made points worthy of note.
- More than 50% or organisations are doing “some” computing in the cloud.
- 32% are using on demand applications to manage customer data
- Application development on the Force.net platform is 4.9 times faster than Java or .Net
Rebecca’s research indicated that Cloud development would realistically show return in less than 6 months, and suggested we needed to have a serious look at what we were doing if it took any longer. As well as an ROI analogy involving her dog Fred (cute fella) she offered tools to calculate and compare ROI (not so cute – but worth checking out).
It was at this point that the day began to lose its appeal to me. The overriding questions from the audience and panels were on integration and security. They were my key questions to, yet nobody discussed them in any detail. It was frustrating to listen to so many people working and developing in the Cloud skirting around what were clearly the key issues for so many of the people there. Instead everyone focused on trying to explain “what is the cloud” which I would have imagined was a given.
Adam Afriyie – Shadow Minister for Science and Innovation joined the panel and we were subjected to a series of digs, raised eyebrows and plain criticisms directed at our current government by Stuart Lauchlan the host of Business Cloud 9. To be fair Adam was informed and objective in his comments. I tried to track him down in the break to ask him about David’s (Cameron) solar panels but he was nowhere to be seen.
This was however, the best of the panels and included Paul Cheesbrough CIO, Telegraph media group. Paul had recently taken the group to Google App’s and described the role of a new type of CIO ready to focus on business engagement and consultation rather than technology.
Martin Bellamy, Director, Office of the Government Chief Information Officer gave a presentation on the current Governments plans for a G-Cloud under the “Digital Britain” initiative. The Government are looking to realise a £3 billion reduction in computing costs under this scheme. If his report of just 10% utilisation in servers in Government departs is accurate than I would question why only 20%. However, I believe the green drivers are sound, and would applaud the Governments strategy to be at the vanguard of the green movement.
Steve Hughes from Colt made some good points on our developing vocabulary. “As a marketing term Cloud confuses the hell out of people. The consumer metaphor for cloud (gmail, facebook, etc) is misleading. ‘Cloud’ is an infrastructure.” Steve predicted the term Cloud would go the same way as ‘eBusiness’ or ‘eCommerce’.
NetSuite’s Zach Nelson finished off proceedings with some interesting comments. He spoke of “insane cost savings” and potential customers just not believing the numbers. He talked of the advantages of the NetSuite approach and cited the last vat change in the UK as a great example of cloud at its best. Netsuite customers came to work on the day of the change to find that vat had changed from 17.5% to 15% overnight. Users of some on premise products were still waiting weeks later for vendors to patch their applications.
He spoke of business and consumer services coming together as the essence of the cloud and was a clear advocate of the power of Twitter. Going so far as to exclusively announce it would be embedded in Netsuite. Clearly twitter is gaining some major attention – during the last few months I have read Microsoft and Saleforce.com proposals to integrate it into their products and listened to David Allan extolling it’s virtues on a GTD podcast this morning.
Mr Nelson’s predictions for 2010? An acceleration in companies moving from SAP to Netsuite!
Summary
Most of the talk during the day focused on simplicity, availability, ease of use and felt like an advert for Cloud. There was little said about porting legacy systems to the cloud environment with focus on the new wave of cloud application providers instead. There was much said about doing innovate creative things. Martin Woodson, Salesforce.com said “People like web browsers – they use them more than their TV’s”. I like that idea, and the thought that designing applications becomes more about the business creating solutions to do things better rather than shoehorning processes into clunky enterprise applications.
Security, Integration, Regulatory Compliance and Consulting all appear to be major considerations in the new order of the Cloud.
I am comfortable that the security and integration issues either have or will be resolved. From my position looking at a global company, planning growth and the applications to support it, Cloud would appear to have much to offer. In fact it may well be too good to ignore. Where I do have concerns is where do you go if your relationship with Netsuite or Salesforce turns sour? There just isn’t a viable alternative to these companies at the moment – other than a lengthy trip back to on-premise solutions.
I am sure this will change in time. It’s not a showstopper, but anyone willing to put all their eggs in this basket really needs to consider their escape plan.