2015 Feb 9

The Technology of True Cloud

Continuing our series on cloud services, especially our most recent one, "How to Do True Cloud", we now turn to the technology that enables true cloud services. This article will go more in depth than the previous ones; after all, we are discussing technology services. However, it will not go so deep as to lose the business-side executives. Indeed, any great executive in technology needs to hold to two principles simultaneously:

2015 Feb 4

How to do True Cloud

Now that we understand what the cloud is, the types of cloud services, the difference between true cloud and hosting, why true cloud matters greatly, and how it makes you nimble, the inevitable question is, how do we get there? Or, to use our question from our last article, how do we get to say, "YES", to the customer who offers us $500,000 - or $5MM - if we are ready to run tomorrow?

2015 Feb 3

The Cloud and Being Nimble

In our most recent article, we explored why "true cloud" really matters: it has a significant impact on: Your gross margins Your speed As a company providing technology services, as opposed to products like software, you cannot get cloud-scale gross margins and speed - and therefore valuations - unless you are operating as a true cloud. Today, we will look at a different set of advantages to running your service as a true cloud: how nimble you can be.

2015 Feb 2

Why True Cloud Matters

In our previous articles, we discussed what cloud is, the types of cloud services, and the difference between true cloud and "market cloud", or hosting. The big question is, so what? You are a software provider offering a cloud solution. Does it really matter if it is "true cloud", or just hosted? Isn't it just a difference in architectural design, a matter for your engineers but not your customers or your bottom line?

2015 Jan 30

True Cloud vs Hosting

Having looked at the definition (and misapplication) of cloud, its key characteristics, and the various categories of cloud services, or fill-in-the-blank-as-a-service (*aaS), we now turn our attention to the important difference between true cloud services and hosting services that are marketed as cloud. This is crucially important to vendors and customers! While it may seem, at first glance, as nitpicking, these are very important differences. They will impact a vendor's short-term and long-term profitability, viability and responsiveness, and a customer's ability to rely on a vendor.

2015 Jan 29

Types of Cloud Services

In the previous article, we discussed what the (terribly overhyped) word "cloud" means. Before we start to delve into the difference between "true cloud" and "we just call it cloud", let's look at the different major categories of "cloud" services available. As we discussed previously, cloud services replace: Expertise with consumption Capex with opex Fixed costs with metered prices Unsurprisingly, you can use that model with any technology you consume.

2015 Jan 28

What is the Cloud?

Cloud seems to be the biggest buzzword in the last few years. Every technology provider, every services provider, if they aren't natively "in the cloud", they are providing a version of their offering "in the cloud." Although the term "cloud" seems pretty clear to marketers - personally, I am convinced many believe it means, "we can charge more for this if we slap the word 'Cloud' on it" - the majority of people with whom I speak, from engineers and support staff through executives, CEOs and especially customers, do not have a real understanding of what the cloud is, and why it matters.

2015 Jan 27

Mind the Gap

What does "mind the gap" - familiar to anyone who has ridden the London Underground, a.k.a. "the Tube", have to do with coffee and power? It turns out, quite a bit. Starbucks' largest metropolitan deployment outside the US - and the largest in Europe by far - is in London, with ~250 stores. Starbucks has become a very familiar English site, indeed. On the technology front, Starbucks has always been an early adopter and even a driver of new technologies:

2015 Jan 26

Deleting Email Is a Chimera

In response to the Sony hack, in which not only valuable intellectual property, such as movies, was stolen, but also (previously) confidential emails, a number of experts have recommended increasing the usage of email retention policies. They go something like this: Email is confidential People put things in corporate email that they do not want seen outside the company Companies get hacked Therefore, we should limit the damage by forcibly deleting all emails older than some time period, say, 30 days The Wall Street Journal also had an article discussing the debate about email retention policies.

2015 Jan 23

The Purpose of a Business is to Create and Keep a Customer

"The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer." - Peter Drucker No matter how many times we say it, we forget it. We get caught up in operations, or competition, or marketshare, or share price. Yet a business, like a life, has a purpose: to create and keep a customer. I might add, "to keep that customer profitably satisfied." Earlier this month, a very well known Apple developer, one of the "