Les Paul, Cloud Computing, and IT Innovation in the Great Recession

Les Paul and one of his innovations, the Gibson Les Paul guitar

Video: Les Paul performs "Over the Rainbow"

As a guitarist, I was especially saddened by the recent death of Les Paul, one of the greatest innovators in music. Les Paul invented the solid-body electric guitar, which sustains sound longer than hollow-body guitars; multi-track recording, which allows individual parts of a composition to be recorded separately and then mixed together to produce the final recording; and delay effects, which many musicians use to enhance their sound.  The Gibson Les Paul guitar is an iconic instrument that is played in countless recordings and concerts, and one of the best-selling guitars of all time. A Gibson Les Paul was my first excellent electric guitar. Les Paul’s inspiration and influence will live on through guitarists, electronic music, recording technology, and through everyone who listens to and enjoys recorded and live music today.

Just as the loss of an innovator does not stop his influence, the stagnating economy does not stop innovation. This is shown in the just-published InformationWeek 500 report, InformationWeek’s annual ranking of the nation’s business technology leaders.

This year, more than any year since 1983, IT needed to innovate with fewer resources. The top priorities of InformationWeek 500 companies to innovate with technology include making business processes more efficient (60 percent); lowering IT or business costs (47 percent); and getting better business intelligence to more employees, more quickly (37 percent). Other innovation initiatives noted in the report include improving customer service and experience, and creating a new business model or revenue stream. Web technologies that will help InformationWeek 500 companies meet their goals for innovation include software as a service (SaaS, 61 percent); and mashups (42 percent).

This is good news for cloud computing, because cloud-computing solutions help companies deliver on initiatives such as making business processes more efficient, lowering IT or business costs, getting better business intelligence to more employees, more quickly, and creating new revenue streams. It’s especially good news because InformationWeek’s top 500 IT innovators recognize the value of cloud computing and are planning to implement cloud computing technologies such as SaaS and mashups to achieve their goals. Even better, the InformationWeek 500 report only profiles companies with more than $250 million in annual revenue, which validates enterprise adoption of cloud-computing solutions.

Independent software vendors that can help the InformationWeek 500 innovations succeed include mashmatrix, a provider of enterprise mashup software; Birst, a SaaS business intelligence solution; and BranchIt, SaaS business software for enterprise relationship management, which helps companies uncover relationships that can lead to new revenue streams and improved interaction with customers, suppliers, and other business partners.

Cloud computing itself is an innovation that is developing at the right time to help innovative companies succeed with increased efficiency, lower costs, better business intelligence, improved customer service and new revenue streams. It is an innovation that will change information technology forever, just as Les Paul did with musical technology.

What are some examples of IT innovation at your organization?