13 Laws of Cloud Computing

As the final installment of my series of numerical posts this week, I offer on Friday, November 13, 13 laws of cloud computing.

If you suffer from triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) or paraskevidekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13^th), I assure you that 13 is a lucky number.

Sierpinski Triangle

This post is based on three sources (three is also a lucky number):

1. An excellent set of 10 laws of cloud computing, plus one bonus law, announced on 11/11 by Bessemer Venture Partners

2. A Deloitte poll of executives about cloud computing announced last week

3. My own observations

Bessemer packages its 10 laws in four ways: a press release, a post on Sandhill.com, on its website, and in a whitepaper available from the website. The press release provides a quick summary, the post on Sandhill.com provides a little detail, and the website content and whitepaper provide more depth and support for each law.

Here are the 10 laws and the bonus law from Bessemer’s press release:

1. Less is more – leverage the cloud everywhere you practically can.

2. Trust the six Cs of cloud computing–build a reliable CEO dashboard to monitor the business.

3. Study the sales learning curve and invest behind success.

4. Forget everything you learned about software channels – the Internet is your new channel and technology enabled service providers are among the few partners that actually care if you succeed.

5. Build employee software – employees are now powerful customers, not just their managers! We are witnessing the “consumerization of software” so focus on ease of use.

6. Savvy online marketing is a core competence – if you are a cloud business, your sales prospects are online by definition. Become an expert at online marketing to reach them!

7. The most important part of “software as a service” is service – support, support, support!

8. Leverage and monetize the data asset – the data hosted by a SaaS provider can become a valuable asset if harnessed appropriately.

9. Mind the GAAP! – Cloud accounting is all about matching revenue and costs to consumption.

10. Cloudonomics requires that you plan your fuel stops [financing] very carefully.

11. Bonus Law: While one or two of these laws may be violated, very few companies succeed if they ignore three or more.

Law 12, from the Deloitte poll press release, is that cloud computing will create new business models in the IT industry, including cloud-based consortiums that combine to present themselves as a larger market presence; and brokers and aggregators that offer “two-way” markets for cloud computing resources among enterprises.

Law 13, from me, is that, no matter how individual SaaS companies may interpret or apply the above laws, it will be difficult or impossible to survive alone.

As a bonus to the 13 laws of cloud computing, I offer for consideration nine SaaS companies that will quickly deliver return on investment (nine is also a lucky number, adjacent to 13 in the series of lucky numbers):

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of a customer or patient on one screen without having to switch between screens and applications.
• SaaS business intelligence (BI) applications from Birst and eiVia provide quick reporting and predictive analytics for decision-making.
• Enterprise relationship management solutions such as BranchIt help your business leverage relationships that colleagues may have with prospective customer or partner contacts.
• Price optimization applications from companies such as Mimiran help you avoid leaving money on the table in pricing your products or services.
• Enterprise cloud databases such as TrackVia help you quickly design and deploy cloud-based applications to solve business problems.
• Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Software provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Cloud-based single sign-on systems from companies such as TriCipher provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications.

The next Friday the 13^th is August 13, 2010. What types of cloud-based solutions will you be lucky to have by then?