Cloud Computing and Seismic Upgrades

SF Bay Bridge new eastern span (right) and original eastern span

In San Francisco, we’re very familiar with building renovations such as seismic upgrades. Here are just a few public building renovations that occurred recently:

• Asian Art Museum, renovation and move to former SF Public Library building, 2002-2003, $15 million
• War Memorial Opera House, earthquake repair and seismic strengthening, 1996-1997, $88.5 million
• Davies Symphony Hall, acoustic and seating renovations, 1992, $10 million

In some cases, a renovation just wasn’t enough to serve our current and future needs. San Francisco recently built:

• Main Library in 1993-1996 for $110 million
• AT&T Park in 1997-2000 for $357 million
• the M. H. De Young Museum in 2002-2005 for $202 million
• California Academy of Sciences in 2005-2008 for $500 million
• San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge western span retrofit and new eastern span construction, currently underway, will cost $6.3 billion and will be completed in 2013

In the new arena of cloud computing, traditional software vendors have no choice but to upgrade their on-premises offerings to support the new cloud-based delivery model. Without a strategy and the resources to bridge the gap between the old computing model and the new, even the largest software companies risk falling behind.

While it’s difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to retrofit a historic building to current seismic standards, or to build a new ball park, museum, or bridge, it may seem fairly easy, quick, and inexpensive to re-engineer on-premises software to software as a service. Not so, according to Don Fornes, CEO of Software Advice, who outlines some of the obstacles of bridging on-premises software to SaaS in this post, “The Software as a Service Dilemma.” Fornes writes that on-premises software companies must re-think and re-organize their business models and operations, in addition to nearly re-writing their code to support a web-based architecture.

One of the hallmarks of progress is creative destruction, when new and improved technologies or methodologies replace the old. Sometimes the transitions are painful, but they are usually beneficial. For example, how many of us would rather have paper-based systems than computerized systems; or how many would rather bring down the Internet and revert to the former methods of storing and communicating information?  How about leaving our cell phones behind for conventional phones, or carrying CDs rather than storing hundreds of them on an MP3 player?

In the future, installed software will have the same appeal as our old methods of storing and accessing information, while cloud-based systems shine as the best solutions for securely and efficiently accomplishing our business objectives.

While the large enterprise players are busy re-writing decades of code and re-aligning their businesses to support a web-based architecture, consider these cloud-based business solutions that were written as web-based applications from the start, and that are continually upgraded to incorporate the best practices and suggestions of their customers:

• Enterprise mashup dashboards such as mashmatrix Dashboard provide rapid, personalized development of dashboards from any web-facing data source; get a complete view of all the information you need 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 brand management solutions from Attensity360 aggregate, measure, and analyze news media and consumer opinion from print and social-media sources to yield insights that enable sales, marketing, PR, and executives to better understand their customers, competitors, influencer communities, industry trends and issues, the press, and the investment community.
• 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.

How will you use cloud-based systems to upgrade your ability to drive revenue growth and profitability, improve business performance, gain insights from social media, and solve IT concerns in the cloud?