Love Festivals and Cloud Partnerships

Last weekend I attended the San Francisco LovEvolution dance-music parade and festival. It was a day rave packed with people in costumes celebrating love and dancing to electronic music. It was held at San Francisco’s Civic Center, surrounded by neoclassical Beaux-Arts civic buildings such as San Francisco City Hall.

The juxtaposition of neoclassical architecture, electronic music, and so many people in costumes made me think about festivals throughout history and in various cultures. If this were an Ancient Greek festival, it definitely would have been dedicated to Eros, god of love, or his mother, Aphrodite, goddess of love!

I also thought of Woodstock; the original, most famous and most influential American festival celebrating music, peace and love, held 40 years ago in 1969. The electronic music played at LovEvolution, which focused on synthesized percussive sounds and rhythm, was quite different from the music played at Woodstock: various types of popular music sung and played mostly on guitars, drums, and keyboards, with approximately equal emphasis on rhythm, harmony, and melody. While the music of LovEvolution and Woodstock was different, the mood of mostly young people celebrating music, dance and love was probably similar.

Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) Datapoint 3300 terminal, introduced in 1969

Just as music has changed, computing has certainly changed since 1969; but cloud computing, today’s new model for computing, is also somewhat similar to computing back in 1969: the data are processed and stored on servers, while local machines are used mostly for application access, input and display. Users can access the servers and run the applications from any terminal that the servers support, with minimal software installation and upgrades.

Industry trade shows and partnerships are festivals and celebrations in their own right. This year, there were so many trade shows and conferences dedicated to cloud computing, and so many new cloud-computing products, partnerships, articles, reports, and surveys, that we could probably call 2009 the “Year of Love” of cloud computing!

One such partnership announced yesterday is between Salesforce.com, one of the first and most successful SaaS companies, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, and Cisco Systems, whose networking products enable data routing over the Internet, and which is celebrating its 25^thanniversary. The two companies are integrating and reselling their respective products for cloud-based customer service and unified communications.

In another partnership between newer cloud-computing companies focusing on the hot area of SaaS business intelligence, Pervasive Software (NASDAQ: PVSW) and Aha! Software today announced the beta users program for Strato-Studio. Strato-Studio is an innovative, cloud-based high-performance analytics services platform available on Amazon EC2. Strato-Studio provides Monte Carlo simulation as the first of a series of next-generation, high-performance analytics services.

A cloud-computing conference occurring this week is the CloudFutures Cloud Computing for Software Vendors Conference 2009. It will soon be followed by the Cloud Futures Software Vendors SaaS Migration Conference in December. Both events are dedicated to helping traditional on-premises software vendors move to SaaS and keep up with the changes occurring in computing today.

The next festival I look forward to is the one we should have to celebrate the economic recovery, when it happens. Cloud computing will help fuel the recovery, because it will be part of the 21-percent jump in worldwide IT spending to $1.7 trillion by 2013, forecasted by research firm IDC.

Authentication, Integration, Interoperability

The more that things change, the more they stay the same. I think that expression applies to some aspects of the transition from on-premises to cloud-computing solutions. Regardless of the way IT services are delivered, they always require authentication, integration and interoperability (and security, privacy, and compliance). They are the main legitimate concerns with any enterprise computing system, and they are being re-voiced as enterprises consider and implement cloud-based systems.

While concerns persist, there are already considerable solutions in place or in development for cloud-based authentication, integration, and interoperability. For example, TriCipher’s myOneLogin service supports secure single sign-on to more than 1,500 web applications. Pervasive Software (NASDAQ: PVSW), already a leader in on-demand and on-premises integration, today announced Universal CONNECT!, a comprehensive connectivity program to connect “virtually anything” (SaaS and cloud applications, databases, structured and unstructured data files, legacy data, infrastructure, web services , EDI, B2B, CRM, ERP, accounting applications, etc.). Last week, a consortium of leading technology companies announced the creation of the Open Mashup Alliance, an organization dedicated to the successful use of enterprise mashup technologies and adoption of an open language that promotes enterprise mashup interoperability and portability. Dion Hinchcliffe wrote a detailed post about the new Open Mashup Alliance here.

While cloud computing is new, supply and demand still applies. As enterprises increasingly demand on-demand solutions for authentication, integration, and interoperability, on-demand vendors will supply enterprise demands. The more that things change, the more they stay the same.

What are your concerns or solutions for authentication, integration, and interoperability of on-demand and on-premises systems?

SaaS is Shaping Up

While 2009 has been an overall difficult year, software as a service (SaaS) is one industry that I think is developing very well, especially from my perspective as a promoter and firm believer in the benefits of SaaS and all components of cloud computing.

One example of the positive developments in SaaS this year is a recent blog post, “Four Factors Changing the SaaS Landscape,” by InformationWeek Editor Chris Murphy. The post is based on insights from a “future of software” panel of IT experts at the InformationWeek 500 conference.

From Chris Murphy’s post, the four factors changing the SaaS landscape are:

1. Board of directors support: even the board is on board with SaaS, according to panel experts working in enterprise IT. That’s a rather important consideration when presenting IT projects to the board for funding.
2. New product categories: SaaS vendors can quickly develop niche products that are not on the product roadmaps of large on-premises vendors.
3. Attitudes about “on premises” are changing to a point where on-premises systems will be considered legacy systems, like mainframes are today.
4. The recession helped SaaS because of lower initial capital requirements, quick implementation, and often less training.

One of the concerns expressed about point two above was integration of the various niche SaaS products and legacy systems; however, there are several integration companies, such as Pervasive Software, which provides standards-based bidirectional interfaces between any application, data source or technology.

Examples of niche SaaS products delivering business value include Mimiran, which focuses on pricing optimization, an important consideration for sales; and BranchIt, which provides a solution for enterprise relationship management: helping sales and other departments to leverage the business relationships within their companies.

In another post, “SaaS for Your Business in the Cloud,” Phil Wainewright documents the positive mood of sales professionals who moved from on-premises to SaaS companies.

Technology continually changes and improves; with SaaS, we’re now experiencing another example of change and improvement in software delivery, cost optimization, and business value.

Are the above points similar to the views about SaaS at your organization?

The Death and Resurrection of Business Intelligence

We’re seeing the death and resurrection of many big entities these days: the global economy, banks, financial service, insurance, and automotive companies. Now, we can even add business intelligence (BI) to the list.

Business Intelligence is definitely “in play.” It topped the wish list of 2,500 CIOs surveyed by IBM this year, was high on the priority list of InformationWeek 500 companies with more than $250 million in revenue, and large vendors such as IBM are introducing new products for midsize companies, the fastest growing segment of the BI market.

With all of this focus on BI, it appears that BI is alive and well. Not so, according to Dan Woods’ article, “The Death of Business Intelligence,” published on Forbes.com. In the article, Woods points out that there are technologies available that can provide multi-touch-screen access to real-time reports about virtually any question. He cites CNN coverage of the presidential election as an example.  Gone are the days of deciding in advance which questions need to be answered, and then waiting to receive the reports. Real-time operational intelligence will eventually replace business intelligence, according to Woods.

InformationWeek also recently published a cover-story article by Doug Henschen about next-generation BI, and the four technologies that are re-shaping it: predictive analytics, real-time performance monitoring, in-memory BI for faster analysis, and software as a service.

Between the extremes of traditional, costly, and time-consuming on-premises business intelligence systems, and the BI utopia that Dan Woods wrote about, software-as-a-service (SaaS) BI provides a current, practical solution to making business intelligence available to more users, quickly and cost effectively. Furthermore, enterprise mashup dashboards provide a way to visualize data from any web-facing source within minutes. SaaS BI and enterprise mashup dashboards provide affordable, current alternatives to real-time operational intelligence and multi-touch-screen interfaces that only large enterprises can currently afford.

To learn more about the “death” of on-premises BI, its “resurrection” in the cloud, and some points to consider while evaluating and implementing SaaS BI solutions, see William Laurent’s article, “Business Intelligence in the Cloud,” published on Dashboard Insight.

Does your organization plan to implement any of the new BI technologies such as SaaS BI, predictive analytics, real-time performance monitoring, or in-memory BI?

Enterprise IT Trends in 2010

On New Year’s Day 2009 I proposed a toast to endurance in 2009 and better times in 2010. Unfortunately, 2009 did not really stand a chance of being considered an overall good year from day one, largely due to the recession that many think could have been prevented with better business insight and decision-making. The recession and the resulting business goals of improving decision-making, efficiency, and cost optimization are among the reasons that business intelligence and analytics, enterprise mashups, and cloud computing ranked highly in this year’s enterprise IT surveys such as the 2009 IBM Global CIO Study and the InformationWeek 500 report.

Now that autumn 2009 has begun and Q4 2009 begins next week, it’s time to predict and look forward to 2010. Burton Group, an IT research and advisory firm, did just that and today released its projection of five enterprise IT trends for 2010:

• Externalization, Consumerization and Globalization – Increasing use of external IT providers; more individual choices for devices and applications; increasing use of social networks
• Cloud Computing – Increasing use of cloud computing for competitive advantage, and maturity of cloud-computing solutions due to enterprise demand
• Data Center Transformation – Increasing use of virtualization and hybrids of internal and external IT providers to deliver business services
• Social Computing – Empowering worker interactions through social networking to create business value
• Wireless Everything – Increasing use of wireless networking and employee-owned wireless devices

According to Chris Howard, Burton Group executive analyst, “IT professionals find themselves at a critical junction in the decade beginning in 2010. Choosing one path, they have the opportunity to become proactive strategic partners within their businesses. Choosing another, they persist as a reactive organization that is gradually being eroded by the availability of commodity IT.” Howard also said, “If this plays out as Burton Group anticipates, enterprise IT will regain its proper place as a part of the business—not a separate entity that must somehow be aligned. True integration—beyond alignment—is achieved when the artificial distinction between ‘the business and ‘IT’ is eliminated altogether.”

Here are my five predictions for enterprise IT trends in 2010:

• Cloud computing will top the list of delivery preferences for IT business services, due to flexibility, rapid time to market, and optimal cost.
• Business intelligence (BI) and analytics will continue to be high-priority strategic initiatives for improved decision-making and business performance.
• Use of mashups to combine and visualize data from multiple web-facing sources will increase.
• Use of SaaS solutions for sales-enablement purposes such as pricie optimization and enterprise relationship management will increase.
• Concerns about integration, compliance, security, and privacy of cloud-computing solutions will be addressed and will decrease.

What are your five predictions for enterprise IT trends in 2010?

Life is a Mashup; So Are Enterprise Applications

Last weekend I attended a Samurai exhibition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; the Autumn Moon Festival in San Francisco’s Chinatown; and I watched a film about painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. Although I did not watch sports, I saw and heard many sports fans cheering their teams on televisions in packed bars. Add the Internet, newspapers, magazines, books, music, people, relationships, family, work, and daily events to the mix, and I think it’s clear that life is a mashup, because we are continually exposed to so much diverse information virtually everywhere.

Enterprise mashups, also called composite applications, are beginning to extend what has already been happening throughout history: we continually have more access to more information from more sources more quickly. Rather than displaying information from one application, mashups combine and display information from several applications to facilitate business intelligence, performance and decision-making.

Several reports and articles confirm enterprise adoption and implementation of mashups. Last month, research firm Business Insights published a report, “The Future of Enterprise Mashups: Demand, Challenges and Vendor Opportunities.” The report forecasts the enterprise mashup market to grow from $161 million in 2008 to $1.74 billion by 2013. Nearly one-third of organizations surveyed already use enterprise mashups. I learned of the report from a search engine company, Reportlinker, which provides access to more than 1 million reports from more than 200,000 organizations. Reportlinker provides yet another example of easy access to information.

In the InformationWeek 500 report, published last week, 42 percent of surveyed enterprises with more than $250 million in revenue reported that their organizations are implementing mashups. In this interview with Government Technology, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra expressed interest in creating mashups of government data.

The future looks good for enterprise mashup companies such asmashmatrix, which enables rapid creation of mashups from any web-facing data source.

Mashups will help enterprises make better business decisions more quickly, and I think the proliferation of information should continue helping us as we participate in the great mashup of life.

How is your organization using, or planning to use, mashups?

Government in the Cloud

Some may think that government “has its head in the clouds.”

Actually, it does, according to President Obama and his federal CIO, Vivek Kundra. Regardless of political opinions or persuasions, it’s true that the U.S. government is one of the foremost early adopters and advocates of cloud computing.

USAspending.gov

A case in point is the federal government’s IT Dashboard, launched on June 30 and part of the USAspending.gov portal.  The IT Dashboard provides visibility into the IT funding and projects of 28 federal agencies.

President Bush signs transparency act while co-author Obama observes.

Then-Senator Obama, in 2006, actually introduced the bill for transparency of the federal budget (the Obama-Coburn 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act). USASpending.gov and the IT Dashboard are products of that bill.

Apps.gov

On September 15, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra and the General Services Administration released Apps.Gov, a storefront for quick procurement of government-approved cloud-computing solutions. In this interview with InformationWeek, General Services Administration CIO Casey Coleman discusses more ways the GSA is paving the way to cloud computing for government.

Data.gov

Earlier this year, on May 15, the federal government launched Data.gov, a site that offers complete federal datasets to the public. On May 9, the National Institute of Standards and Technology published its working definition of cloud computing.

In this interview with Government Technology, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra discusses the IT Dashboard, Data.gov, and future plans of using dashboards for state and local government, and “every aspect of government operations, not just technology projects, but also health care, energy and education. Once that data is made available to the public, you can do interesting mashups, create applications and innovate in spaces where innovation is needed at a time when the only way we can lead is through innovation in a global economy.”

It will be interesting to see the U.S. government’s cloud-computing initiatives unfold over the coming years.

Washington: “What is cloud computing, and is it revolutionary?”

Jefferson: “The NIST published a working definition here.”

Roosevelt: “I am concerned about security, privacy, and compliance.”

Lincoln: “Those concerns will be resolved peacefully.”

What do you see happening in government adoption and promotion of cloud computing over the next several years?