Cloudup 11-4-2011
KPMG came out with a recent study on where cloud computing is heading, and what is compelling this change. Out of the 806 executive participants, 81% said that their organization has already moved at least one business activity to the cloud, and 10% said their organization is already running their “entire core IT services on the cloud.” Why are these companies moving to the cloud? 80% reported process improvement as their main reason; 79% of users stated technical benefits, and 76% said cloud computing has strategic benefits, such as “transforming their business models to gain a competitive advantage.”
Cloud computing has a lot to offer for various businesses, and might also be considered crucial for startups. Most importantly, cloud computing reduces your startup costs significantly, can get you going right away with out of the box mobility, and allows for pay as you go resources and customizable plans. Cloud computing can also offer faster time to value, which means the quicker a startup can begin to look towards profitability. Other benefits they list are easier collaboration and partnering, faster access to IT enhancements, fewer IT people, and improved security.
It looks like the Australian market is most adverse to cloud computing, and are “skeptical about the speed at which cloud computing [is] being adopted elsewhere across the globe.” However, despite their skepticism, Australian businesses are quite possibly the best-positioned market to adopt to the cloud, with 67% of their businesses already utilizing some form of cloud technology. From what it sounds like, their main, possibly only, issue with the cloud is security, which is something covered a lot in our blog and various other cloud computing blogs. The cloud is not any less secure than say, hosting your data on an in-house computer. Why so much hesitance? We’re not quite sure, but for their sake, we hope they catch on soon.
In case you missed it, Force.com held a Siteforce webinar earlier this week. It is now available for viewing. Check it out to learn more about how to create and run a web site on Siteforce!
Major companies such as Salesforce, Oracle, and IBM are integrating their CRM with the social cloud. According to SugarCRM’s CTO, CRM is yet to become established. He states, “I can guarantee it will take off massively in the next few years… We have a whole new generation of social collaboration users- who we call the Facebook generation- that expect these tools to be in front of them.”
I agree with this article’s argument that businesses need to turn social, especially at the brink of the “Facebook generation” coming into the workforce; however, I do not agree when it states that Salesforce is “1st generation SaaS” and that SugarCRM and Oracle are “2nd generation, 100% open” SaaS. Marc Benioff’s whole keynote at Dreamforce was dedicated to the social cloud, (remember, “We were born cloud, and we’ve been reborn social” comment that had people tweeting #DF11 away?). Especially with the ease and effectiveness of Chatter, Salesforce seems to have the social cloud concept figured out pretty well. What do you think?
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