Are you wondering who is gaining mind share in the 3rd quarter of 2011?  Well wonder no more. Lets take a look at the Top Cloud Enablers Gaining Mind Share, and The Leaderboard (Up and Coming Cloud Innovators, Movers and Shakers). As you know, Cloud computing has gone mainstream, and large enterprise information technology companies must continue their rapid restructuring to an on-demand model enhancing their portfolios largely through acquisitions. So lets see how they’re doing.

Here are the most recent changes this quarter, and a quick look at the 2011 acquisitions (2010 activity can be found here).

2011 Acquisitions:

• ARM Holdings buys Obsidian (RAVEN)
• Black Duck Software acquires Olliance (Open Source Strategy Consulting)
• BMC acquires Aeroprise (Mobile)
• CA acquires Torokina Networks (Service Assurance Management)
• CA Technologies buys ITKO (Application Development)
• CA Technologies buys Watchmouse (SaaS Monitoring)
• CenturyLink acquires Savvis (Managed Hosting Services)
• Cisco picks up Pari Networks (Network / Change Management)
• Cisco acquires Versly (Collaboration)
• Cisco acquires newScale (Data Center Services)
• Citrix closes Netviewer acquisition (Software-as-a-Service -SaaS)
• Citrix acquires Cloud.com (CloudStack)
• CoreLogic acquires Dorado (Transaction Management – PaaS)
• CSC acquires AppLabs (Software Testing)
• CSC acquires Maricom (BI and DM)
• Dell to acquire InSite One (Healthcare/ Medical Storage, DR)
• Dell SecureWorks acquisition (Security)
• Dell acquires Force10 (Networking)
• Google acquires SayNow (Social Voice Platform)
• Google acquires Zagat (Content / Reviews)
• Google buys Motorola Mobility (Mobile)
• HP Buys Vertica (Real-Time Analytics)
• HP acquires Autonomy (Information Management Software)
• Infor Launches Bid For Lawson (Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP)
• Intel to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems (Ethernet Switch)
• Intel to acquire Infineon’s Wireless Unit (Mobile)
• Microsoft acquires Skype (Communications)
• NetApp acquires Akorri (Infrastructure Optimization)
• NTT’s Dimension Data buys OpSource (Cloud Managed Services)
• Qualcomm acquires Atheros (Chips – Smartphones, Tablets)
• Rackspace acquires Anso Labs (OpenStack)
• Salesforce buys Heroku (Ruby Development platform)
• Salesforce buys Radian6 (Real-time monitoring)
• Salesforce buys DimDim (Communications platform)
• Salesforce acquires Navajo Systems (Security)
• Salesforce buys Assistly (Real-time customer service)
• Skype acquires Qik (Mobile video – Android, iOS, BlackBerry)
• Sourcefire acquires Immunet (Cloud based anti-malware)
• Teradata buys Aster Data (Data analytics)
• Time Warner Cable buys Navisite (Cloud Managed Services)
• Verizon acquires Terremark (Managed Hosting Services)
• Verizon acquires CloudSwitch (Cloud Software)
• VMware acquires Socialcast (Enterprise blogging)
• VMware acquires PacketMotion (Security)

With that M&A activity as background, here are the rankings for the Top Cloud Enablers Gaining Mind Share in 3Q 2011. As customary, the list below is a subjective impression of Cloud Service Providers (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), and Cloud Technology enablers on my cloud computing radar.

1.  Amazon Web Services(AWS),
   1. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),
   2. Simple Storage Service (S3),
   3. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC),
   4. Elastic Beanstalk,
   5. Elastic Block Store (EBS),
   6. CloudFront,
   7. Cloud Formation,
   8. CloudWatch
2.  Google Apps (Web based business applications suite)
3.  Salesforce.com* [Salesforce blog post], Navajo Systems
   1. Sales Cloud 2 (CRM),
   2. Service Cloud 2 (Support),
   3. Force.com (Development Platform),
   4. Chatter (Collaboration),
   5. Heroku,
   6. Database.com,
   7. Jigsaw,
   8. RemedyForce,
   9. AppExchange
4.  VMWare(Virtualization management)
   1. vCloud Director,
   2. vCenter,
   3. vSphere
   4. Hyperic (Open Source Networking Software)
5.  Citrix – XenServer (Virtualization), VMLogix, Cloud.com
6.  Dell – Boomi (AtomSphere – Cloud Integration)* [Dell blog post]
7.  IBM Smart Business, Cloudburst
8.  Microsoft Azure, Hyper-V* [Microsoft blog post]
9. HP - 3PAR, Vertica (Data Analytics)
10. CA Technologies – 3Tera AppLogic, Nimsoft,* [Nimsoft review]
11. EMC
12. Intel* [Intel blog posts]
13. Equinix (Data Center Platform)
14. Cisco,  newScale (Data center services)
15. Verizon – Terremark * [Verizon blog post], CloudSwitch
16. Apple – iCloud
17. AT&T Synaptic
18. BMC
19. CSC Cloud
20. ARM Holdings
21. Rackspace – Cloud Builders / OpenStack, CloudKick
22. NTT‘s Dimension Data / OpSource (Enterprise Cloud and managed hosting services)
23. Fujitsu – Manufacturing “Engineering Cloud”
24. Abiquo (Enterprise Cloud management)
25. Time Warner Cable -Navisite (Managed Cloud hosting services)
26. Eucalyptus (Open source private cloud software)
27. Rightscale (Cloud management platform)
28. Joyent (Cloud software for service providers)
29. GoGrid (Cloud infrastructure solutions – IaaS)
30. NetSuite (Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP and financials suite)
31. SugarCRM (Customer Relationship Management)
32. Zuora (Cloud based subscription billing and payment solutions)
33. CohesiveFT (Cloud container virtualization solutions)
34. Red Hat (Enterprise virtualization / Linux)
35. rPath (On demand IT systems automation)
36. SoftLayer (On demand data center and hosting services)
37. Enomaly – Elastic Compute Platform (ECP) (Cloud service provider platform)
38. AppZero (Virtual application appliances)
39. HubSpan (Business Process Integration)
40. BitNami (Cloud Hosting Service)* [BitNami review]
41. Kaavo (Infrastructure and middleware on demand)
42. Adaptive (Data Center automation)
43. F5 Networks (Cloud Infrastructure and Storage)
44. Radware (Integrated application delivery solutions)
45. OpenNebula (Open source cloud computing toolkit, infrastructure as a service)
46. Appistry (CloudIQ storage management platform)
47. Appirio – Cloud Connectors (Cloud solution provider)
48. Jive Software (Social CRM)
49. LongJump (Platform as a Service provider)
50. Juniper Networks (Cloud-ready Data Center Infrastructure)
51. RightNow (Cloud based Social, Web, and Contact Center Platform)
52. Nimbula (Enterprise Cloud operating system)
53. Symplified (Security – Unified access management for SaaS)
54. CenturyLink / Savvis (Cloud infrastructure as a service)
55. Gigaspaces (Enterprise PaaS and ISV SaaS enablement)
56. Delphix (Database Virtualization)
57. Scalr (Dynamic server provisioning)
58. Puppet Labs (Open Source Data Center Automation)
59. OpsCode Chef (Data Center Automation)
60. Box.net (Content Management)
61. Rollbase (Cloud platforms for business applications)
62. Amplidata (Optimized Object Storage)* [Amplidata review]
63. Intalio (Private Cloud computing solutions)
64. Parallels (Virtualization and automation software)
65. Nasuni (Cloud storage)
66. mindSHIFT (Cloud Service Provider for SMB)
67. Egnyte (Hybrid Cloud storage)
68. CloudShare (IT as a Service)
69. JumpBox (Open source virtual appliance)
70. Crosscheck Networks (Service Oriented Architecture – SOA web services)
71. Caspio (Online database platform)
72. Netuitive (Predictive analytics platform)* [Netuitive blog post]
73. Cordys (Cloud MashApp platform)
74. VirtuStream (Enterprise Cloud Solutions)
75. Zendesk (Web based Helpdesk software)
76. Hosting.com (Cloud  hosting and recovery services)
77. RainStor (Big Data Solutions)
78. MyERP (Business Applications)
79. Cloudant (Integrated database, analytics, and search)
80. Couchbase (NoSQL database)
81. Practice Fusion (Electronic Health / Medical Records)* [PracticeFusion blog post]
82. Zoho (Business, Productivity, and Collaboration Applications)
83. enStratus (Cloud governance)
84. Engine Yard (Ruby application development platform)
85. Cloudera (Open source data analysis)
86. SOASTA (Cloud testing)
87. Akamai  Cloud (Cloud Performance Optimization)
88. Mezeo (Cloud storage)
89. Intacct (Cloud based Financial and Accounting software)
90. Pano Logic (Virtual Desktops)
91. Okta (On demand identity and access management)
92. Astadia (Marketing automation, sales enablement)
93. Nirvanix (Enterprise Cloud Storage, Storage Delivery Network)
94. GoodData (Sales and marketing collaborative analytics)
95. AtTask (Project Management)
96. Ncomputing (Desktop virtualization)
97. Noliosoft (Application release automation)
98. Calxeda (formerly Smooth-Stone)
99. Riverbed, Zeus Technology (Elastic Application Delivery)
100. ReliaCloud (Cloud servers and storage)
101. RingCentral (Cloud based Phone System)
102. LayeredTech (Cloud hosting and managed services)
103. CGI (Cloud Services)
104. Flexiant (Utility computing on demand)
105. DotCloud (Build and Deploy Cloud Applications)
106. Twilio (Cloud communications – web services)
107. Workbooks (Web-based CRM and Business Applications for SMB)

The Leaderboard: Up and Coming Cloud Innovators, Movers & Shakers:

1.  10Gen (Open source document database)
2.  37Signals (Collaboration, project and contact management)
3.  Active Endpoints (Business Process Management)
4.  Acquia (Social Publishing)
5.  Adeptol (Cloud Connect)
6.  Aerohive Networks (Enterprise Management)
7.  Konica Minolta Business Solutions  All Covered (Business Continuity)
8.  AppNeta (formerly Apparent Networks – Network Performance Management)
9.  Apigee (API Management)
10. Aprimo (Integrated Marketing)
11. Arjuna (Cloud consulting)
12. Aria Systems (Subscription Billing Management)
13. Aryaka (Enterprise Communications & Network Services)
14. Aspera (Software License Management)
15. AsperaSoft (File Transfer Software)
16. Atlantis Computing (Virtual Desktops)
17. Basic Gov (Software as a Service – SaaS for government)
18. Bill.com (Payment and Invoicing)
19. Birst (On Demand Business Intelligence)
20. Bitcasa (Secure Data Storage)
21. BlueLock (Virtual Datacenter)
22. Bluewolf (Software as a Service – SaaS consulting)
23. Board Suite Corp (On Demand Governance)
24. Care Cloud (Healthcare)
25. Cenzic (Security)
26. Certain Software (Event Management)
27. Cotendo (Cloud based Acceleration Services)
28. Clarizen (Project Management)
29. Cloud9Analytics (Sales forecasting and pipeline management)
30. CloudCentral (Cloud servers and hosting)
31. CloudCruiser (Cloud migration solutions)
32. Cloud Passage (SaaS security)
33. CloudSigma (Cloud servers and hosting, Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS)
34. CloudScale (Real-time analytics)
35. Cloud Sherpas (Google Apps Reseller)
36. CloudSoftCorp (Transactional application scaling and distribution)
37. Cloudworks (Virtual desktop)
38. Coraid (Cloud Storage)
39. Corefino (SaaS Accounting)
40. Coupa (Spend Management)
41. daptiv (On demand PPM)
42. Datameer (Data analytics)
43. Datapipe (Managed Cloud services)
44. DocuSign (eSignature Platform)
45. Doxo (Cloud Storage)
46. Dropbox (File Synchronization)
47. Elastic Hosts (Elastic Cloud servers)
48. Electric Cloud (Cloud based private software development)
49. Embrane (Agile Network)
50. Eloqua (Cloud Marketing Platform)
51. ERPLY (Retail POS, Inventory and eCommerce)
52. eVapt (Billing solutions)
53. Enki (Virtual IT)
54. MaaS360 FiberLink (Mobile Device Management as a Service)
55. FluidInfo (MetaData Engine)
56. FreshBooks (Invoicing and Billing)
57. Fusion-IO / IOTurbine (VM I/O Performance Management)
58. Gladinet (Cloud Desktop Backup and Storage)
59. Grasshopper (Virtual Phone System for Entrepreneurs)
60. Green Revolution Cooling (Data Center Cooling)
61. GreenQloud (Green Public Cloud Compute)
62. Host Analytics (Corporate Performance Management)
63. HubSpot (Inbound Marketing)
64. HyperOffice (Business collaboration software)
65. iLand (Cloud infrastructure)
66. Imonggo (SaaS Point of Sale)
67. In2Clouds (Predictive Analytics)
68. Integral Networks aka iNet (Managed Cloud)
69. IntelePeer (Unified Cloud Communications)
70. Iovation (Fraud and Reputation Management)
71. iPipeline (Insurance and Financial Services, ePolicy)
72. Jobvite (Social CRM SaaS Recruiting)
73. LiveOps (On Demand Contact Center)
74. Marketo (Sales & Marketing Solutions)
75. Model Metrics (Cloud computing consulting)
76. MuDynamics (Application Testing)
77. Nicira (Network Virtualization)
78. NetDNA (Content delivery network)
79. NewRelic (SaaS based App Performance Management)
80. Nimbus (Cloud client computer)
81. nPario (Big Data Insights)
82. Nubifer (Cloud Platform Integration Services)
83. Nutanix (Cloud Storage Architecture)
84. Oxygen Cloud (Enterprise Cloud file storage)
85. Palantir Technologies (Data Analysis and Visualization Platform)
86. PanTerra Networks (Cloud based Unified Communications)
87. Paremus (Service fabric)
88. Peer1 (Private Cloud hosting services)
89. PerimeterUSA (eSecurity Platform)
90. PiCloud (Platform as a Service)
91. PivotLink (Business Intelligence)
92. PowerAssure (Data Center Power Optimization)
93. PowerReviews (Social Commerce)
94. Producteev (Task Management)
95. Qlikview (Business Intelligence)
96. Quantivo (Behavioral analytics)
97. RPost (Legal electronic messaging platform, registered email)
98. RunMyProcess (Cloud Workflow Management)* [RunMyProcess review]
99. ServiceMesh (Cloud Governance)* [ServiceMesh review]
100. SkyTap (Cloud automation solutions for enterprise)
101. SeaMicro (Low-power server technology)
102. SendGrid (Cloud based email)
103. Sentilla (Energy management platform)
104. Service-now (IT management Software as a Service)
105. Sonian (Cloud powered email archiving)
106. StackIQ (formerly Clustercorp – Cluster computing)
107. SuccessFactors (Analytics, Mobile, Social)
108. SumTotal Systems (Human Capital Management), Cybershift, Accero
109. Sungard (Cloud infrastructure services)
110. SynapSense (Energy Management)
111. Tableau Software (Data Analytics)
112. ThinkGrid (Cloud enablement platform)
113. Unisys (Cloud managed services provider)
114. Venda (SaaS Commerce)
115. Veracode (Security as a Service)
116. Virtual Ark (Application managed services, SaaS)
117. Workday (Human Resource Management Solutions)
118. Wyse (Cloud client computer)
119. Zetta (Cloud storage)

Who’s on your cloud computing radar?

Additional Cloud computing lists you may enjoy:

• The Top 100 Cloud Computing Private Companies
• The Talkin’ Cloud 50: Top 50 Cloud Computing VARs & MSPs
• Top 15 Cloud Service Providers – Ranked by Global Performance
• 50 of The Biggest and Best Cloud Computing Companies
• 85 Cloud Computing Vendors Shaping the Emerging Cloud
• The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list
• The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing
• The VAR Guy’s SaaS 20 Index
• The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem
• Top Ten Cloud Companies in 2Q10 Report
• 10 Cloud Computing Companies to Watch
• 15 Cloud Companies to Watch

-Tune The Future-

Twitter: @RayDePena   |   LinkedIn   |   Facebook   |   Google+

Disclosure: The opinions expressed here are my own. I have no direct stock holdings in any company mentioned. I am a member of the Ulitzer Blog Network serving as Founder and Editor of several Journals, and am not an employee of Ulitzer, SYS-CON, CloudTweaks, Cloudbook, CloudTech, Focus Expert network, or any other website where this blog post may appear.

Sometimes the analysis is sound. More often than not, it omits key variables.

Perhaps you relied too much on vendor input for key variables in your analysis, or on your own in-house staff that may not necessarily have the skills, experience, or vested interest in such analysis. After all, how often do they undertake such an analysis in the first place? How well does it compare to an unbiased, independent consultant?

As I mentioned in, “Cloud Computing Economics: 40-80% Savings in the Cloud?“, your best bet is an independent analysis by an objective 3rd party.

Though instead of debating the merits of an analysis, the extent of cost savings, or other business benefits of migrating to the Cloud, I would like you to consider an another perspective.

What’s your alternative?

The inevitable answer that I usually hear is, “We’ll just continue doing what we’re doing”. That answer is quite telling. It’s clear that they have not considered Cloud computing’s tipping point.

You see, as Cloud computing continues to gain traction in the market, and Cloud interoperability improves, the value of its network effect increases, creating a bandwagon effect, and ultimately driving software providers to change their legacy business model, or into decline.

Some business leaders assume that they will be able to continue their legacy IT consumption practices unimpeded, and that their costs will not be impacted by the Cloud’s success. On the contrary, remaining on unsupported software will increase your IT costs. Finding skilled resources to support and develop on legacy software, and systems is not easy or inexpensive.

Today, the Cloud’s tipping point, may not be an issue for you unless you want the benefits your competitors are deriving from SaaS applications, as you can’t consume them any other way. No, Salesforce.com will not be sending you any shrink wrapped software by mail. You’ll have to sign up for the service like everyone else.

In any event, whether you consider the Cloud now, or later, at some point, for many software vendors, the economics of developing, shipping, supporting, maintaining, patching, and releasing upgrades to software will change. That is, those software vendors may discontinue their legacy software business model in favor of a SaaS model.

As early adopters take to the Cloud, the number of on premise customers for software vendors will decline. A small business may shift all 10 of its employees to Google Docs or Office 365, no longer buying Microsoft Office and implementing it in-house. Multiply this scenario by thousands of early adopters and it’s not hard to see the decline of the installed customer base for on premise software.

In the near term, this isn’t an issue for large software vendors as their installed base can keep revenues flowing for years even as they lose part of their large installed base. Smaller players don’t have the same advantage. Even a 10-20% hit, or one large customer, may be enough to drive them out of business or to a Cloud model, creating a domino effect.

Fast forward 3 to 5 years. Lets say 20-25% of smaller software vendors have shifted to the Cloud model.

Will this impact your business?

Even if you believe that it will not affect your business, you can see the effect will continue – as other businesses are impacted by the shift, they will have to address the issue, and make a decision whether to keep and maintain unsupported software, look for an alternative software vendor, or shift to the Cloud.

In turn, their decisions may continue to drive more business to the Cloud, more software vendors shift as their installed base erodes, more developers focus on the Cloud, and 5-8 years out it could be 25-40% of the smaller software vendors no longer shipping shrink wrapped products.

Are you impacted now?

-Tune The Future-

Twitter: @RayDePena   |   LinkedIn   |   Facebook   |   Google+

According to Wikipedia, in physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. In cosmology, the concept of spacetime combines space and time to a single abstract universe. But you know we’re not here to talk about physics, cosmology, or the universe, as interesting as they may be.

For this moment in time, I want you to think of Cloud computing along the lines of space and time, because too many businesses shifting to the Cloud are focused on space, and space alone. You see, traditionally, for business or enterprise IT, time has not been a factor, so it was not an element usually given much consideration.

Unfortunately, when that 4th dimension is overlooked, many businesses conclude that “the Cloud doesn’t work”.

If you’re shifting your business to the Cloud, it is imperative to understand your processes and the underlying technology infrastructure. It’s true that infrastructure can be abstracted and an application may simply require resources (processing, memory, storage) to be available, though we still need to remember that for the business logic to work, all the necessary components must be available when the business logic (or tool) is executing.

In a traditional enterprise setting, that was not an issue, because servers, once put into operation in your datacenter, were not usually taken down. If servers were taken down, it was planned and coordinated during an outage window, and if unplanned /emergency, the focus was to bring it back into operation. So your servers were always “hot” or “live” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, within or across departments. In many cases, inter-departmental coordination was non-existent or unnecessary.

With a transition to the Cloud, one of the cost savings is shutting VMs down when they’re not in use. This is where you have to think four dimensionally.

If you have an automatic process that runs in the evenings traversing multiple departments, say departments A, B, and C, and you get unexpected results or your process did not complete, you’ll have to consider the availability of those resources during the time the process is running. Department B may have been achieving cost savings by shutting down their VM when no-one in their department was using it, during evenings and weekends, though unwittingly breaking an enterprise process as they did so.

Historically, we’ve always assumed that the resources would be available when we kicked off an automated process intended to run when we are not working, whether it’s an automated enterprise billing tool, security scan, backup, or business logic, we now have to consider not only where the application and process resides, but the resources that the application or tool requires, and their availability state.

So as you move to the Cloud, remember to consider the time factor, and coordinate the availability of VMs accordingly. It’ll save you a lot of time. The Cloud does work, you just have to know how to use it.

How are you handling the Cloud-time factor?

-Tune The Future-

Twitter: @RayDePena   |   LinkedIn   |   Facebook   |   Google+

The Cloud, like the Internet before it, it seems deceptively easy.

Back then, it was just connect. Done. Today, it’s just subscribe. Done.

The illusion is powerful and seductive, isn’t it?

As a C-level executive, you know better though. Being the CEO, CIO, or other senior executive responsible for running a global business with more than 10,000+ employees is no easy task. Perhaps you’re a Fortune 500 company or large government entity. Years of battle scars have turned you into a seasoned veteran. You know that thinking of Cloud computing as just another technology that can be incorporated the same way (you’ve added technology to your enterprise for the past 20 years) would be a mistake. You also know that Cloud computing isn’t about technology, it’s about business. So you’ve given serious thought to what it will take to migrate your slow, inefficient, static, traditional IT organization; change your business processes, and adapt your procurement to accommodate the acquisition of internal and external Cloud services. You’ve considered these and many other issues because you believe in the business agility, dynamic capabilities, and other benefits that a hybrid Cloud will bring to bear for your organization.

Yes, a hybrid Cloud. Lets be pragmatic about this. An enterprise of your scale (or larger) will likely have its own Private Cloud in addition to offloading some services to Public Cloud Service Providers. So you have carefully weighed the enterprise components you’ll need to keep in-house, and components you’ll defer to cloud service providers. You know you will need to manage this migration carefully or spend a lot of time and money cleaning up the mess.

However, you can’t sit still and wait. Rogue IT will create an unmanageable hodgepodge of point solutions throughout your enterprise if you do. Imagine all your business units independently negotiating agreements with the same or numerous Cloud Service Provider(s). The Gang of Six. No, not the ones in Washington, but Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), Salesforce (CRM), VMWare (VMW), Microsoft (MSFT), and Apple (AAPL) whose devices (smartphones, tables), technology, and as-a-Service solutions (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS) is overwhelming your enterprise. Now it’ll be up to you to clean house and consolidate all those agreements attempting to leverage economies of scale and develop some IT governance and management around all those point solutions with varying Service Level Agreements (SLAs), if there are any at all. Like spaghetti programming, avoid it up front and you won’t have to redo the work down the road.

It’s a good thing you’re way ahead of the curve. You’ve been here before, not like some of the kids that grew up during the dot-com boom and continue to ask me how one “monetizes” the Cloud. This is real business, not “eyeballs” and other fanciful metrics.

You know it’s about your people, process, technology, and organization thereof. We can all have the same Rubik’s cube (technology), however, not everyone can organize it successfully to solve the (Cloud management) puzzle.  The right strategy is multifaceted, encompassing:

• Migration (to a services model and new architecture),
• Management and Governance (within and outside enterprise boundaries),
• Organizational culture (silos and the status quo must be replaced by teamwork and cooperation),
• Integration, Security, and Interoperability
• Business and operational models,
• Reference frameworks (for development), (business) models, and architectures (enterprise, technology, information, software, and systems),

And other key components to shift from a traditional, static, infrastructure management approach to dynamic, on demand, service management, and ultimately become an internal Cloud Service Provider, Cloud Broker, or both, to the rest of your organization. You think about this as you look down rows of Intel (INTC) x86 systems sprawled on valuable real-estate in your datacenter. At 10-15% utilization per system, that’s a highly inefficient energy, maintenance, and real estate footprint and that’s just the hardware – software maintenance, upgrades, patches, security, management, license fees, labor, the list seems endless. With 75-80% of your budget going to keep the lights on, and business units demanding services, you’re at risk of losing control of your IT.

So you’ve launched business transformation initiatives, understood that Cloud terms mean different things to different people in your enterprise and developed a common taxonomy to keep everyone on the same page. You have enumerated the benefits sought from migration to Cloud services, captured business requirements across business units, considered alternatives, studied the impact on your business processes, evaluated reference frameworks, models, and architectures, positioned your Services (or Web) Oriented Architecture (SOA/WOA) to take advantage of Web Services, worked on your IT governance, dispatched your leadership team to work on changing your organizational culture to break down silos, standardized your backend enterprise technologies and processes, simplified your IT environment, consolidated IT systems, servers, storage, networks, and rationalized your application portfolio – after all, does your enterprise really need to migrate 20,000 applications to the Cloud? Let’s hope not.

Finally, you have virtualized and abstracted your infrastructure. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Dynamic, elastic services are finally within your grasp. Now you’re deploying enterprise wide service offerings ranging from internally provided Cloud services to externally procured Cloud services brokered by your team.  Your business and IT services are a web of tightly integrated, loosely coupled, highly modularized and cohesive, end to end value chain with no weak links. Your team has shifted to business service operations, agile (iterative) implementation methods, highly flexible configuration management for automation and dynamic service delivery, orchestrated services, continuous (operations) improvement, and integration with development, to build, support, and maintain applications and services.

Is this your enterprise Cloud computing migration end game in order to become a (Cloud) Services Led Organization?

Regardless of your approach, you have to see your enterprise end game. Without a strategy, without a plan, without envisioning the end game, you’ll be changing direction midstream like many others before you. Don’t be seduced by the illusion. Develop your strategy and plan your rallying cry before committing your troops.

-Tune The Future-

“Then one night as I was set to finish a Political Science paper, I couldn’t log in. “We’re sorry, the servers are down for maintenance. Please try later.”

“But… you have my paper!” I whisper-screamed.

I spent that night waiting for the paper-hostage-holding servers to come back online. Thankfully, around 4:00am, they popped back up, and I quickly moved the file to a 3.5-inch floppy where it was safe.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was using the cloud, and I didn’t like it. Heck, it ate my paper.”

In 1990, while Josh was a freshman at UC San Diego, I was a sophomore at the City University of New York at Baruch College. Opposite ends of the country and opposite perspectives on the Cloud. Now don’t get me wrong, I love some things about my PC and the “old” way of working. I loved the control that a PC provided that a terminal did not. I can’t say the same for sneakernet, nor did I ever consider files on a 3.5-inch diskettes “safe”. On the contrary, lets enumerate a few of the situations I came across.

1. Many times fellow students came crying for help as they accidentally turned off their PC without saving the files they had spent hours working on.
2. Worse, some students had months of work for multiple classes on their PC or floppy disk when it malfunctioned.
3. Stories of lost 3.5-inch disks on the train or in a cab were not uncommon.
4. PC hard disks crashed or were infected by viruses making them unusable, losing months (or years) of work in the process.
5. Students accidentally reformatted their 3.5-inch disks, or discovered to their dismay that taking a 3.5-inch disk to the beach was not a good idea.
6. Students in science classes quickly discovered that magnets and disks don’t go well together.
7. One of my personal favorites were the students that would eject the disk as they were saving their work because they were in a hurry. They could swear they saved their files before ejecting the disk.

At least the 3.5-inch diskette was an improvement over the 5.25-inch floppy. Those were more easily damaged – warped by sunlight, bent, or dust, scratches and fingerprints got on the disk at the open end.

Coffee cups and disks didn’t go well together. It took some convincing that diskettes didn’t also double as coasters or an ashtray.

It wasn’t all bad, there were some positive outcomes at times.

1. Some students would work late into the evening forgetting their disks in the lab. The disks would be saved until the student returned the next day when the lab opened. For those that had to turn in their work first thing the next morning it was a bittersweet moment; they recovered their work, but didn’t turn it in on time.
2. On other occasions, a student would mistakenly take another student’s diskette. At least the files were safe. It’s too bad that in some instances the students didn’t know each other and it would take days or weeks before they found one another again (to exchange disks).
3. Sometimes a file (that a student had been working on in the lab) was too large to save on a 3.5-inch disk and lab staff would work with the student to resolve the issue. Particularly if it was a file that could not be easily broken up so that it could be saved on two 3.5-inch diskettes.

You see, as a computer major, I spent a lot of time in computer labs, and was regularly asked by other students how to recover their lost data.

One brought me the remains of a disk that had clearly been in flames at some point. I guess they just thought that recovering data from a disk was magic. After all, they weren’t computer majors, why should they have to know about sectors, tracks, file allocation tables, error correcting code, and formatting disks?

Over the years the technology has changed, but the same problems remained.

1. Instead of a lost 3.5-inch disk, it became a lost CD, iPhone, or other device left on a train, plane, cab, or somewhere else.
2. A colleague had his corporate laptop stolen right out of his car.
3. Another backed over a company laptop with his car when he unwittingly left his briefcase in the driveway.

Josh asks, “Are we gearing up for the perfect storm?” You bet. The Perfect (Innovation) Storm, facilitated by technological innovations like those found in Cloud computing.

The Cloud may not be perfect, but it didn’t eat your paper Josh – it gave it back (albeit at 4:00am). That’s more than those who had their data on a “safe” local media can say.

-Tune The Future-

Happy 4th of July! I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend (if you happen to live in the U.S.)

Today we take a look at the first half of 2011 to see which Cloud players are gaining mind share. In addition to the, “Top 110 Cloud Enablers Gaining Mind Share”, I have included, “The Leaderboard”, 120 Up and Coming Cloud Innovators, Movers and Shakers.

So far the segment has been brimming with excitement as large enterprise information technology companies continue their rapid restructuring to an on-demand cloud computing model by enhancing their portfolios through acquisitions.

Before we see the most recent changes, lets take a quick look at the 2011 acquisitions (2010 activity can be found here).

2011 Acquisitions:

• Black Duck Software acquires Olliance (Open Source Strategy Consulting)
• CA acquires Torokina Networks (Service Assurance Management)
• Cisco picks up Pari Networks (Network / Change Management)
• Citrix closes Netviewer acquisition (Software-as-a-Service -SaaS)
• CoreLogic acquires Dorado (Transaction Management – PaaS)
• Dell to acquire InSite One (Healthcare/ Medical Storage, DR)
• Dell SecureWorks acquisition (Security)
• Google acquires SayNow (Social Voice Platform)
• HP Buys Vertica (Real-Time Analytics)
• Infor Launches Bid For Lawson (Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP)
• NetApp acquires Akorri (Infrastructure Optimization)
• Qualcomm acquires Atheros (Chips – Smartphones, Tablets)
• Rackspace acquires Anso Labs (OpenStack)
• Salesforce buys Heroku (Ruby Development platform)
• Salesforce buys DimDim (Communications platform)
• Skype acquires Qik (Mobile video – Android, iOS, BlackBerry)
• Sourcefire acquires Immunet (Cloud based anti-malware)
• Teradata buys Aster Data (Data analytics)
• Time Warner Cable buys Navisite (Cloud Managed Services)
• Verizon acquires Terremark (Managed Hosting Services)
• Cisco acquires newScale (Data Center Services)
• CenturyLink acquires Savvis (Managed Hosting Services)
• NTT’s Dimension Data buys OpSource (Cloud Managed Services)

With that M&A activity as background, here are the rankings for the Top 110 Cloud Enablers Gaining Mind Share in 2Q 2011. As customary, the list below is a subjective impression of Cloud Service Providers (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), and Cloud Technology enablers on my cloud computing radar.

1.  Amazon Web Services(AWS),
   1. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),
   2. Simple Storage Service (S3),
   3. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC),
   4. Elastic Beanstalk,
   5. Elastic Block Store (EBS),
   6. CloudFront,
   7. Cloud Formation,
   8. CloudWatch
2.  Google Apps (Web based business applications suite)
3.  Salesforce.com* [Salesforce blog post]
   1. Sales Cloud 2 (CRM),
   2. Service Cloud 2 (Support),
   3. Force.com (Development Platform),
   4. Chatter (Collaboration),
   5. Heroku,
   6. Database.com,
   7. Jigsaw,
   8. RemedyForce,
   9. AppExchange
4.  VMWare(Virtualization management)
   1. vCloud Director,
   2. vCenter,
   3. vSphere
   4. Hyperic (Open Source Networking Software)
5.  Citrix – XenServer (Virtualization), VMLogix
6.  HP – 3PAR, Vertica (Data Analytics)
7.  Dell – Boomi (AtomSphere – Cloud Integration)* [Dell blog post]
8.  IBM Smart Business, Cloudburst
9.  Microsoft Azure, Hyper-V* [Microsoft blog post]
10. CA Technologies – 3Tera AppLogic (Turnkey Cloud computing platform)
11. EMC
12. Intel* [Intel blog posts]
13. Equinix (Data Center Platform)
14. Cisco,  newScale (Data center services)
15. Verizon – Terremark * [Verizon blog post]
16. Apple – iCloud
17. AT&T Synaptic
18. BMC
19. CSC Cloud
20. ARM Holdings
21. NTT‘s Dimension Data / OpSource (Enterprise Cloud and managed hosting services)
22. Time Warner Cable -Navisite (Managed Cloud hosting services)
23. Fujitsu – Manufacturing “Engineering Cloud”
24. Rackspace – Cloud Builders / OpenStack, CloudKick
25. Abiquo (Enterprise Cloud management)
26. Rightscale (Cloud management platform)
27. Eucalyptus (Open source private cloud software)
28. Joyent (Cloud software for service providers)
29. GoGrid (Cloud infrastructure solutions – IaaS)
30. NetSuite (Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP and financials suite)
31. SugarCRM (Customer Relationship Management)
32. Zuora (Cloud based subscription billing and payment solutions)
33. CohesiveFT (Cloud container virtualization solutions)
34. Red Hat (Enterprise virtualization / Linux)
35. Kaavo (Infrastructure and middleware on demand)
36. rPath (On demand IT systems automation)
37. SoftLayer (On demand data center and hosting services)
38. CloudSwitch(Enterprise Cloud computing services)
39. Adaptive (Data Center automation)
40. HubSpan (Business Process Integration)
41. BitNami (Cloud Hosting Service)* [BitNami review]
42. F5 Networks (Cloud Infrastructure and Storage)
43. Radware (Integrated application delivery solutions)
44. AppZero (Virtual application appliances)
45. OpenNebula (Open source cloud computing toolkit, infrastructure as a service)
46. Appistry (CloudIQ storage management platform)
47. Appirio – Cloud Connectors (Cloud solution provider)
48. LongJump (Platform as a Service provider)
49. Juniper Networks (Cloud-ready Data Center Infrastructure)
50. Nimbula (Enterprise Cloud operating system)
51. CloudSwitch(Enterprise Cloud computing services)
52. Enomaly – Elastic Compute Platform (ECP) (Cloud service provider platform)
53. Symplified (Security – Unified access management for SaaS)
54. CenturyLink / Savvis (Cloud infrastructure as a service)
55. Gigaspaces (Enterprise PaaS and ISV SaaS enablement)
56. Delphix (Database Virtualization)
57. Scalr (Dynamic server provisioning)
58. Rollbase (Cloud platforms for business applications)
59. Amplidata (Optimized Object Storage)* [Amplidata review]
60. Intalio (Private Cloud computing solutions)
61. Parallels (Virtualization and automation software)
62. Nasuni (Cloud storage)
63. mindSHIFT (Cloud Service Provider for SMB)
64. Egnyte (Hybrid Cloud storage)
65. RightNow (Cloud based Social, Web, and Contact Center Platform)
66. CloudShare (IT as a Service)
67. Jive Software (Social CRM)
68. JumpBox (Open source virtual appliance)
69. Crosscheck Networks (Service Oriented Architecture – SOA web services)
70. Caspio (Online database platform)
71. Netuitive (Predictive analytics platform)* [Netuitive blog post]
72. Cordys (Cloud MashApp platform)
73. VirtuStream (Enterprise Cloud Solutions)
74. Cloud.com (Cloud computing infrastructure and management software)
75. Zendesk (Web based Helpdesk software)
76. Hosting.com (Cloud  hosting and recovery services)
77. RainStor (Big Data Solutions)
78. Puppet Labs (Open Source Data Center Automation)
79. MyERP (Business Applications)
80. Cloudant (Integrated database, analytics, and search)
81. Couchbase (NoSQL database)
82. Practice Fusion (Electronic Health / Medical Records)* [PracticeFusion blog post]
83. Zoho (Business, Productivity, and Collaboration Applications)
84. Box.net (Content Management)
85. enStratus (Cloud governance)
86. Engine Yard (Ruby application development platform)
87. Cloudera (Open source data analysis)
88. OpenNebula (Cloud Management)
89. SOASTA (Cloud testing)
90. Akamai  Cloud (Cloud Performance Optimization)
91. Mezeo (Cloud storage)
92. Intacct (Cloud based Financial and Accounting software)
93. Pano Logic (Virtual Desktops)
94. Okta (On demand identity and access management)
95. Astadia (Marketing automation, sales enablement)
96. Nirvanix (Enterprise Cloud Storage, Storage Delivery Network)
97. GoodData (Sales and marketing collaborative analytics)
98. AtTask (Project Management)
99. IOTurbine (VM I/O Performance Management)
100. Navajo Systems (Virtual Private SaaS – VPS)
101. Ncomputing (Desktop virtualization)
102. Nimsoft (Cloud monitoring)* [Nimsoft review]
103. Nolio (Application release automation)
104. Zeus Technology (Elastic Application Delivery)
105. ReliaCloud (Cloud servers and storage)
106. RingCentral (Cloud based Phone System)
107. LayeredTech (Cloud hosting and managed services)
108. CGI (Cloud Services)
109. Twilio (Cloud communications – web services)
110. Workbooks (Web based CRM and Business Applications for SMB)

The Leaderboard: 120 Up and Coming Cloud Innovators, Movers & Shakers:

1.  10Gen (Open source document database)
2.  37Signals (Collaboration, project and contact management)
3.  Active Endpoints (Business Process Management)
4.  Acquia (Social Publishing)
5.  Adeptol (Cloud Connect)
6.  Aerohive Networks (Enterprise Management)
7.  All Covered (Business Continuity)
8.  AppNeta (formerly Apparent Networks – Network Performance Management)
9.  Apigee (API Management)
10. Aprimo (Integrated Marketing)
11. Arjuna (Cloud consulting)
12. Aria Systems (Subscription Billing Management)
13. Aryaka (Enterprise Communications & Network Services)
14. Aspera (Software License Management)
15. Atlantis Computing (Virtual Desktops)
16. Basic Gov (Software as a Service – SaaS for government)
17. Bill.com (Payment and Invoicing)
18. Birst (On Demand Business Intelligence)
19. BlueLock (Virtual Datacenter)
20. Bluewolf (Software as a Service – SaaS consulting)
21. Board Suite Corp (On Demand Governance)
22. Calxeda (formerly Smooth-Stone)
23. Care Cloud (Healthcare)
24. Cenzic (Security)
25. Certain Software (Event Management)
26. Cotendo (Cloud based Acceleration Services)
27. Clarizen (Project Management)
28. Cloud9Analytics (Sales forecasting and pipeline management)
29. CloudCentral (Cloud servers and hosting)
30. CloudCruiser (Cloud migration solutions)
31. Cloud Passage (SaaS security)
32. CloudSigma (Cloud servers and hosting, Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS)
33. CloudScale (Real-time analytics)
34. Cloud Sherpas (Google Apps Reseller)
35. CloudSoft (Transactional application scaling and distribution)
36. Cloudworks (Virtual desktop)
37. Coraid (Cloud Storage)
38. Corefino (SaaS Accounting)
39. Coupa (Spend Management)
40. Cybershift (Workforce and Expense Management)
41. daptiv (On demand PPM)
42. Datameer (Data analytics)
43. Datapipe (Managed Cloud services)
44. DocuSign (eSignature Platform)
45. DotCloud (Build and Deploy Cloud Applications)
46. Doxo (Cloud Storage)
47. Dropbox (File Synchronization)
48. Elastic Hosts (Elastic Cloud servers)
49. Electric Cloud (Cloud based private software development)
50. Embrane (Agile Network)
51. Eloqua (Cloud Marketing Platform)
52. ERPLY (Retail POS, Inventory and eCommerce)
53. eVapt (Billing solutions)
54. Enki (Virtual IT)
55. FiberLink (Mobile Device Management as a Service)
56. Flexiant (Utility computing on demand)
57. FluidInfo (MetaData Engine)
58. FreshBooks (Invoicing and Billing)
59. FusionIO (Shared Data Decentralization)
60. Gladinet (Cloud Desktop Backup and Storage)
61. Grasshopper (Virtual Phone System for Entrepreneurs)
62. Green Revolution Cooling (Data Center Cooling)
63. GreenQloud (Green Public Cloud Compute)
64. Host Analytics (Corporate Performance Management)
65. HubSpot (Inbound Marketing)
66. HyperOffice (Business collaboration software)
67. iLand (Cloud infrastructure)
68. Imonggo (SaaS Point of Sale)
69. In2Clouds (Predictive Analytics)
70. Integral Networks aka iNet (Managed Cloud)
71. IntelePeer (Unified Cloud Communications)
72. Iovation (Fraud and Reputation Management)
73. iPipeline (Insurance and Financial Services, ePolicy)
74. Jobvite (Social CRM SaaS Recruiting)
75. LiveOps (On Demand Contact Center)
76. Marketo (Sales & Marketing Solutions)
77. Model Metrics (Cloud computing consulting)
78. MuDynamics (Application Testing)
79. Nicira (Network Virtualization)
80. NetDNA (Content delivery network)
81. NewRelic (SaaS based App Performance Management)
82. Nimbus (Cloud client computer)
83. netDNA (Content Delivery Network)
84. nPario (Big Data Insights)
85. Nubifer (Cloud Platform Integration Services)
86. Nutanix (Cloud Storage Architecture)
87. Oxygen Cloud (Enterprise Cloud file storage)
88. Palantir Technologies (Data Analysis and Visualization Platform)
89. PanTerra Networks (Cloud based Unified Communications)
90. Paremus (Service fabric)
91. Peer1 (Private Cloud hosting services)
92. PerimeterUSA (eSecurity Platform)
93. PiCloud (Platform as a Service)
94. PivotLink (Business Intelligence)
95. PowerAssure (Data Center Power Optimization)
96. PowerReviews (Social Commerce)
97. Producteev (Task Management)
98. Qlikview (Business Intelligence)
99. Quantivo (Behavioral analytics)
100. RunMyProcess (Cloud Workflow Management)* [RunMyProcess review]
101. ServiceMesh (Cloud Governance)* [ServiceMesh review]
102. SkyTap (Cloud automation solutions for enterprise)
103. SeaMicro (Low-power server technology)
104. SendGrid (Cloud based email)
105. Sentilla (Energy management platform)
106. Service-now (IT management Software as a Service)
107. Sonian (Cloud powered email archiving)
108. StackIQ (formerly Clustercorp – Cluster computing)
109. SuccessFactors (Analytics, Mobile, Social)
110. Sungard (Cloud infrastructure services)
111. SynapSense (Energy Management)
112. Tableau Software (Data Analytics)
113. ThinkGrid (Cloud enablement platform)
114. Unisys (Cloud managed services provider)
115. Venda (SaaS Commerce)
116. Veracode (Security as a Service)
117. Virtual Ark (Application managed services, SaaS)
118. Workday (Human Resource Management Solutions)
119. Wyse (Cloud client computer)
120. Zetta (Cloud storage)

• [edit: addition] AsperaSoft (File Transfer Software)

Who’s on your cloud computing radar?

Additional Cloud computing lists you may enjoy:

• The Top 100 Cloud Computing Private Companies
• The Talkin’ Cloud 50: Top 50 Cloud Computing VARs & MSPs
• Top 15 Cloud Service Providers – Ranked by Global Performance
• 50 of The Biggest and Best Cloud Computing Companies
• 85 Cloud Computing Vendors Shaping the Emerging Cloud
• The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list
• The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing
• The VAR Guy’s SaaS 20 Index
• The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem
• Top Ten Cloud Companies in 2Q10 Report
• 10 Cloud Computing Companies to Watch
• 15 Cloud Companies to Watch

- Tune The Future -

Disclosure: The opinions expressed here are my own. I have no direct stock holdings in any company mentioned. I am a member of the Ulitzer Blog Network serving as Founder and Editor of several Journals, and am not an employee of Ulitzer, SYS-CON, CloudTweaks, Cloudbook, Focus Expert network, or any other website where this blog post may appear.

Like others before them (Verizon + Terremark; Time Warner + NaviSite; CenturyLink+Savvis), they too have “figured it out”. Cloud computing is a complex, capital-intensive business. Scaling is expensive. Other companies in the segment are likely to continue marching along this road, particularly as the executive management at companies wanting to play in the Cloud segment reach the same conclusion. Cloud computing is not hosting. Scale or go home.

According to Treb Ryan, OpSource CEO and co-founder, mapping a migration path and architectural design for the cloud is complex and requires in-depth understanding of an organisation’s entire IT infrastructure, architecture, and relative interdependencies and risks. An understanding of IT integration across disparate multi-technology, multi-geography, IT environments is critical to evolving toward cloud-based architectures.”

The acquisition announcement hit the wires this morning, and by noon I was on the phone with representatives from both companies. The meeting was originally intended to be with Treb Ryan, OpSource CEO, and Brett Dawson, Dimension Data CEO. Unfortunately, at the last minute they were unable to attend. I can’t imagine why they would be busy today. Fortunately for us,  Keao Caindec, SVP and CMO from OpSource, and Ettienne Reinecke, Global CTO from Dimension Data came to the rescue providing me a 15 minute reprieve. So I had the chance to fire off a few questions. What are the terms of the deal (sure, they’ll answer that one)? Any service offerings portfolio duplication? Geographic duplication?

At first glance it appears that the service portfolio offerings and geographic presence seem to be complementary. So who gets what in this deal?

OpSource gets:

1. A bucket full of cash and stock? Who knows? Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
2. Global reach for their offerings,
3. NTT / Dimension Data backing, support, and resource leverage,
4. Access to capital and enterprise clients who would like to build Private Cloud architectures, but don’t necessarily have the know how to do so according to Ettienne.

I tend to agree with that view. Cloud build out and integration is not an easy undertaking even for the industry experts that live and breathe cloud on a daily basis.

NTT / Dimension Data gets:

1. A world-class business addition to their new Cloud Solution Business Unit,
2. A complementary portfolio that extends their current private on-premise data center virtualization offering to include orchestration, automation and billing.
3. The ability to extend the OpSource architecture for Service Provider peering, and
4. Rapid ramp up to Public Cloud offerings.

Keao points out that not too many companies in this segment that can provide both private and public Cloud offerings.

Agreed.

So this puts the NTT / Dimension Data / OpSource team in a new competitive landscape with the likes of AT&T and IBM, particularly in emerging markets and mid-market segments.

Potential new geography / offering targets include:

1. Off-shore disaster recovery offerings for the Asia-Pacific market,
2. Fast path to public offerings in the AP marketplace,
3. Public sector federal offerings for government that are partial to private Cloud with some elements of public Cloud for non-core workloads, and
4. Data center in a box offerings for service providers.

Dimension Data’s Ettienne, a hybrid Cloud supporter, indicated that they will be well positioned to provide offerings at multiple points in the Cloud adoption curve from private to public and various degrees of enablement for the managed services construct.

Indeed.

-Tune The Future-

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. ~ Howard Aiken

That seems an appropriate quote for microcomputer’s early days and the challenges that faced Paul Allen. I received Paul Allen’s book, “Idea Man” four days ago and finished it yesterday afternoon. Maureen Cole at the Penguin Group had been kind enough to send me a copy for review (Thank you Maureen!).

As many of us in business and technology already know, Paul Allen, the 17th wealthiest American, with a net worth of $13 billion, co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975. Those that are avid sports fans may be more familiar with Mr. Allen’s role as the owner of the Seattle Seahawks (NFL) and Portland Trail Blazers (NBA).

So I wondered how it came to be that I was contacted to do this book review. I found it odd that I had been asked. After all, I’m an IBM alumnus, and spent most of my career not only trying to avoid Microsoft products, but compete with them whenever I could. The last position I held at IBM involved building an ecosystem of Linux partnerships in IPTV to undermine Microsoft’s Mediaroom efforts (my view, not IBM’s), and most recently I’d written a post on Microsoft’s Cloud Trajectory which did not view their Cloud computing efforts favorably. In addition, I’m the founder and editor of Amazon, Apple, and Salesforce Journals.

Clearly, I’m no Microsoft fan boy.

Nevertheless, after my laughter at the irony of the situation subsided, I agreed to read the book and write this review.

I had already heard the history of Microsoft and its founders more than once, not only in my undergraduate and graduate technology classes, but throughout my career. I had also written in Innovation and Risk in the Clouds II that one of my favorite docudramas is the story of Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Xerox as told in the Pirates of Silicon Valley.

So I was more than familiar with Microsoft’s history. However, this book not about Microsoft. It is about one of the men behind Microsoft, and while inextricably linked to the company’s history, there is more to Paul Allen than the company he co-founded.

So here is another irony for you. I actually enjoyed the book.

Some parts of the book are before my time as Paul Allen is more than 10 years my senior, but other (technology) parts were a trip down memory lane for me.  Having been a programmer myself (though never on a PDP-10), I can appreciate some of the technological challenges Paul describes in his book.

And imagine my surprise when I read, “Idea Man”, only to find similar views of Microsoft’s current challenges (pgs 184-190) from none other than one of its co-founders!

Those of you that enjoy sports and music will appreciate the chapters on Blazermania and Jimi Hendrix. I was more intrigued and fascinated by the early chapters and those in the rest of the book – from Paul’s Microsoft era to the X-Prize, Wired World, Fat Pipe, and Mapping The Brain.

Coincidentally, just last semester I took a Human Anatomy course having long been intrigued by the potential of technology applications to help solve the puzzle of the human brain (and its capacity for innovation and creativity). I’m also a member of a regional community college Computational Thinking project funded by the National Science Foundation. So it is with great interest that I most enjoyed reading about the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Brain Atlas project. I have previously written in a recent post on The Rise of the Cloud Enabled Autonomous Robots, that a single human brain has a greater switching capacity than all the computer switches on earth as discovered by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Additionally, having grown up with Star Trek, I was also very interested in the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a partnership between the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute (I ran SETI@home for years on my computers before switching to IBM’s World Community Grid to do my small part in the fight against cancer and Human Proteome folding research).

If you enjoy imagining how technology will change the future of the world, contemplating innovations in business and technology, or the journey of ideas from their origins in the human mind to their realization in the marketplace, then you’ll appreciate this book and its rare insight into the mind of one of the great pioneers of our time.

P.S.  Full disclosure:  I received a free copy of the book in order to review it.

-Tune The Future-

Shared Inbox group members can see all incoming tickets and assign them accordingly while communicating anonymously through the shared inbox with the support ticket originator.

RMP is fully integrated with Google Apps and enables organizations to design, run, and manage business processes in the Cloud – no hardware, software, or coding required. As companies migrate to Google Apps and its Gmail platform from legacy solutions like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, demand for shared inbox solutions have increased.

The company’s pay as you go web-based workflow service is more cost efficient and agile than legacy on-premise alternatives, and more than 50 Enterprise customers in the U.S., France, Japan, Turkey, and Singapore are already enjoying the higher ROI relative to using Microsoft Exchange public folders or Lotus Notes workflows. You can also synchronize Google Calendar with Oracle CRM on Demand Calendar or integrate your on-premise application with Cloud services.

Named “Coold vendor” by Gartner in 2009 and nominated for Red Herring’s Top 100 European Innovators, RunMyProcess design tools make it easy to migrate your custom Lotus Notes workflows to GoogleApps, using the same data repositories, approval processes and data exports.

With RunMyProcess you can quickly design, build, and run business workflows in the Cloud that connect your business functions. For example, sales with billing and logisitics or customer relationship management with your call center and accounting.

The company offers a library of 1200 pre-configured connectors to over a hundred different SaaS and on-premise applications. If you’re an ISV that would like to include yours in the mix download the document on how to add a new connector here. Here’s a quick 2 minute introduction to the company.

Shared Inbox is free for up to 3 individual users, and larger companies can access the solution at just$10 per user per year for access to an unlimited number of shared inboxes (standard Gmail fees apply). The solution does not require the purchase of a standard RunMyProcess Workflow account. Follow the link for more information.

-Tune The Future-

So you’ve been posting on WordPress.com and due to lack of JavaScript support used by many popular widgets or other reasons, you’re now considering having your blog hosted on Amazon Web Services’ Free Usage Tier.

I decided to see what it would take to move my current WordPress.com blog to AWS. After a quick Google search I found Greg Wilson’s post on moving his GregsRamblings.com blog from WordPress to an AWS micro instance. His post provides an excellent description of what is involved in making such a move. I also encountered Ishan’s post on how to set up a free WordPress blog on Amazon’s EC2 free tier, and Ryan Geyer’s post, “How to host WordPress for Free” and set up via RightScale (note: I’m a big RightScale fan).

However, for many SMBs and individual bloggers this is still too complex an approach (personally, I’m looking forward to the day one can drag and drop a blog from one provider to another) so I sought out an easier way to make the move.

In comes BitNami’s Cloud Hosting service to the rescue!

With a BitNami WordPress stack*, now you too can feel like a world-class administrator (with a little help from BitNami) and can brag to your less technically oriented friends that you setup WordPress on a LAMP stack in Amazon’s EC2 Cloud. You should note that there is also a BitNami WordPress stack on Amazon Web Services, but here I’m referring to their Cloud Hosting service which doesn’t require any command line instructions. Below is a 7 minute demo to give you an idea of their capabilities.

*A stack is an integrated software bundle that includes a web application and all of its required components (web server, database, language runtime), so it is ready to run out of the virtual box.

So instead of just writing about it, I decided to sign up for their free 30 day trial and give it a shot. After 1 hour I had my WordPress installation running on Amazon EC2 – ok, ok, it was really less than 10 minutes (my 3 kids kept distracting me) and 50 minutes looking through 40+ pages of WordPress themes and hundreds of plugins.

Interestingly, in exploring RightScale a week or two ago, I had linked my AWS account, and in setting up BitNami I also linked my AWS account. When I launched the EC2 instance via BitNami, I not only received a BitNami notification, but one from RightScale as well.

I have yet to find an easier way to do this than using BitNami’s service, but if you happen to know one, I’d love to hear about it. Perhaps that’s why Siemens, GoGrid, RightScale, Deloitte, Yale, IBM, Sony, Bank of America, and many others are BitNami users.

As for me, while I enjoyed the BitNami+WordPress+EC2 experience and putting this post together; with a full-time job, part-time blogging, and 3 kids, I just don’t have the bandwidth to work through the necessary fine tuning; after all, I have many more Cloud solutions to research and dozens of posts to write.

Full Disclosure: BitNami offered to host my blog free for a year if I wrote a review (either positive or negative). I have not taken them up on their offer (the free hosting that is), but may in the future – if I ever find the time.

-Tune The Future with WordPress.org on EC2-

-Tune The Future on WordPress.com-

-Tune The Future on Ulitzer-

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