THINK IT Services Blog
Worry About Your SaaS, Not Your IaaS
28th July
A combination of macro-market forces is driving companies of all sizes to adopt Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to better support their employees, serve their customers and coordinate with their business partners. These forces are also attracting a proliferation of players and creating intense competition which makes it increasingly important for SaaS vendors to focus on their core competency – creating clearly differentiated software solutions – rather than deal with the complexities of managing their own service delivery infrastructures in a highly volatile marketplace.
Click here to read my recent blogpost, published on behalf of Rackspace, that outlines why SaaS companies should partner with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers to handle their service delivery requirements so they can focus on their core business of developing and marketing successful SaaS solutions.
The Next Enterprise Wave is Consumerization of Cloud Storage
28th July
One of the major trends transforming how hardware and software is acquired and utilized is the ‘consumerization of IT’. This trend has changed how technologies and business applications are designed and delivered, and it is now reshaping how storage solutions are architected and administered in the Cloud, according to a recent Gartner report.
Click here to read my contributed blogpost for Symform, a Cloud Storage Network Service provider, which discusses how this consumerization trend will impact enterprise storage management strategies and solutions.
iCIMS Wins THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace Award
23rd July
THINKstrategies announced today that iCIMS has been named the winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards. This program is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
The BoSS Awards are part of an ongoing program in THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace and recognize SaaS companies producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.
The iCIMS Talent Platform provides an easy-to-use, web-based talent acquisition solution that allows organizations to manage everything from sourcing, to recruitment, to onboarding all within one streamlined application. Companies that implement iCIMS HR software can significantly reduce the time-to-hire and cost-per-hire of new employees. Users are able to centralize, store, and track applicant profiles, jobs, and workflows, dramatically streamlining HR operations. The iCIMS Platform is … Read More »
Newvem Offers Advice to AWS Users In Midst of Major Outage
7th July
Well, it turns out the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage I referred to in my previous blog entry was more significant than originally reported.
The initial issues being suffered by AWS last Friday were compounded by the severe weather which hit the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states later that day. The impact of the outage has also been more widespread than just a small number of Cloud companies, as indicated by this New York Times article which discusses the broader effects on a diverse cross-section of companies and consumers.
The outage also came shortly after Gartner announced that it expects Cloud storage services to experience exponential growth over the next 3-4 years,
“The desire to share content and to access it on multiple devices will motivate consumers to start storing a third of their digital content in the cloud by 2016, [up from] just … Read More »
Measuring the Costs and Mitigating the Risks of Cloud Downtime
29th June
Today’s brief disruption of Amazon Web Services (AWS) coming on the heels of last week’s longer outage may have been minor in comparison to the extended problems which occurred last year, but they will still spark a new round of debate regarding the reliability of Cloud services and relative costs of downtime. These issues will also bring renewed attention to preventive measures IT folks can take to handle Cloud service disruptions of any scale.
By coincidence, around the same time that AWS suffered its outage, the International Working Group on Cloud Computing Resiliency (IWGCR) released its first Availability Ranking of World Cloud Computing (ARWC) report which stated that,
“The average unavailability of Cloud services is estimated to 10 hours per year or more. Average availability is estimated to 99.9% or less.”
The IWGCR’s estimation method relies on public press reports of Cloud incidents. … Read More »
Enrollment Rx Wins THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award
7th June
THINKstrategies announced today that Enrollment Rx has been named the winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards. This program is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
The BoSS Awards are part of an ongoing THINKstrategies Cloud Computing Showplace campaign to recognize SaaS companies producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.
Enrollment Rx provides cloud-based solutions on the Salesforce.com Force.com platform specifically to satisfy the constituent relationship management and student information system needs of higher education institutions. To help higher education customers streamline day-to-day business processes and manage the student lifecycle, Enrollment Rx offers a full suite of products:
Enrollment Rx – Enrollment Management in the Cloud
Placement Rx – Career Services Management in the Cloud
Alumni Rx – Alumni … Read More »
Cloud Analytics Summit Highlights, Speaker Interviews and Session Videos Now Available Online
3rd June
We’ve posted a new highlight video of the Cloud Analytics Summit, along with the recordings of all the presentations and panel sessions on the Agenda page of the Summit website.
You can also click here to view over thirty (30), one-on-one interviews with each of the Summit speakers, produced by DreamSimplicity, and find a number of testimonials from a cross-section of speakers, sponsors and attendees who found the Summit valuable and worthwhile.
We are very pleased that the Cloud Analytics Summit was able to bring together many of the leading innovators — both vendors and CIOs — to discuss how the Cloud is redefining business intelligence (BI), data integration and Big Data.
Because of a combination of factors, we have decided to forgo the second of our 2012 Cloud Innovators Summit series, the Cloud Management Summit, on Tuesday, June 19, and focus our energies … Read More »
Cloud Analytics Summit Presentations, Speaker Interviews and Testimonials Now Available
14th May
You can find video recordings of all the presentations and panel sessions from last month’s Cloud Analytics Summit on the Agenda page of the executive forum website. So, if you missed the event or want another opportunity to hear some of the insights from the Summit, click here to watch and listen to the sessions.
You can also click here to view over thirty (30), one-on-one interviews with each of the Summit speakers, produced by DreamSimplicity.
We have also posted a number of testimonials from a cross-section of speakers, sponsors and attendees who found the Summit valuable and worthwhile.
As you’ll see, the Cloud Analytics Summit brought together many of the leading innovators — both vendors and CIOs — to discuss how the Cloud is redefining business intelligence (BI), data integration and Big Data. It not only produced a lot of positive feedback, but … Read More »
Aryaka Wins THINKstrategies' Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award
14th May
THINKstrategies announced today that Aryaka has been named the winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards. This program is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
The BoSS Awards are part of an ongoing THINKstrategies Cloud Computing Showplace campaign to recognize SaaS companies producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.
Aryaka provides a Cloud-based WAN optimization as-a-service solution to address application and network performance issues faced by distributed enterprises. Aryaka eliminates the need for expensive and complex appliances, as well as long-haul connectivity and enhances collaboration across locations. It offers significant cost, ease-of-use and performance advantages, helping global companies achieve dramatic productivity gains and increased visibility into their WAN applications.
Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which Aryaka has … Read More »
Taking a Look at Cloud Management Trends
12th May
Now that the idea of Cloud Computing has become generally understood, the discussion about this concept has shifted from “what” and “why”, to where, when and how.
This is bringing greater attention to questions about how to best manage hybrid Cloud environments, which is the focus of the second of THINKstrategies’ series of Cloud Innovators Summits, the Cloud Management Summit on June 19.
In anticipation of that event, I’ve discussed today’s rapidly evolving Cloud management technologies and techniques in my most recent commentaries in these online publications,
IT Services Blog: Cloud-Based Analytic Tools Can Improve IT/Application Performance, 05/11/12
E-Commerce Times: Cloud Management Keys to Success, 05/11/12
