I’m pleased to announce that IBM’s Vice President of Big Data Products, Anjul Bhambhri, has agreed to be a keynote speaker at the Cloud Analytics Summit on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The purpose of the Cloud Analytics Summit is to provide a forum for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Cloud solutions aimed at addressing their business intelligence (BI) and analytics needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their systems and applications into a more productive enterprise-wide resource to satisfy their business requirements.

Anjul recently provided her perspective in Forbes about the growing importance of the Data Scientist in the business environment. At the Cloud Analytics Summit, she will discuss, “Smarter Decision-Making: Leverage Big Data to Gain New Actionable Insights”.

Prior to assuming her current responsibilities, Anjul was the Director of IBM Optim application and data life … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that SalesFUSION 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.

SalesFUSION offers an integrated, Cloud-based SaaS marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) solution designed to automate the entire lead to sales process. SalesFUSION 360 is specifically designed to help clients improve their top-line revenue by providing the tools marketers need in today’s competitive environment and helping customers integrate their marketing campaigns with their CRM systems.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits SalesFUSION is delivering to … Read More »

Recognizing that many CIOs in mid-size and large-scale enterprises are facing severe budgetary constraints, but are increasingly interested in today’s rapidly evolving Cloud analytics and management alternatives, THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media are offering complimentary guest passes to our 2012 Cloud Analytics and Cloud Management Summits.

The complimentary Summit registrations are available on a first-come, first-served basis to qualified CIOs, IT managers, and other corporate decision-makers who apply for the special admission to the Cloud Analytics and Management Summit executive forums. Others who do not qualify for the complimenary quest passes can take advantage of early bird registration discounts.

The Cloud Analytics Summit, on Wednesday, April 25, will provide a unique opportunity for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions aimed at addressing their business intelligence (BI) needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their … Read More »

A growing number of innovative CIOs and other influential corporate executives have agreed to speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit, hosted by THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The corporate executives who have agreed to speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit to date include:

Jane Griffin, Americas Leader of Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Analytics Practice
Ju-kay Kwek, Product Manager of Google’s Big Data Initiative
Ken Rudin, VP Analytics & Platform Technologies, Zynga
Doug Harr, CIO, Splunk
David Roth, CEO/Co-Founder, AppFirst
Lonnie Wills, CEO/Co-Founder, CloudTrigger
Joseph Szmadzinski, CEO, IT Management Resources
Chor-Ching Fan, Senior Director of Analytics Product Management, LogiXML
Russell Hertzberg, VP SaaS and ISV Solutions, SoftServe
Chuck DeVita, Founder, Growth Process Group

The Summit is also attracting a diverse set of sponsors and partners supporting the event. The Summit sponsors include AppFirst, CloudTrigger, Host Analytics, LogiXML and SoftServe, with many more expected to sign up as … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Attendance On Demand has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Showplace which recognizes SaaS companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits can include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

Attendance on Demand is a Cloud-based employee time and attendance service which supports the labor management needs of thousands of companies and over a quarter million employees across North America. Launched in 2006, Attendance on Demand minimizes a company’s risk and technology investment while providing advanced features for … Read More »

Zynga’s Vice President of Analytics and Platform Technologies, Ken Rudin, has agreed to be a presenter at the Cloud Analytics Summit hosted by THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The purpose of the Cloud Analytics Summit is to provide a forum for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Cloud solutions aimed at addressing their business intelligence (BI) and analytics needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their systems and applications into a more productive enterprise-wide resource to satisfy their business requirements.

Ken will participate in a panel session entitled, “Redefining BI & Analytics in the Cloud”, with Doug Harr, the CIO at Splunk.

Ken is responsible for managing Zynga’s massive analytics platform and generating key insights that drive Zynga’s strategy, and delivering key social, communication, and personalization technologies which act as the foundation … Read More »

Today’s news of the merger of Cloud Sherpas and GlobalOne not only adds a major new player to the rapidly growing Cloud consulting world, but also shows that there are plenty of new business opportunities for consulting and other value-added service providers in the Cloud.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Cloud Sherpas, it is one the largest consultancies focused exclusively on helping organizations adopt Google Apps and was recently named the Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year. (Disclosure: I did a webinar in 2011 on behalf of Exoprise in conjunction with Cloud Sherpas.) GlobalOne has been quietly building a multinational consulting practice focused on salesforce.com, and is a salesforce.com platinum consulting partner.

The newly merged companies will adopt the Cloud Sherpas name, and will boast nearly 300 employees in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific (APAC) region working out of … Read More »

The recent outage of Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has reopened a persistent question about the reliability of Cloud services.

Microsoft’s most recent service disruption is just the latest evidence that Cloud alternatives are not immune to problems. Last year’s Amazon Web Services debacle was far worse and lasted much longer.

Yet, overall the uptime record of all the major Cloud service providers is far greater than most enterprise data centers. And, the leading Cloud vendors are generally better at keeping their customers informed about the status of their services than inhouse IT departments have been.

But, no service provider can achieve 100% uptime. Therefore, it is important for IT and corporate decision-makers to fully understand the potential pitfalls and put in place a series of back-up and recovery capabilities to minimize the short-term and long-term impact on their business.

The vulnerabilities associated with … Read More »

I’m pleased to announce that Jane Griffin, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP responsible for leading the firm’s Analytics practice, will speak at the Cloud Analytics Summit on Wednesday, April 25 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

The goal of the Cloud Analytics Summit is to provide a meeting place for corporate decision-makers to learn about the latest Cloud solutions aimed at addressing their BI and analytics needs, so they can harness their ‘Big Data’ sources, and integrate their systems and applications into a more productive enterprise-wide resource to satisfy their corporate requirements.

Jane’s keynote will discuss, “Capitalizing on Cloud Analytics to Harness Big Data, Social Media and Mobility”. Her perspective on this important topic is based on more than 30 years of information technology experience focused on information management, business intelligence, data warehousing and master data management.

As Americas Leader of Deloitte Analytics, Jane brings her vast experience to help … Read More »

I’m very pleased to announce that THINKstrategies’ Cloud Computing Showplace now includes over 1900 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) companies, including Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Technology Enablement Vendors, divided into over 90 Application, Industry, Service and Enabling Technology categories. 

THINKstrategies has been helping clients capitalize ‘on-demand’ services since 2001, and created the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Managed Services Showplace directories and resource centers in 2006, which we merged together in 2011 to form the Cloud Computing Showplace.

Today, the Cloud Computing Showplace provides a clearinghouse of company information and industry insights regarding the rapidly expanding array of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions. Visitors can find a list of the latest Cloud vendors which have added their company information to the Showplace right on the homepage, along with a real-time tally of the total number of companies listed in the directory. We also have plenty of statistics regarding the number of companies listed by application, industry, region and … Read More »