The concept of “shared services” has been bandied about the IT industry for over 50 years. Yet, past iterations of this concept have often failed to meet the needs of corporate executives and end-users from a functional and economic standpoint.

This is because previous generations of shared services were too often built upon cumbersome and costly systems and software which could not scale to give corporate customers greater cost advantages or added features than they could gain from optimized inhouse resources. As a result, only highly specialized shared services, such as payroll processing and basic hosting, prospered in the past.

I was recently prompted to think about what sets today’s Cloud services apart from past versions of shared services when I was interviewed for a SearchCIO article.

Today’s rapidly evolving Cloud services are permitting a growing number of mid-size and large-scale enterprises to gain … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that independenceIT 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.

independenceIT (iIT) enables organizations to rapidly transition from traditional, on-premise IT to realize the cost savings and operational advantages of the Cloud. iIT gives users secure, high-performance access to systems, applications and data from any Internet-connected device. iIT also provides supplementary IT processes such as automatic applications upgrades, maintenance, data security, backup and recovery with SSAE 16 security compliant process controls and infrastructure. iIT provides a centralized platform for managing multiple locations … Read More »

If you don’t subscribe to my newsletter updates, you may have missed the recent Strategic Thinking profiles which were published by THINKstrategies over the last few months. Here’s a quick list with links to where you can find the profiles posted:

Attivo: The explosive growth of data, which is very often core to the value of today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud-based applications, is becoming an increasingly difficult issue for SaaS/Cloud vendors to economically manage to meet the escalating needs of their customers. This profile details how Attivio’s UIA platform has become increasingly attractive to SaaS/Cloud vendors seeking to keep pace with users’ escalating data access requirements.
Dell-Boomi: As Cloud-based, SaaS business applications become more popular, the demand for more powerful, yet easy-to-use, integration solutions is also growing. Today’s integration solutions must not only tie together a rapidly expanding array of SaaS apps, but also … Read More »

This is the time of year when we reflect on the year past and year to come.

I provided a scorecard of my past year’s predictions which I published a year ago in E-Commerce Times in my previous blogpost.

I’ve been given the privilege of publishing this year’s predictions for 2012 in Datamation. I hope you like them and they serve as a guide for leveraging the unprecedented businesss opportunities created by today’s exciting new Cloud innovations.

Based on the success of THINKstrategies’ Cloud Channel Summit this past November, we are not only planning to have another one next November, but also plan to host two new events in 2012. We’ve announced that one of the new events will focus on Cloud Analytics. We will announce the focus of the other new event in early January. All of these events will be one-day forums for … Read More »

If you are like me, you’ll probably spend some of the downtime during the upcoming holiday week catching up on a pile of reading which you didn’t get a chance to digest over the past few weeks (months?) because of daily distractions such as work, family, survival, etc.

If you have spare time to read more of my perspectives regarding important industry trends which are impacting businesses of all sizes across nearly every industry, here are my recent writings from other online outlets since my last listing of commentaries regarding channel issues related to our Cloud Channel Summit back in November:

Internet Evolution: Human Capital Management Heads Cloudward, 12/21/11 
Datamation: Cloud Computing: Show Me the Analytics, 12/12/11 
E-Commerce Times: Standing Out in the Clouds, 12/09/11 
Internet Evolution: Big IT Vendors Try Buying Their Way Into Cloud, 12/06/11 
Internet Evolution: Why Google May Not Win in the Enterprise, 11/22/11 
Sandhill.com: Market … Read More »

Despite some skepticism from industry analysts about the ability of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors to deliver viable business intelligence (BI) solutions a few years ago, today’s Cloud-based analytic tools are increasingly demonstrating that they can quickly generate tangible benefits to organizations of all sizes, especially mid-market companies.

The growing interest in Cloud-based analytics is easy to understand given the escalating pressures facing businesses contending with rising customer expectations and intensifying competitive. Businesses not only have to synthesize a widening array of internal and external data sources, they must also make timely and useful analysis available to an increasingly dispersed workforce so they can make better day-to-day business decisions.

The Cloud is the perfect enablement platform for analytic tools to respond to these demands. THINKstrategies sees the Cloud responding in three ways.

First, every leading Cloud solution includes a basic set of analytic tools to satisfy … Read More »

A year ago, I published a series of 10 predictions regarding how the Cloud Computing marketplace would evolve in 2011 in E-Commerce Times. Here’s a recap and assessment of my predictions:

The Cloud Computing market will grow more rapidly than analyst firms forecast as organizations move from asking “what is Cloud and why is it important” to “where and how can I capitalize on the Cloud today.”

I think I did ok on this one, although there remain plenty of organizations who are still trying to define the Cloud and determine why they should seriously consider employing it.

This accelerated growth will occur despite a major cloud computing service disruptions and/or significant security infractions, which will heighten customer concerns but won’t discourage wider adoption.

This certainly was the case as we watched Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) crash, jeopardizing numerous start-ups and other companies dependent on its Cloud … Read More »

Despite numerous market research forecasts predicting that small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) would be in the vanguard of adopting today’s rapidly expanding array of Cloud-based services, the truth is that most mid-sized businesses have been slow to join the migration to these ‘on-demand’ alternatives.

In too many cases, it has been hesitancy or even overt resistance among IT decision-makers within mid-sized businesses which has let to these organizations staying away from Cloud services.

THINKstrategies believes there are 5 reasons why it’s time for CIOs in mid-sized businesses to move to the Cloud,

It’s Safe: Too many IT decision-makers in mid-sized businesses continue to be afraid of the perceived security, reliability and performance risks associated with the Cloud. The fact is that the leading Cloud service providers have more stringent security precautions in place and far higher uptime records than most mid-sized businesses can boast. 
Your … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Skire Unifier 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.

Skire Unifier is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for managing capital projects, facilities and real estate. Skire’s Unifier system has managed over $300 billion in capital projects and over 3 billion square feet of facilities and real estate.

Click here to read about the customer success stories in which Skire Unifier delivered measurable business benefits which earned it the latest BoSS Award.

For more information about the rules for applying … Read More »

Ten years ago this month, I launched THINKstrategies as a strategic consulting firm with the singular mission to help IT solution providers, corporate decision-makers, and venture investors capitalize on the transformation of the software and technology industry from a product-centric to a services-driven business model.

At that time, the industry was recovering from the Dot.com bust, and the world was coming to grips with the devastation of 9/11. 

Ten years ago, the hot ideas were application service providers (ASPs) and utility computing. Those ideas have morphed into Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing which have not only transformed the software and technology industry, but have fundamentally changed the way organizations acquire and utilize business applications and computing power. 

I’m proud to have been one of the first to recognize the magnitude of this new market opportunity in 2006, when I published a commentary in BusinessWeek debunking the most common myths associated with SaaS.

THINKstrategies also founded two, … Read More »