OpSource and the Virtual Computer Environment (VCE) Company announced an alliance today which will offer joint solutions aimed at helping service providers (xSPs) launch public cloud services more quickly. This joint initiative is the latest effort by various vendors to enable  xSPs to fulfill their promise as potent ‘cloud brokers’.

VCE is a joint venture formed by Cisco and EMC, with additional investments from VMware and Intel, to create a new generation of networking, storage, virtualization and management technologies to improve xSP infrastructure operations. VCE’s primary product is the Vblock™ Infrastructure Platform for virtualization, data processing, networking and storage capabilities in cloud computing environments.

In this new alliance, OpSource is adding its cloud orchestration software capabilities to VCE’s Vblock Platform to enable xSPs to handle the user sign-up, provisioning, metering, billing, and reporting requirements associated with cloud services. Together, OpSource and VCE’s combined solution promises to eliminate needless development costs, accelerate the service providers’ time … Read More »

NetworkWorld’s latest list of 10 SaaS companies to watch which was published yesterday, not only highlighted my perspectives regarding how Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is penetrating the IT organization, as well as the broader enterprise, it also highlighted three of  THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award winners and a couple of our consulting clients.

The BoSS winners on NetworkWorld’s ‘companies to watch’ list are Cloud9 Analytics, Host Analytics and LiveOps.

Our clients who made the list are CVMsolutions and Exoprise.

The list also includes Taleo, a leading SaaS-based human capital management (HCM) solutions company which THINKstrategies first profiled in 2005.

NetworkWorld’s list reflects the expanding footprint of the SaaS and broader array of Cloud Computing solutions into the IT management world. The list and a series of related articles also include numerous customer testimonials highlighting the tangible business benefits being derived from these solutions. The growing number of satisfied customers willing to … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Smartsheet.com 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.  

Smartsheet.com is a leading SaaS provider that delivers an intuitive, online project management and collaboration tool. With a familiar and easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interface coupled with file sharing and work automation features, Smartsheet.com is used by organizations worldwide to manage projects and tasks, operations, sales pipelines, events, marketing campaigns and other ‘crowdsourcing’ activities. 

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which have earned Smartsheet.com a BoSS Award.

Click here to read about previous … Read More »

THINKstrategies announced today that Innotas 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.

Innotas’ Cloud solutions for IT Management provide a unified approach to manage resources, applications and projects across the entire IT operation. Innotas provides Cloud-based project portfolio and application portfolio management solutions that enable CIOs and IT management to gain a 360° view across their strategic initiatives and ongoing operations that improves their decision-making capabilities.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which … Read More »

Client work, travel and family distractions have conspired to force me to neglect my blog over the past few weeks. And, more than a week of dreary weather in the Boston area hasn’t helped my energy levels.

It is impossible to devote enough time to disect all of the Cloud-related news which has occurred since my last post, but here are a few developments which caught my eye recently and illustrated many of the themes and topics I’ve written about over the past few weeks, months and years.

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) recent service disruptions are the latest example of the frailties of the Cloud, coming on the heals of Google’s own outages.   These incidents also illustrate the higher stakes which traditional software vendors must face as they try to transform into service providers, as I discussed in a 2009 blogpost. However, some of Microsoft’s Office users were spared serious downtime by the company’s … Read More »

Plenty of has been written about last week’s disruption of Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) which took hundreds of organizations offline, including many rapidly growing start-ups and evolving aspects of enterprise operations.

(The best I’ve read summarizing the questions raised and lessons to be learned as a result of the AWS outage was by my friend Phil Wainewright.)

After suggesting at the beginning of last week that recent issues surrounding Google could derail the rapid growth of Cloud Computing services, it is obvious that Amazon’s problems must be added to the list of sobering events which will certainly cause many entrepreneurs and enterprise decision-makers alike to re-think their Cloud strategies and deployment tactics.

Google’s support issues, combined with Amazon’s service availability problems, clearly make real two of the three greatest fears which IT and business decision-makers face when considering the widening array of Cloud alternatives. The third primal fear … Read More »

Cisco Systems’ decision this past week to shut down its Flip video camera business generated plenty of attention because of its implications on multiple levels for the networking company and the IT industry. Here are a few of my perspectives on the meaning of this event and the lessons to be learned.

Cisco deserves credit for the boldness of its acquisition of Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip camera, in 2009 and its equally brave decision to walk away from the over $590 million investment (acquisition, development and marketing costs) in a two year span. It had hoped to use the Flip camera and other home entertainment products as catalysts for additional consumer demand for its network connectivity capabilities and its service providers’ transmission services. Although Cisco didn’t sell as many Flip cameras as it hoped, it certainly can be credited to contributing the rise in video transmission … Read More »

The recent flurry of major vendor announcements regarding their new Cloud Computing initiatives, latest acquisitions and offerings clearly shows that the “Cloud Rush” is in high gear.

Here’s a quick list of the announcements which have caught my attention over the past few weeks in chronological order since HP unveiled its Cloud ‘vision’ last month, and my views regarding their significance,

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire newScale, 03/29/11  – Cisco Systems has been pushing into the ‘new data center’ environment for a while with its Unified Computing solutions. It acquired newScale to improve its provisioning capabilities to make it a more viable Cloud vendor for enterprise customers and service provider partners.
Salesforce.com to Acquire Radian6, 03/30/11  – Now that Salesforce.com has succeeded in popularizing its Chatter social networking capabilities, it wants to give its customers the necessary tools to monitor, manage and measure the effectiveness of these … Read More »

THINKstrategies, Inc., the leading strategic consulting company focused on the business implications of the on-demand services market, announced today that FinancialForce.com 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.

FinancialForce.com focuses entirely on building business applications on Force.com, the Cloud Computing platform from salesforce.com, including accounting, billing, professional services automation (PSA) and services resource planning (SRP). Its applications help fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. The company is a joint venture of UNIT4 and … Read More »

THINKstrategies, Inc.  announced today that TrackVia has been named the latest winner of THINKstrategies’ new Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s cloud computing solutions.

The CCBV Awards program was launched in 2010 to recognize Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers delivering tangible business benefits to specific user organizations. These benefits include lower costs, faster deployment times, greater profitability, etc.

TrackVia is a provider of an application development platform designed to make it easier for business users to build their own database-driven applications and avoid the backlogs which typically plague IT and traditional inhouse software development organizations.

Click here to read about the measurable business benefits which earned TrackVia THINKstrategies’ latest CCBV Award.

Click here to learn more about THINKstrategies’ CCBV Award program or to apply for an Award.

The CCBV Award program builds on the success of THINKstrategies’ Best of SaaS Showplace … Read More »