The recent detailed Amazon earnings report finally put to rest many debates about whether Amazon Web Services, in particular, and the public Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market in general, are economically viable businesses.

Now that AWS’ revenues and profits have become public knowledge, you can expect the cloud computing market to grow at a faster pace.

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ views regarding the industry implications of AWS’ financial results on the Cloud marketplace in SearchAWS.

Rising competition and fading customer loyalty are compelling a growing number of companies to launch new digital initiatives, adopt the latest “omnichannel” marketing capabilities and become more “customer centric.” Making this move requires new technologies and new thinking, a combination that poses significant organizational problems for most businesses.

A great deal of today’s digital challenge is driven by the advent of mobile technologies and social applications, which enable customers to access information regarding competing products and services in new ways. In response, companies must develop new tactics to engage customers via multiple “channels.” This means companies must adjust the way they convey information about their products and services to fit a variety of mobile devices and use various methods to prompt customers to try or buy their offerings.

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ views in Sandhill.com regarding the challenges and opportunities facing enterprises undertaking … Read More »

I’ve long believed that we wouldn’t be talking about “Big Data” if it wasn’t for the ability of today’s cloud-based services to enable us to capture, store, analyze, and share the insights from the data more cost-effectively today than ever before. Yet, most organizations are still facing serious challenges trying to unlock the escalating volumes and variety of data being generated by social media, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other technological developments despite the rapid advancements in data analytics and business intelligence (BI).

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ perspectives in All Analytics regarding how a new generation of Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) BI and data analytics alternatives are overcoming these escalating challenges.

Now that cloud computing has made it economically feasible to capture and collate large volumes of data — that is, “big data” — many organizations are trying to find an equally economical method to analyze and move the data across various business applications.

The rapidly escalating demands for powerful analytic tools to decipher the meaning of old and new data streams are driving many organizations to invest millions of dollars in data scientists and expensive consulting services.

Click here to read my latest blogpost in E-Commerce Times which describes how two cloud-based companies, Algorithmia and Bedrock Data, are offering online marketplaces to remedy these age-old issues.

Everyone is talking about the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT), but few organizations are getting very far in capitalizing on the exciting new market opportunities created by IoT because they lack a designated executive leader responsible for spearheading their IoT initiatives. Capitalizing on current and future IoT opportunities depends on pulling together numerous technological components and assembling them to achieve a number of corporate objectives. This is a significant undertaking. It can require a technological supply-chain extending from remotely deployed sensors; numerous mobile, desktop and enterprise software applications; a variety of databases; and multiple cloud services.

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ views in Datamation about why enterprises should establish a new Chief IoT Officer position to lead their efforts in this rapidly growing marketplace.

Interest in and use of cloud services in general, and AWS in particular, has grown because they promise to be less expensive and easier to deploy than building out a traditional on-premises corporate data center.

However, as the variety of cloud services expands and the number of offerings increases, many organizations discover they need help selecting, implementing and effectively administering the right combination of cloud services to achieve business objectives and remain within budget.

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ latest commentary in SearchAWS about why we believe the proliferation of cloud services is driving more organizations to seek help from managed cloud service providers to help them make the right cloud choices and optimize the performance of their cloud services.

THINKstrategies’ Cloud Computing Showplace now has over 2500 company listings divided into over 90 market segments in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace.

Since we launched our original Showplace sites in 2007, THINKstrategies has been committed to providing valuable information and insight for:

IT/business decision-makers seeking to adopt today’s latest in ‘on-demand’ Cloud solutions;
Cloud providers seeking to promote their latest offerings;
Technology investors seeking to find the Cloud companies with the greatest market potential.

The Showplace now includes over 2500 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) companies divided into over 90 application, industry, technology and service categories.

The Cloud Showplace online directory and best practices resource center provides a wide array of primers, whitepapers, webinars, podcasts, commentaries and industry events.

Add your company information – If you’re a Cloud solution provider and aren’t already listed on the Showplace, click here to add your company to our online directory. You can also post your customer success … Read More »

Despite past predictions of the “disintermediation” of the channel due to the advent of the cloud, the opportunity to unlock big data and capitalize on the Internet of Things (IoT) via the cloud is actually creating plenty of new business possibilities for value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators (SIs) and other channel companies.

However, as in other segments of the IT industry, the biggest channel players face the toughest challenges responding to the rapidly changing cloud marketplace.

One major channel company that embraces the brave, new world of the IoT is Arrow Electronics. I recently attended the company’s IoT Immersions conference in Boston and was impressed with the format of the event, size of the turnout and vision of the company.

Read THINKstrategies’ perspectives regarding the market implications of Arrow Electronics’ IoT strategies and solutions in Sandhill.com at http://sandhill.com/article/how-arrow-electronics-is-channeling-iot-big-data-and-cloud-opportunities/.

The idea of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) has gained a lot of attention over the past year, but it’s impact on the IT function has not been fully recognized. Although every technology shift of the past has reshaped the IT function, none has fundamentally redefined the role of IT like the IoT will do over the coming years.

What sets IoT apart from the IT function of the past is that hardware and software is now being embedded into a company’s products and services to give the lines of business (LoBs) unprecedented insight into how their products and services are being used by customers so they can better serve current customers and develop new products/services to win new customers.

Click here to read THINKstrategies’ perspectives regarding the IT implications of this phenomenon in Datamation.

In my previous commentary in Sandhill.com, I identified four levels of value that can be derived from the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT). In THINKstrategies’ latest post in Sandhill.com, I provide a real-world example of how traditional product companies can redefine their business by capitalizing on the data produced by their products via the cloud.

en-Gauge Inc. is a family-owned business based in Rockland, Mass., which manufactures pressure gauges for safety devices such as fire extinguishers and defibrillators. Over the past 40 years since its founding, en-Gauge’s products evolved from mechanical gauges to digital gauges. The company recently introduced a new generation of sensor-based, cloud-connected gauges that will significantly change the nature of the company’s business.

Click here to read how en-Gauge’s move to the IoT via the Cloud is fundamentally changing the nature of the company’s business and exponentially expanding its addressable … Read More »