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 »

The topic of building effective channel alliances in the Cloud continues to gain greater attention. This past week, I spoke at two events and attended a third in the Boston area in which Cloud channel strategies and solutions were a central theme.

The first event was a local gathering called, “Mondays in the Cloud”, organized by Sonian and hosted at the UMass-Boston Venture Development Center. The session was kicked off by Greg Arnette, Sonian’s Founder and CTO, who provided his perspective on the state of the Cloud marketplace. I followed Greg with a talk about the Cloud industry trends driving the demand for a stronger channel network to build on the initial success of Cloud services. My talk was followed by Erik Sebesta of cloudTP who talked about how Cloud integration services companies like his are becoming an important channel to market for Cloud vendors seeking to sell private … Read More »

I’ve had the privilege of publishing my point of view on Sandhill.com regarding two of the blockbuster announcements over the past week,

Will Google’s Purchase of Motorola Be a Path to Greater Android Success or Pandora’s Box?
HP’s Software Transformation Cloudy without Consumer Channel to Market

Yesterday’s NY Times included a good article discussing the new challenges facing Google as it enters the smartphone business, echoing my concerns with this terrific quote,

“When Google decides to evict a small Web publisher from its ad service, it sends a computer-generated form letter with the bad news. It says the Web site “poses a risk of generating invalid activity.” Why, the publisher might ask? You will never find out from Google. The only appeal is to fill out a Web form. Good luck. You can’t talk to an algorithm.”

There was also a seminal commentary by Marc … 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 »