On November 11, 2009, in Sunnyvale at NetApp, the Asssociation of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) held this month’s event on Clouds.
Dave Nielsen of Platform D gave the keynote on what he thinks the cloud computing is. Basically it is a software service you pay for only when you use it. The old headaches of IT become irrelevant to users. Operating systems are less important as their installations are automated and becoming mere application dependencies. Virtualization provides new platforms in the cloud, sitting above physical servers but beneath operating systems and applications. These hypervisors will cause massive disruption as they run on easy-to-use, highly-scalable, commodity platforms. It will create new opportunities for those who figure out a smarter way to deliver services. It will also cause a slow and painful decline in market share for those who ignore it.
Randy Bias of Cloudscaling moderated panelists Nimma Bakshi of PwC, Wally MacDermid of NetApp and Mark Trang of Salesforce.com. They discussed whether the cloud was real, how it works, what the standards are, the market opportunities, who are the players, and how to make alliances. Learn the relationships between Web as a Service (WaaS), Software as a Service, (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Start now. Do your research and start with a small project. It should be something that you need but can’t get done internally through traditional channels. If it works, roll it out.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.