Posts Tagged ‘MWD’

It’s time to start framing a Cloud Computing strategy. Are you ready?

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

It’s easy to dismiss Cloud Computing as just another IT industry hype bubble that will one day burst, showering everyone in a slightly stale-smelling mist. Certainly, as with all waves of technology advancement, there’s been an *awful* lot of hype about the potential and – just like any other technology advancement – Cloud Computing offers no silver bullet for anyone’s IT investment or management woes.

Nevertheless our research (including a survey of 350+ IT architects in 9/09) shows that many organisations are dipping their toes in the Cloud (if that’s not a heinous non-sequitur) and they are seeing success. What’s also interesting is that some of the most eager proponents of Cloud Computing and Cloud-based application use aren’t in those industries which are typically at the leading edge of technology adoption (financial services, telecom); they’re in industries like media, retail, utilities, pharma which are more generally thought of as conservative investors in IT. This is because Cloud Computing is not a model of technology ownership – it’s a model of service delivery and consumption.

2010 will see every major IT vendor and service provider moving to offer or enable Cloud-based infrastructure and services. You need to be prepared to reap the potential benefits while managing the potential risks – and this means having a solid awareness of how Cloud Computing concepts fit into the rest of your existing IT investment portfolio. Only then can you chart a course that makes sense for you (and which won’t be driven by the proprietary interests of one or more IT suppliers).

Here’s some questions to think about that can help you frame a strategy:

  • What are the ways that Cloud Computing can deliver value, and in what kinds of scenario? How does the value of a “private Cloud” relate to the value of a “public Cloud”?
  • How is Cloud Computing really related to SaaS? What does this mean for me if I’m considering using the Cloud as a strategic source of IT services? Where does SaaS make most sense?
  • What are the tradeoffs that I’ll experience on choosing a Cloud Computing platform, and what will be the downstream effects?
  • What’s the real story with security in a Cloud Computing environment? Is the security issue a show-stopper?

With all this in mind, yesterday we launched a two-part online event designed to help enterprises frame a Cloud Computing strategy. It’s made up of two on-demand webinars which you can view at any time – and it’s completely free of charge (you just need to register for Guest Pass access to our site first – which also gives you access to a big chunk of our research library for free, too).

The event is sponsored by Google Enterprise – and we’re very grateful for their support. Nevertheless we designed and created the content without any input from Google – it’s a completely independent piece of work.

We’d love to hear what you think of this event. We’re currently exploring a number of options regarding holding future events like this, so your feedback is crucially important to us. Once you’ve viewed the content you can provide feedback right from the event home page – or alternatively leave us a comment below!

links for 2010-02-05

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

links for 2010-01-27

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

links for 2010-01-26

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

links for 2010-01-07

Friday, January 8th, 2010

links for 2010-01-06

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

When BPM and Collaboration collide: now available

Monday, December 14th, 2009

A few days ago I trailed our Guest Pass webinar on the topic “When BPM and Collaboration collide“. As promised, the webinar is now available for access. Just make sure you’re signed in with your Guest Pass credentials and you’ll be good to go. (You’ll need to ensure that Flash is installed and enabled in your browser).

Although it’s an on-demand webinar, we’d be very happy to receive any questions you might have – we’ll do our best to respond to them all.

This is the first time we’ve done a research webinar ourselves using this technology, and we’re really pleased with how it’s turned out. We really hope you enjoy it! We’re likely to do more of these in 2010, so your feedback is very welcome if you have any…

Fun with logos

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Out of the blue, I got an email from one of MWD’s friends. They’d been playing around with a few idle moments and an interest in learning a graphics tool, so they’d set about having some fun with our logo.

This was far and away my favourite!

MWDAdvisory

As someone who first saw stickers a bit like this on CDs (woah, remember them?) in the late 1980s like Appetite For Destruction and Straight Outta Compton – it just made me smile… perhaps it’s about time we started offending some people ;-)

links for 2009-12-09

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Free MWD webinar: When BPM and Collaboration collide

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Are you interested in developments in BPM and/or collaboration? Perhaps you’re engaged in initiatives in one or both of these areas, or you’re interested in understanding how these elements of the IT industry are shifting… if so, would you like an early Christmas present?

OK, it’s not exactly in the same league as a bottle of your favourite whisky, a must-have high-fashion piece or a day at Gleneagles, but it’s not in the league of bad socks either…

As our lead analyst on the topic of BPM I’ve been busy working behind the scenes with our lead Collaboration analyst Angela Ashenden (see her excellent Collaboration blog) on a theme of research that we’ll be developing and delivering throughout 2010, looking at how the worlds of Business Process Management and Collaboration are coming together. We’re finding that this is a topic with a lot of interest and resonance within our existing client base and we think it’ll continue to be a vital consideration through 2010 and beyond.

Our first deliverable is a freely-available webinar, open to all, called “When BPM and Collaboration collide”. It’ll be 25-30 minutes long and will provide an overview of the related topics of Social, Collaborative and Dynamic BPM. In it we’ll:

  • highlight the synergies between collaboration technologies and today’s BPM programmes
  • look at the main drivers for interest in these synergies and why these topics are so important now
  • look at what the business value of combining these two technology areas looks like
  • look at the potential of new developments in the market and show how opportunities are likely to develop over the next 12 months.

The webinar will be available on-demand from next Monday, but we don’t want this to be a one-way broadcast. Once you’ve viewed the webinar, we’d be very happy indeed to receive your questions and we’ll do our very best to answer them all – we’ll provide details of how you can submit questions at the end of the presentation.

All you need to do to access the webinar from Monday Dec 14th is to make sure you sign up for (free) Guest Pass access to our site, if you’re not already registered. If you’d like us to send you a link to the webinar on Monday just email us in advance; alternatively, look out for an update on this blog on Monday – I’ll provide the link then.

We hope you find the webinar useful – and please feel free to tell your friends!