Hiding Behind the Cloud

A while ago I wrote about Cloud 2.0 and the rapid evolution of the Cloud to incorporate Web 2.0 social networking functionality. The term Cloud 2.0 was coined by Mark Beinhoff when he described the Chatter product SalesForce.com is developing. Cisco have followed this path with the release of Quad.

Quad is a product that lets employees create and manage personal profiles, build virtual communities and collaborate on any type of digital content. Surely this is what Facebook does ? Yes it is. So Quad can be considered as a Facebook for the Enterprise. This has value as any organisation using Facebook knows that they do not own the content that is posted to Facebook, a vital commercial consideration.

So why am I commenting on Quad on a blog focused on Cloud Computing? The reason is that Cisco is marketing Quad as a Cloud Computing solution. The kind of things being mentioned are that the initial release of Quad is for large enterprises running Private Clouds but there will be a Public Cloud Quad service available for small and medium businesses soon.

It is clear that Quad appears to be a tremendous software product that has the potential to be of significant benefit to all types of organisations. Is it a Cloud Computing product? – potentially. Many factors need to be considered such as the sales model, scalability, security, administration that can distinguish a Cloud product from a standard software product. There is no doubt that the Cloud is gaining significant positive publicity, and rightly so. As a result, to gain a competitive advantage, organisations will use Cloud Computing in their marketing materials. To fully understand these marketing materials now requires an understanding of Cloud computing. You can rapidly acquire this understanding, and how to make sense of vendors products by attending Learning Tree’s Cloud Computing course, or if you are time constrained an overview from the high paced half day Cloud Computing overview. You may also be interested in a White Paper on Cloud Computing I recently wrote.

Chris

Cloud 2.0 : The Rapid Evolution of the Cloud

When the internet boom came along in the mid nineties a common phrase used was Internet time, referring to the speed at which the Internet was developing and the rate at which organizations had to move to maintain competitive advantage. Ten years later the phrase Web 2.0 emerged as a term encompassing the new social Web applications that were being developed such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

One of the advantages cloud computing offers organizations is the ability to move quickly – rapidly provisioning infrastructure and platforms as well as instantaneous access to applications. It is interesting therefore to see the term Cloud 2.0 being used now barely two years after cloud computing emerging as the next revolutionary evolution in computing.

So what exactly is cloud 2.0 ? It is a term that really applies to software and platforms rather than infrastructure as a service. Salesforce.com are using the term and it represents the next stage in the development of their cloud based applications. The first stage of the cloud delivery model, software as a service(SaaS), is providing access to applications with similar functionality to desktop applications but hosted in the cloud with the advantages that brings (access anywhere, scalable, etc). This has proved incredibly successful already. This type of software service is termed cloud 1.0.

The term cloud 2.0 describes SaaS that integrates Web 2.0 social networking features and functionality into cloud based applications. An example of this is Chatter from Salesforce.com which provides a twitter type facility to the Salesforce.com CRM application suite. A key feature here is collaboration and sharing of information between users in real-time for business benefit.

Salesforce.com have also made these features available in their PaaS, Force.com. The recent acquisition of Jigsaw by Salesforce.com adds further Web 2.0 functionality to their cloud platform. Jigsaw is a software service delivering business contact information.

So whilst many companies are evaluating the cloud and considering adopting the cloud, the pioneers have already developed and offering the second generation of cloud products. Its exciting times in the cloud world ! If you need a jumpstart into what the cloud can offer why not consider taking an effective training course that will provide you a hands-on pragmatic view of the state of the art.

Chris