Future Ready: The Business of Tomorrow - Today - Business Agility & Resp...

Participated on this panel at the Bloomberg / Dell conference at the fantastic Bloomberg offices in NYC.



In addition to the panel I was on, I really enjoyed the Michael Bloomberg / Michael Dell interview at the end of the event.

Cloud-first strategy

Nice interview on my cloud-first strategy on IBM THINK Exchange: https://www.think-exchange.com/pacesetters/yuvi-kochar…. Also like the graphic-effects on my picture!

My Interview on CIO Insight

Link to the article: Washington Post CTO Yuvi Kochar Wants Cloud Vendors to Give Him an Exit Strategy

My wide-ranging discussion with Jim Nash touches on where we are with the use of cloud services. We also talked about my strong desire to see the industry deliver more flexibility for us to make from one solution to the next. Integration, Vendor lock-in and security continue to top the list of things I worry about when I look at new SAAS solutions.

Cloud Forecast 2015 @ CIO Insight
I was interviewed by Tony Kontzer of CIO Insight for this article. We had a broad discussion about the state of cloud services and how services need to evolve in the areas of management, monitoring, portability and security.

TM Forum Management World Americas - Cloud Summit
I delivered a Summit Keynote at this conference on Nov 9, 2010: Lessons from an Early Cloud Adopter – How the Washington Post Company has Developed its Cloud Strategy

My talk is very well covered in David Carr's blog posting on Forbes.com.

Pic: Fall sunset scene I captured as I walked our dog.

My Podcast
I was recently interviewed by Peter High of Metis Strategy. We covered several topics that are front and center for me. I enjoyed my conversation with Peter a lot. Here is a link to the podcast. We discussed:

• Cloud Computing
  
• Collaboration (Enterprise 2.0) in a decentralized organization
• Leveraging the digital media environment
• Skills IT professionals need for the future
  
• The future of mobile technologies’ impact on media

I checked out a few other interesting podcasts on the Metis website.

SAAS is now mainstream
I was first introduced to SAAS (then ASP) when I joined Brassring (now Kenexa) in 2000. We were convinced that it was how Enterprise Software will be delivered in the future. Salesforce.com was leading the way. However, most ASPs grew much slower than anybody anticipated. Profitability was elusive and hard to attain.

I believe and Infoworld just validated that SAAS finally arrived in 2009. There is robust growth and one can find multiple feature rich products in most every functional area. My team integrated many new SAAS products with our PeopleSoft ERP last year. A small business starting does not need a single piece of on-premise application software.

SAAS LMS
I am currently looking for a "light" Learning Management Solution to deliver 4 courses once in 2 years. Obviously, I am taking an approach very similar to the one we used to support WhoRunsGov.com (link to my post). Obviously, implementation and ongoing cost is a big factor.

Besides several proprietary vendors, I have come across a couple of Open Source LMS solutions (Moodle and Sakai) that may fit the bill. I am looking for SAAS vendors who support these platforms.

Suggestions? Ideas? - Comment on this blog posting.

IBM - Resilient Cloud Validation program
Interesting news in Cloud Computing. The technology media is rife with this most recent IBM announcement (link to an article on GigaOM).

This sounds so 1970s. I am not sure if CIOs and tech-savvy business folks will wait for IBM to finish all their testing. Further, this is such a moving target. I may be proven wrong but I am not holding my decisions for the seal to appear on my service-provider's websites.

Big News @ Amazon Web Services
Amazon announced the release of Elastic Block Storage, persistent storage service for EC2. So, now, you can rent a complete server with attached storage at AWS. The storage will live even if you destroy the server. Here is a post from Jeff Barr describing the service. Another post by Amazon CTO, Werner Volgels.

Here is the GigaOM post where I first read about the service.

I wish these services were available when I was CTO at Brassring, a SaaS provider in the recruitment automation space.

Elastra - On Demand Applications in the cloud
One of my VC friends pointed me to Elastra. I think the idea of creating scripts to provision entire servers built up to the application tier in the cloud is v cool.

6 years ago, I used bladelogic (recently acquired by BMC) to manage server configurations. Elastra offers similar features in cloud computing. It makes cloud computing more accessible.

Here is review of Elastra on GigiOM.

UPDATE: I also like Rightscale - they compete with Elastra. Rightscale on GigaOM.

SAAS-Y
Having built a SAAS product, I can relate to the thoughts in this article: Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being “SaaS-y”.

Very Insightful and on the money!

Google AppEngine offers free Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing is the future of Infrastructure. Google, having built one of largest and most impressive computing infrastructures, is jumping in with an offer for developers to host their applications for free. Their solution is called AppEngine. The blogosphere is rife with predictions (GigaOm, TechCrunch) that Google will give existing services (Amazon Web Services, etc.) a run for their money. Time will tell if the features offered free will be sufficient.

The Washington Area CTO Roundtable (full disclosure: I am the President of this group) will discuss the topic at a sold out event at the end of this month.

The Big Switch - rewiring the world from Edison to Google
Just finished reading the latest book by Nick Carr (his blog), who revels in the thought that he is enemy #1 of us IT types. His article IT Doesn't Matter in 2003 and book Does IT matter? in 2004 made him very famous in IT circles.

He makes an interesting case that a significant move to cloud computing and to software as a service is leading us towards the creation of a World Wide Computer. He paints a relatively dark picture of the future where the World Wide Computer become smarter than humans. He also feels that instead of it being able to do what we humans can do, we will transform to behave and work more like how computers do.

The first part of the book describes the rise of computing as a utility. I fully agree with the belief that this is where we are headed. It is obvious that virtualization and services like Amazon S3 and EC2 are moving us in that direction. However, some very complex issues need to be resolved. The most important is that of the standardization of interfaces. Nick draws a lot of parralles from the evolution of electricity as a utility.

The second half paints a dark picture of the future. I have a hard time getting to where Nick expects us to reach by 2020.

All in all, the book made an interesting read while enjoying the wonderful weather on the beaches of St Martin.

SpiceWorks - Ad supported business software
Interesting company, primarily selling network management software to SMBs:

• sandhill.com article
• Infoworld article