Survey Says: Hybrid Approach to Cloud Offers Best-of-Both-Worlds

ThinkGig

With so much hype surrounding cloud, we love to see some real data. According to a recent online poll of business and IT leaders conducted by IDG Research Services, almost all enterprises have adopted or are planning to adopt a hybrid cloud model for at least a portion of their computer applications. Makes sense, right? It certainly seems like a good deal to get the best-of-both-worlds, but it brings us to a critical question: how do you deal with separate internal and public infrastructures?

Security is obviously a top concern when it comes to cloud adoption plans. After all, what CIO wouldn’t worry about a threat in a public environment spilling over into his enterprise network? Plus, couldn’t this bring about additional complexities?

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New Age for the Sales Process

ThinkGig

The enterprise buying process is broken. And I suggest both customers and providers need to work at fixing it.

Let me back up and explain. The all-too-common traditional process that is no longer working typically looks like this: Customer has a need, finds providers that sell a product to fulfill that need, and then selects a solution based on price or a mixture of price and feature/functionality.

What I am proposing is that we take a more transparent and collaborative approach to the buying process. Something that would look like this: Customer talks to provider about what they are looking to do with their business (change in technology, new apps, outsourcing, etc.) and also shares critical things like business challenges, their forecasted growth and their current infrastructure environment. The provider then proposes possible solutions based on a holistic view and customer selects the one that works best for them.

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What’s in it for Me? Varying Perspectives on Cloud Computing

ThinkGig

During our cloud computing roundtable series we’ve covered a variety of topics from the technical benefits of cloud to the business risks. This range of topics brings us to an important point: the cloud discussion is very different for the business professional than it is for the IT professional.

In our final expert roundtable, we explore this dynamic. For the business person, cloud represents an opportunity to drive profitability, growth and product development. For the IT professional, the cloud represents a way to drive greater efficiencies, offload resources and ultimately provide another tool in the IT toolkit to support the business.

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