Evangelising development on any cloud computing or enterprise platform is challenging, costly and takes a unique skill set that can educate, persuade, sell and serve developers at the same time.

The companies who excel at this exude technical prowess and as a result earn and keep trust.  For cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform providers, getting developers, both at partner companies and at enterprise customers to build applications, is a critical catalyst for future growth.

Assessing Cloud Infrastructure as a Service Providers with Inquiry Analytics  

Using the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, 2012 published October 18, 2012 as the baseline and shown above from Rueven Cohen’s excellent post last year, the five leaders were compared using the Inquiry Analytics Statistics: Topic and Vendor Mind Share for Software, 4Q12 published March 13th of this year. 

Analysing the five leaders in the Magic Quadrant using Inquiry Analytics …

One of the most frequent questions we get on cloud computing is “When should a company move to the cloud?”  While there are numerous reasons to make the move, there are also certain events that minimize obstacles and objections. These are ” triggers” which greatly reduce the sales cycle for prospects considering cloud offerings. In no particular order:

1. Change in business size

As an elastic, utility-based service, cloud computing is ideal not just for growing companies, but ones that may be downsizing as well.   The on-demand nature of cloud services ensures that one can scale quickly and without additional investment. 

Companies in uncertain economic times are reluctant to make capital purchases or commit to large projects or financial obligations.  Through cloud computing, you can help these prospects leverage every advantage of newer technology without the downside of purchasing hardware and software that may sit idle in a business downturn. 

As …

During 2012 the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market experienced sluggish growth of just 2.2%, yet Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), financial management and Human Capital Management (HCM) applications showed potential for breakout growth.

Through the challenging times of the previous year however, SAP still retained worldwide market share leadership.  These and other insights were recently published in the recent report, Market Share Analysis: ERP Software Worldwide, 2012 authored by Chris Pang, Yanna Dharmasthira, Chad Eschinger, Koji Motoyoshi and Kenneth F. Brant.

Key Take-Aways

• Overall market growth of just 2.2% and the top ten vendors owning 64% of the worldwide ERP market is leading Gartner to predict further consolidation of the industry.
• SAP had just over $6B in total ERP software revenue in 2012, leading the worldwide market with 24.6% market share.  Oracle had $3.12B and Sage, $1.5B in software revenues for 2012 …

Roy Illsley, Principal Analyst, Ovum IT

The recent VMware Forum 2013 in London provided a platform for VMware EMEA chief technologist, Joe Baguley, to reveal how VMware is addressing the challenges of transforming IT to an as-a-service paradigm. This transformation is based on three key pillars.

First, it is about making the entire data center more agile, and the software-defined data center (SDDC) is the vehicle that VMware sees as being a major disruptive technology to enable the delivery of IT in this way. Second, it is about open standards to support the hybrid cloud. Finally, it is about the way in which customers access these services is changing.

For VMware this signals a shift from a virtual desktop policy to a multi-device strategy that supports the concept of enablement, not control. Ovum believes that this shift does not represent a radical rebirth for VMware, but instead is the result …

Tony Baer, Principal Analyst, Software – Enterprise Solutions

Actian, the vendor formerly known as Ingres, has suddenly put itself on the map through rapid-fire acquisitions of Pervasive Software, ParAccel, and Versant Software. The die was cast more than two years ago with its acquisition of Vectorwise, a fast, single-node analytic database.

Actian’s goal is to assemble a mini-stack that includes a data integration engine and different data platforms for different transactional and analytic use cases. With the acquisitions, Actian winds up with a mix of mature, maintenance-oriented businesses that can contribute cash flow towards developing emerging data platforms for harnessing Big Data.

While Actian has bought its way to a $150m business – big enough to be noticed – its challenge is building critical mass in at least one or two of its product segments.

Deep heritage

Actian, the outgrowth of the Ingres business, has been in search of a high-growth engine …

The best manufacturers I’ve visited this year all share a common attribute: they are obsessed with making themselves as easy as possible to work with from a supply chain, distribution and services standpoint.  Many are evaluating cloud-based manufacturing applications including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and several have adopted cloud-based applications across their companies.

With so much interest, there is much confusion as well.  I recently spoke with Cindy Jutras, founder and CEO of MintJutras.  Her firm has recently completed a survey of SaaS adoption in manufacturing, distribution and other industries.  She found the following:

• 49% of respondents in the manufacturing & distribution industries do not understand the difference between single- and multi-tenant SaaS architectures.  Overall 66% of respondents to the survey did not know.

• SaaS-based applications are 22% of all manufacturing and distribution software installed today, and will grow to 45% within ten years according to MintJutras.

• The three most …

The best manufacturers I’ve visited this year all share a common attribute: they are obsessed with making themselves as easy as possible to work with from a supply chain, distribution and services standpoint.  Many are evaluating cloud-based manufacturing applications including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and several have adopted cloud-based applications across their companies.

With so much interest, there is much confusion as well.  I recently spoke with Cindy Jutras, founder and CEO of MintJutras.  Her firm has recently completed a survey of SaaS adoption in manufacturing, distribution and other industries.  She found the following:

• 49% of respondents in the manufacturing & distribution industries do not understand the difference between single- and multi-tenant SaaS architectures.  Overall 66% of respondents to the survey did not know.

• SaaS-based applications are 22% of all manufacturing and distribution software installed today, and will grow to 45% within ten years according to MintJutras.

• The three most …

The best manufacturers I’ve visited this year all share a common attribute: they are obsessed with making themselves as easy as possible to work with from a supply chain, distribution and services standpoint.  Many are evaluating cloud-based manufacturing applications including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and several have adopted cloud-based applications across their companies.

With so much interest, there is much confusion as well.  I recently spoke with Cindy Jutras, founder and CEO of MintJutras.  Her firm has recently completed a survey of SaaS adoption in manufacturing, distribution and other industries.  She found the following:

• 49% of respondents in the manufacturing & distribution industries do not understand the difference between single- and multi-tenant SaaS architectures.  Overall 66% of respondents to the survey did not know.

• SaaS-based applications are 22% of all manufacturing and distribution software installed today, and will grow to 45% within ten years according to MintJutras.

• The three most …

Another day, another cloud survey, and for 69% of the near 250 IT professionals quizzed by business process automation firm PMG, the hybrid cloud is the “wave of the future within their organisations”.

The combination of public and private cloud is really starting to gain traction in 2013. But why?

The most important reason for adopting hybrid clouds, according to 38% of respondents, was that cloud apps were deployed faster. Delivering better value (21%), and being able to meet requirements more easily (10%) were the next most popular suggestions.

Elsewhere, the survey touched on more general cloud trends. Only 18% of respondents said they weren’t going to procure more cloud services in the next 18-24 months, whilst more than three in five (64%) agreed that BYOD equalled corporate cloud usage.

A good cloud survey is rarely without a question on cloudy security threats, and this report is no different …

This year will see the turning point for the public cloud, as a result of repeated security infractions and regulatory issues.

Companies are beginning to realise that they need a secure and stable infrastructure, which is both fast and flexible. They need to think about systems that allow them to ramp up resources, as well as scaling them down depending on business needs.

For many service providers, 99% uptime is seen as good, however as the role of service providers becomes even more critical, that one per cent of downtime isn’t good enough anymore.

This is what is starting to be seen with the public cloud. The fundamental question is, what infrastructure would you run your important business system on and how risky are you willing to be with business data? 

The public cloud emerged as a quick and scalable utility that could revolutionise enterprise IT, however, due to …