There is a common phrase, often attributed as a Chinese proverb/curse, “May you live in interesting times.” For those following the cloud technology space, we are definitely living in interesting times. In their latest magic quadrant report on IaaS, Gartner describes the market as still evolving and maturing. This would imply the market leadership is in flux, yet according to Gartner “AWS is the overwhelming market share leader, with more than five times the compute capacity in use than the aggregate total of the other fourteen providers in this Magic Quadrant.” I would say that makes AWS an 800lb gorilla in the room that the competition must get by. Many of those competitors could be considered 800lb gorillas in their own right. Microsoft, IBM, Google are not small companies, yet AWS has managed to create a dominant position in the marketplace.

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The hottest new wave of marketing — digital social influence — is intersecting with one the hottest areas of cloud computing — software-as-a-service (SaaS) collaboration and documents/objects sharing.
Educating technology markets and communities is now, more than ever, a function of influence, social media, digital word of mouth — and of cultivating an ecosystem of trusted collaboration. The role of social media and the power of personal connections have really become dominant forces in how people learn how to find and use technology.
This is such a major departure from the past — marketing has changed more in the last 5 years than the previous 50 — that any instruction on what actually works best these days is highly prized.

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Fujitsu RunMyProcess and MongoDB extend their existing collaboration to deliver seamless integration for cloud solutions to joint customers.

More than 350 companies around the world deploy Fujitsu RunMyProcess-based workflow applications that integrate MongoDB. Fujitsu RunMyProcess provides a cloud platform for the creation, deployment and operation of business applications, with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface. The integration with MongoDB allows application developers to securely store and access their data from any device and location. MongoDB provides real-time database statistics, allowing platform users to build ad hoc and complex data analytics.
“By integrating MongoDB into our platform, we provided a secure and reliable database solution that meets our quality and technical standards,” said Matthieu Hug, CEO of Fujitsu RunMyProcess. “Furthermore, our partnership is strengthened by a mutual dedication to bringing solutions that enable agility and better customer experience.”

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For years, the benefits of moving to the cloud – including lowered costs, flexibility and faster time-to-market – have been espoused. But among IT professionals, there remains widespread reticence about migrating mission-critical applications over, due in large part to performance concerns. “Can the cloud really deliver the same level of speed and reliability as physical services?” IT asks. Business managers often minimize or downplay these worries, saying that the potential business benefits to be reaped are just too mission-critical to ignore.
Therein lies a major conflict. Regardless, as numerous surveys like this one from IDC demonstrate, cloud adoption is moving forward at a rapid pace. Clearly, the cloud is where we’re headed. IT must learn to accept the cloud as just part of how services are delivered today, rather than some exotic and potentially dangerous new technology. The good news is IT’s concerns about application performance are not insurmountable and can actually be eased with specific approaches.

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Once you learn the definition of shadow IT, it shouldn’t be too shocking to learn how widespread it is at companies large and small all over the world. I hate to assume, but the odds are, that you yourself have used a non-IT approved SaaS option for the same reason as everyone else, myself included. We’re all expected to do our jobs faster, and at a higher quality than we did in the past, and sometimes it’s just too easy to go behind the backs of those whom we perceive to slow us down, or act as a blocker.
A recent study showed that eighty percent of those polled admitted using SaaS applications and tools without IT’s approval, which, when you’re part of that eighty percent, isn’t all that shocking. The real kicker is the revelation of who has been using shadow IT SaaS solutions more than anyone.

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Nishant Shah, Senior Analyst, Government Technology

Stories about frustrating experiences with government agencies abound. Typically, they are due to a combination of service delivery failure, lack of transparency, and inadequate communication. Fortunately, many governments are beginning to address these issues with a greater sense of urgency. The need for action is being manifested in new policy and an operational focus on better service delivery globally, with customer relationship management (CRM) tools as integral as ever.

Ovum’s recently published Decision Matrix, Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a CRM for Constituent Service and Case Management in Government, examines the competitive dynamics for CRM in the public sector market and analyzes six leading software application suites to inform agencies’ selection processes.

With a focus on civilian and administrative agencies such as tax/revenue, immigration, and health/human services, it expounds the topics discussed here with rankings and detailed evaluations of Oracle, KANA, SAP …

Research from Eduserv has revealed that for three in four UK charities, inertia from the IT department is stunting growth and putting doubt into future fundraising activities.

The research, of 100 digital and IT leaders in UK charities including Oxfam, Macmillan and Unicef, found concern from heads of digital over moving with the times. Survey respondents argued this lack of ‘digital transformation’ would impact fundraising (73%), reputation (71%), and the ability to deliver the right services (59%).

For 75% of charities there was no clear IT strategy in place to move into a digital world, while more than half (52%) reported discord between IT and digital teams which added time to project deadlines.

There are three issues of responsibility that IT and digital need to address, according to Eduserv. These are mobile strategy, digital application strategy and ownership of the CRM system.

And according to respondents, for heads of digital …

Netflix has long been known for being a leader and innovator in delivering its Netflix service by leveraging public cloud service provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, Netflix’s IT team wasn’t quite there, and still had many legacy applications and infrastructure in place. One thing is to start a platform from the ground up solely leveraging cloud. It’s an entirely different process to do so from a legacy environment to more SaaS based and infrastructure as a service. The goal for Netflix is to achieve 100% of this by beginning of 2015. Mike Kail joined Netflix in 2011 as VP of IT Operations and is tasked with ensuring that this migration happens as smoothly as possible.

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Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Software – Information Management

Informatica continues to see data disintermediation between cloud and on-premise IT systems as a lucrative opportunity. The latest release of its Informatica Cloud – marketed seasonally as Cloud Spring 2014 – advances this strategy, delivering new self-service tooling and user interface enhancements, aimed at business users, that are intended to remove much of the complexity and burden of cloud and on-premise data integration.

Informatica has leveraged its experience from on-premise data integration assets in the cloud to good effect, and its platform is technically enabled by its new Vibe technology, which ensures that reusable and self-adapting integration designs are fully portable across cloud and on-premise application environments.

Hybrid integration agility through self-service user empowerment

The main design theme for Cloud Spring 2014 is making business application users and administrators more self-sufficient in servicing their data integration needs. A brand new Cloud Designer tool enables IT …