Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, Public Sector Technology

Salesforce announced a private SuperPod hosting of the Salesforce offering for HP at Dreamforce. This announcement appears to open the door to a more nuanced hybrid delivery model where the distinction between public and private cloud services is becoming a matter of customer choice.

The SuperPod may provide a bridge that enables some customers to access the benefits of SaaS while keeping data in dedicated infrastructure. Enterprises, however, need to be careful about wishing for a “private” cloud.

Unless there are definite and unavoidable regulatory or legal drivers, the better path is probably to learn how to live safely in the public cloud. That, after all, is where the real economies of scale and scope are to be found. It is also increasingly the destination of choice of both customers and employees.

Introducing the SuperPod

Dreamforce 13 was, as usual, an impressive …