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Cloud Computing is the New Spice

Hello techies, look at your hardware…now look at mine. Now back to your hardware. Now back at mine. Now look at your’s again. Sadly, it may not be like mine. But if you got rid of your old servers and legacy software and moved to the cloud, it could look like mine. Look down, now look up. Guess what techies? You are in the cloud with the man whose hardware your hardware could be like…welcome. Here in the cloud we do things differently, and so do our friends.

One of our friends named @MartinLudovic recently tweeted: “SaaS Market Expected to Grow By 25 Percent a Year Until at Least 2014 http://bit.ly/bVokNg.”

What does that mean? It means that in 2009 total SaaS revenues were at about $13 billion and by 2014, that number will jump to more than $40 billion according to a recent report released by IDC. That same reports notes that legacy application revenues is likely to drop by $7 billion this year with that number set to increase each year after. The IDC report sites a few reasons for this including, “faster deployments, the lack of a need to purchase and maintain hardware, and easier upgrades.”

[Learn about a large law firm moving to the cloud in this case study or check out the total cost of ownership between SaaS DMS vs. on premise DMS with this customizable TCO calculator]

Another cloud colleague named  @kmarshall008 validated this report with his tweet: “Gartner Says Worldwide SaaS Revenue Within the Enterprise Application Software Market to Surpass $8.5 Billion in 2010 http://bit.ly/9uoCKk

Yes, Gartner’s estimates are a bit more conservative and are based on a tighter definition of SaaS than the IDC report, but the implications are the same. Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner described those implication in this way, “the popularity of SaaS has increased significantly within the past five years and initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread.” At NetDocuments we have seen this first hand with an ever increasing number of small and large companies moving to SaaS and the cloud.

I’m not gonna tell you that cloud computing will make you “dominate the competition” or “crush your opponent,” mostly because I don’t talk like a late-80s pro wrestler, but I will say that anything is possible when you’re with the man whose hardware your hardware could be like…

Post was written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments marketing team with inspiration from the scholar you could study like and the man you could smell like.




Analyzing Gartner’s 10 Strategic Technologies of 2010

Post authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Sales and Marketing Team

Every year Gartner, Inc. identifies the 10 strategic technologies for the year ahead. It released the 2010 edition in October and I found the results very interesting.

For Gartner to consider a technology, a “strategic technology,” it must have the “potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.”

The number one technology on the 2010 list is one that we at NetDocuments are very close to and have been doing for the past 10 years — that is “Cloud Computing.”

“Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others.” – Gartner

Listed below are the other nine strategic technologies for 2010:

  • Advanced Analytics
  • Client Computing
  • IT for Green
  • Reshaping the Data Center
  • Social Computing
  • Security – Activity Monitoring
  • Flash Memory
  • Virtualization for Availability
  • Mobile Applications

It was interesting to note that many of the technologies mentioned are in some form related to cloud computing or SaaS. These include “IT for Green,” “Reshaping the Data Center” and “Mobile Applications.” I will highlight each one of these below, as well as “Social Computing,” as it has become even more relevant to the business enterprise with Salesforce.com’s announcement of Chatter.

IT for Green

There are many ways to move to a more environmentally friendly workplace. The last decade saw companies do this by moving to a less paper office with the help of scanners and document management systems to reduce paper waste. The next step for these companies is to reduce energy waste by getting rid of their servers and moving to SaaS and the cloud.

Reshaping the Data Center

Gartner talks about this point in terms of design principles and mentions how a pod-based data center design approach can save space and is more efficient. I propose to take that one step farther by suggesting that a cloud-based design approach can save even more space and is even more efficient. That is because much of the data center can be eliminated by going SaaS and storing data in the cloud.

Mobile Applications

This one actually surprised me. Not because it made the list, but because it was not higher on the list. Gartner states that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will be using mobile devices capable of running rich web applications.  Many software providers have already released apps for the iPhone and Android OS that provide rich functionality from anywhere in the world, and cloud computing companies such as ourselves and Salesforce.com allow users to access their entire DMS or CRM directly from the mobile device.

Social Computing

Social media is certainly on everyones radars with the popularity of Twitter and other social networks, and this point was made clearer at Dreamforce 09 when Salesforce.com announced their new Chatter feature. Chatter, which is billed as the “Facebook for the Enterprise” brings social networks to the business enterprise.  To learn more about Chatter and social computing for business, read Marc Duncan’s recent blog titled, “Dreamforce Offers Glimpse into the Future of SaaS and Social Media.”