Intel, Salesforce, EMC: Tech Titans Discuss Future of Cloud Computing

Skeptical about "Platforms as a Service": The IT generation has evolved significantly since the last major IT era (Client/Server). Major platforms like .NET evolved because the majority of enterprise applications were custom built on top of base capabilities like a database. Today, IT and users are finding greater benefit from full-featured configurable SaaS applications that can provide the vast majority of their needed requirements with an "off the shelf" application.

I believe the cloud world will actually bifurcate into two major segments. First, many users will adopt SaaS offerings for base capabilities and actually use the SaaS Application as a "platform" for extensions. In this case, users will leverage high-level code/configuration environments to create simple extensions around an existing app. SF.com with force.com is a great example. I believe, for example, that most force.com users are actually leveraging Salesforce.com as a base application.

Second, ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), and users that want to write new applications will look to leverage development environments that optimize the performance and capabilities of their application. Most will leverage Public/Private cloud (IaaS) (Infrastructure as a Service) as a foundation. They will then pick and choose additional components based on their application needs. They will code in different languages, selecting from one of 50+ databases, etc.

So, effectively while every application will get developed on a platform, the days of ISV''s or businesses standardizing on one database (e.g. Oracle) and one programming environment are over. Since cloud applications will communicate through Web Services and Restful interfaces, the applications themselves will be able to leverage the most optimal platform components. So, while platforms and PaaS (Platforms as a Service) will be everywhere, I believe they will not longer be this major control point for vendors to create "lock-in." Platforms will be flexible, many will be Open Source, and most will run on virtually any infrastructure.

Virtual IT: 2012 will be the year where companies start to really think about their "virtual IT" systems as a whole. Most are now using several SaaS providers, doing at least some development work in public clouds, and are well on the way to building private clouds to run internal applications. I believe that companies see the strong need to insure that they have consistent data management policies, security policies, and cross-application integration across all of these different clouds. To have both the needed governance as well as for optimal business leverage, IT needs to connect these disparate clouds into a single Virtual IT environment.

Companies operating in the new enterprise environment must offer great base capabilities to the user but also insure their applications can meet the security, data protection and other regulatory needs that will be driven by IT. It is this combination of capabilities (User+IT) that will create the next leaders.

The Truth Is Out There: In 2012, the perception of cloud evolves from being tolerably distant from the data center, to being strategically close to social networks and real-time data feeds.

 

In 2012, the cloud will stop apologizing for being at the other end of a wire, and will instead assert the crucial importance of being closer to the points of origin of the data that’s most valuable to a Social Enterprise.

 

When IT’s job was archival of business transaction by-products, the data center was the logical solution. Today, the data most vital to the business originates outside the business: in social networks where customer communities thrive, and in real-time data feeds from a fast-growing ‘Internet of Things.’

 

Twitter Town Hall: In 2011, we saw the phenomenon of the ‘Twitter Town Hall’ conducted by the Obama administration. Tens of thousands of citizen questions and comments were digested in real time using the Radian6 technology that is now the heart of Salesforce.com''s newly announced Social Marketing Cloud. A post-event report transformed this firehose stream of unstructured data into understandable slices by demographic, by issue of concern, and by other key dimensions that turned this into useful policy guidance.

President Obama used Radian6 technology from salesforce.com to digest tens of thousands of real-time Tweets into useful policy guidance following a “Twitter Town Hall"