There has been lots of talk in the industry about cloud computing for some time now. At the end of 09’ we checked in with our IT decision maker panel to get their perspective on cloud computing and where it fits into their IT plans. At that time, two-thirds of them were already using “cloud computing” in some capacity to lower costs or increase scale and flexibility. Deployment seemed to be more horizontally focused on non-core application workloads. But we saw signs that 2010 would be the year cloud computing would gain some serious momentum—many just needed some proof of concept and now Microsoft and eBay are teaming up to deliver just that.
Microsoft is claiming their stake in the cloud by announcing at last week’s developer conference that their long anticipated Windows Azure appliance was ready, making good on their promise to offer preconfigured datacenter containers directed at large enterprises who can’t have their data hosted off site.
Microsoft also announced that eBay will be one of the first customers to put Azure to the test as they announced a joint cloud computing agreement. This agreement comes on the heels of a successful deployment program which allows eBay the flexibility to put some applications on the pubic cloud. For example http://ipad.ebay.com— is hosted on the public Windows Azure platform.
Where there was once a lot of confusion there now seems to be more traction—particularly for private cloud computing. In a space that has a lot of competition, Microsoft is working hard to get a head start out of the gate. And this agreement with eBay is certainly a big feather in their cap.
Stay tuned as we are going back to our IT decision maker panel this month to gain new insights on what enterprise end-users require of vendors offering cloud computing solutions.
We would love to hear from you. Does this agreement between Microsoft and eBay give you the proof of concept you need?
Chris Neal leads CMB’s Tech Practice. He enjoys spending time with his two kids and rock climbing.
Earlier this week we attended IIR's Social Media and Communities 2.0 Conference here in Boston. The conference was chock full of client-side presentations and case studies, including one about our work helping AMD decide where and how to prioritize their social media resources.
Not surprisingly, many of us were tweeting during the event and you can check out the running commentary of the conference through Twapper Keeper . There are also more summaries on the conference blog.
Among all of the great presentations and panel discussions, 7 comments jumped out at me:
- Steve Alter of Ant's Eye View and the creator of Microsoft Answers used the Field of Dreams analogy saying that many community builders take the mantra "If you build it they will come." But if you don't know why you are building a community they will only come once and never again.
- Kimarie Matthews of Wells Fargo talked about the extensive customer service initiative they have built using social media. Two key components are a dedicated off line set of bankers who can help and the social media team circling back within social media to ensure that problems were solved. Kimarie also made the excellent point that "social media metrics should reflect your business metrics" if it is really going to impact your business.
- Michael Desmarais of VH1 said that "while traditional research isn't dead, we need to embrace new techniques AND old techniques. It shouldn't be an either/or proposition." He also talked about the good and bad of immediate information via "listening" and warned that acting too quickly based on the online conversation can lead to bad decisions.
- Jennifer Abelson of Scholastic Books gave great insights into how they have built their teacher community including "when building a community, you need to understand your audience. For example, Scholastic deals with teachers who work on antiquated computers and behind firewalls so we had to include technical capabilities in our recruiting and conduct chat sessions at night."
- Charlene Li of Altimeter and the co-Author of Groundswell had a great quote from John Hayes, the CMO of American Express, in her presentation about Open Leadership that may strike some as research heresy but I thought it was a good viewpoint. "We tend to over value the things we can measure and undervalue those that we can not." Certainly something to think about.
- Jennifer Cisney from Kodak talked about how they used feedback from twitter to rename their pocket video camera line after the original names had been criticized as well as improving specific camera features.
- Georgeanna Liu of AMD shared a case study of strategy research conducted with CMB emphasizing that you need to "separate sources from media and methods," you should "test social media against traditional media," that "social media is A channel, not THE channel," and that "not all social media is created equal."
Below is a great clip of Charlene Li talking about the future of social networks (from another conference) and how they'll become like air. Enjoy!
Learn more about why people engage
in social media by downloading our
research report:
"Why Social Media Matters for Your Business."
Posted by Josh Mendelsohn. Josh is our VP of Marketing and loves live music, tv, great food, market research, New Orleans, marketing, Boston and sports. You can follow him on Twitter @mendelj2.
Posted originally on our Technology Pulse Blog by Chris Neal
We recently conducted research on social media to look at why people become fans and followers of certain brands. We wanted to get a high level view of why people become a fan/follower. Our gut (and some of our own personal experience) told us that many people that become a fan or follower do so because they are already customers of that brand. For the most part our instinct was right. Our research found 49% of people who become Facebook fans do so because they are already a customer.
The really interesting part is we found over half of those people who are engaged stated that they are more likely to buy and recommend that brand since becoming a fan/follower. It's clear that using social media as an engagement strategy helps cut through the online clutter and keeps brands "top of mind".
This makes a lot of sense for consumer companies, but is a social media engagement strategy right for harder to reach B2B audiences? The short answer is yes, but not without digging deeper to learn more about who you are trying to reach and where they "live" online. There are so many social media outlets available today and they are not all created equal and they're not a "one size fits all" answer.
Truly using social media as an engagement strategy may not take a lot of money, but it does take a lot of time. So the best place to start is prioritizing who you want to engage with and then look for the best places to find them and figure out how they want to be engaged in the various social media outlets available.
Recently we worked with AMD, a leading processor company to re-evaluate their social media effectiveness and develop a more optimized and targeted strategy to reach their widely disparate target audiences. It was important to start by looking at each of those targets and then systematically evaluate the true extent and impact of social media usage on each of those audiences.
- Audience: We used separate research modules for each unique target audience, spanning from extreme B2B to consumer segments
- Recruiting: We did not use social media to recruit research participants as to prevent sampling bias
- Techniques: Both qualitative/open-ended and quantitative research
This approach really allowed AMD to refine and optimize their social media content and tactics based on the different behaviors of each target audience. Learn more about this AMD case study at the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies event coming to Boston May 3-5.
Understanding B2B Social Media: An AMD Case Study
CMB's Chris Neal and AMD's Georgeanna Liu will presenting a case study of how CMB helped AMD better understand and capitalize on social media to drive their business. In this session, we'll explain the steps that AMD took to review and refine their social media strategy focusing on very specific target audiences.
Read more about social media
by downloading our report:
"Why Social Media Matters for Your Business."
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We have a lot of great events coming up here at CMB that you might be interested in. In addition to April 29th's Segmentation Best Practices webinar, we have three great conferences lined up for May including co-presentations with AMD and Tauck Worldwide. If you're interested in attending, let us know and we might be able to get you a discount.
1. Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies, May 3-5, Boston
Understanding B2B Social Media: An AMD Case Study
CMB's Chris Neal and AMD's Georgeanna Liu will presenting a case study of how CMB helped AMD better understand and capitalize on social media to drive their business. In this session, we'll explain the steps that AMD took to review and refine their social media strategy focusing on very specific target audiences.
2. The Life Stage Marketing Summit, May 10-12, Chicago
Building a Boomer Focused Travel Package
CMB's Judy Melanson and Tauck Worldwide's Jeremy Palmer will share a case study of how the two companies worked together to develop a full understanding of Tauck Worldwide's current and potential Boomer guests and translate that information into a Boomer-focused tour product.
3. Netbook Summit, May 24th and 25th, San Francisco
CMB's Don Ryan will be speaking and moderating several sessions at the Netbook Summit May 24th
and 25th in San Francisco. Don will be sharing research on the consumerization of IT and where Netbooks fit into the purchasing agenda for the enterprise market.
HP's quest to be a service kingpin...
While attending the HP Industry Analyst Conference for the Enterprise Business Division in mid March in Boston - the point that struck me was the emphasis on the new businesses that HP sees as its next growth engines: service delivery and networking solutions. These two areas were stressed throughout all the sessions at the conference. Indeed, the focus on services is well placed as HP's service portfolio has more than doubled in the last 2 years to encompass over 30% of gross revenue mainly through the addition of EDS's business.
HP's server and storage solutions while well represented took dual billing with the newer areas. The EDS teams presented in-depth case studies and shared their expertise in focused solution areas in telecom, financial services and manufacturing industries. These sessions really highlighted their ability to do large and complex IT infrastructure outsourcing projects.
However, while HP's service revenue is growing, not all service business should be equally valued by HP given its business model at the present time. HP's overall business model and go-to-market strategy is one that is based on scale and standardization. This works well in the server, storage, PC and arguably the networking businesses. Where this doesn't play fully today is with HP's EDS services business which is typically highly customized and specialized to specific client environments and applications.
While some of EDS's IT and outsourcing methodologies and practices can be leveraged across different customer environments, many of these cannot be easily reused today for other customers even within the same industry segment. Standardizing ITO and more commodity type BPO is a must have for HP at this point. Determining and taking advantage of delivery leverage points and processes is, in my belief, the number one challenge facing HP today as it migrates to a services based delivery company in the enterprise market. If HP can successfully apply these core business principles of standardization and scale to its service business as it has done to its hardware and solutions business, then a truly successful and profitable service business model is on the near term horizon. If on the other hand, the EDS business continues to exist as a set of one-off albeit large scale engagements, (lift and shift, your mess for less) then a successful services business model for HP built on standardization and scale will remain a bridge too far to cross.
Learn more about IT Service Delivery by downloading the full CMB Tech Pulse report: IT Services
Posted by Don Ryan. Don is the managing director of CMB's technology practice. Don is an avid tennis player and enjoys reading political commentary and spy novels. Don was assisted on this blog by Stan Lepeak, Managing Director of Equaterra (www.equaterra.com) a major outsourcing consultancy.
Before Windows 7 was released CMB reached out to our own panel of IT experts as part of our Tech Pulse program to get a gut check for the planned adoption rates of Windows 7. The initial news was quite positive, especially after Microsoft had such a tough time with Windows Vista. In fact, our initial research shows that the majority of IT professionals plan to standardize on Windows 7 operating system (OS) for a variety of products in the enterprise. The research shows that 51% plan to standardize on Windows 7 for laptops and desktops, while 38% plan to do so with netbooks over the next two years. In addition, 60% plan to standardize on Windows Server 2008 R2 in the next 24 months.
I see these numbers and an early indicator of success for Microsoft's enterprise success with Windows 7 and a welcomed shift from the adoption rates of its predecessor, Windows Vista.
However, there are some challenges for Microsoft I will talk about in my next post. Google is the kind of company we all need to watch, as in the past they have demonstrated their ability to come from behind and dominate in other areas. Next we will take a look at Google Chrome and the potential threat that poses for Microsoft.
Subscribe to the CMB blog to keep up to date with the latest trends. For more information on the Windows 7 Uptake Plans download the full report free or listen to our webinar How Windows 7 is Changing Enterprise IT OS Plans