Cloud Connect 2013-Look Out, Here We Grow

by Cary J. Calderone, © 2013

Cloud Connect Keynote

It is hard for me to believe that it was only two short years ago that the "Cloud" was new.   For those of us who follow technology it was not really new but rather, "newly marketed."   What was new was Big Data technologies, Open Stack, and mobile, all of which combined to make Cloud Computing a very robust business model.   And now, what is hot about the Cloud is not so much new and innovative technologies but rather, massive growth and consolidation.  This industry is maturing.  Here are some interesting observations made by speakers at the 2013 Cloud Connect Show in Santa Clara: 

Avery Lyford-VP Business Development, Leap Commerce(social and mobile)-Chairman of Churchill Club

• "Smart phone sales are 3x more than personal computers.   You HAVE to think mobile."
• "Clouds are global, stable, and homogeneous so they can scale.  This is opposite for mobile -that is personal and unique to the individual.  You need both."
• "Cutting expenses with the Cloud?  Boring.  How about adding new customers and services and growing the top line?  This requires huge power on the back end to deliver something simple via mobile."
• "Percentage of eCommerce spending is now 10% via mobile-a couple of years ago it was 2%"

At a Thursday Keynote panel  we learned:

• There is a strong preference for using private clouds.  90% 
• Mark Hinkle- "If always connected is the drug,The Cloud is the needle that delivers it"- 
• Ian Rae-analogous to "people sneaking out back and using the Cloud."
• Ann Winblad, “not an allowable expense”  Enterprises have to legalize Cloud as a drug….Gateway drug

In general, the show was well attended by important Cloud Connected vendors but there were some missing.

Lessons on the side:

• Last year I commented that sessions on Cloud legal and compliance issues were poorly attended.  This year, they did away with those types of presentations.
• It seemed as if every speaker commented on how great it was to have Amazon Web Services, even though they are the 800 pound gorilla of commodity-priced public cloud offerings.  I felt that there were too many people making that statement.  They said the words but I did not believe them.  They did not sound sincere and  AWS is very dominant.
• There seems to be the recognition that both raw hardware cloud and virtualized clouds are successful and there is enough need for both to exist and grow. 
• The past two years there was an awful lot of discussion about security and the major disasters that were inevitable.  While security is still a common theme, the Cloud as a whole, has become much more familiar and less scary. 
• The Cloud is growing....