After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the IBM Watson and the Cloud: Implications of the Next Generation of Computing Presentation.

Presenter: Stephen Gold, IBM Corporation

Discussion Points:

• Watson had 70% unaided awareness within American population. In jeopardy Watson needed to wait 3 second before buzzing to answer a question affirmatively.
• Watson helps convert unstructured data into something meaningful
• Trillion interconnected devices 2 billion mobile devices driving information’s. Information is becoming new oil. Oil in the ground does not have much value, but once it extracted refined then it had value. Information has same implication. Big data by itself is not that interesting, but what you do it can be insightful.
• Next generation system will be learning system, systems that are not just programs, but systems that are taught. System that will get smarter with each iteration, with each outcome, with each new information.
• On big difference between programmatic system vs. learning system is the notion search vs. discovery.
• Next generation of system will be about bringing back relevant information.
• Deterministic vs. probabilistic system. 2+2 may not always 4 it may have probabilistic answer.
• 90% of current world data is collected within the last two years
• 80% of data is unstructured
• Only 20% of date currently leveraged by traditional system.
• 83% CIO thinks big data / analytics is important
• Differences among Watson and other systems is Watson’s ability of Natural Language processing. Its ability to break question into sub components and evaluate each components for possible answer/solution.
• IBM Watson use case in health care – Medical information will be doubled by the time a med student finish the entire curriculum. It will be impossible consume all the data. 81% physicians spends 5 hours or less per month on medical journal. Watson can process vast number of information and help a doctor quickly diagnose a patient and prescribe right medicine. Watson currently being used in pre-authorized treatments. Announced development partnership with cancer care institute.
• Other use case can be in financial services industries.
• IBM Watson is delivered as a service through cloud. (public/private/hybrid)

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the Using Cloud to Manage Business Growth Presentation.

Moderator: Michael Pearl, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Speakers: Nara Balakrishna (Appirio), Guy Shani (Clarizen), Gil Zimmermann (CloudLock)

Discussion Points:

• Mike help client leverage cloud to drive their business
• Nara – Cloud solution provided, help mid size companies to move to cloud. How he uses cloud to run his buinses
• Guy – collaborative online project management services. 1600 customers (midsize to large companies). How his company leverages cloud to drive his business
• Gill – Cloud data security. Help leverages enterprise leverages the cloud secured way. 100s of enterprise customer, millions of users use cloud securely.
• How to leverage the cloud to manage the growth of the company
  1. Support millions of users without having a single server
  2. Continuously innovate, continuously provide value to customer
  3. Built on Google App engine, so not need to focus on infrastructure management, just focus on software development
• Share some experiences about connectivity and collaboration across the org
  1. Disparate group across many geographical locations. Use own solution to communicate and collaborate with own employees.
  2. Also other cloud based solution like Saleforce, Marketo etc
  3. Only 100+ employees but supporting many customer world wide
• Nara sharing perspective of how Appirio grown and how you managing your customer
  1. 3 guys supporting 500 people
  2. all project run using own solution build cloud based solution
  3. Able to move quickly (on baording new employees, )
  4. Spend a little less on IT
• Some challenge from IT organization that you serve (how do they respond)
  1. How you go around IT
  2. IT leader recognize the shift in market
  3. 70/75% spending keeping their lights on
  4. Moving form IT maintenance to innovative business solution
• Guy’s perspective
  1. 5 years ago only early adopters SAAS based model for project management
  2. More streamlined a way to deliver cloud based solutions
  3. Is SAAS the right vehicle no longer a concern
  4. SAAS is valid option to consider
  5. Spend more time focusing on the right solution
• Security and Risk Management (how customers manage this aspect)
  1. CIO stands for Chief Information Officer (Not infrastructure office)
  2. CIOs need to make sure information available securely
  3. Making sure IT provide the best application
  4. People will find a way collaborate, so CIO need to enable cloud based solutions that are secured from the company data point of view
  5. Dropbox are users breaking corporate policy
  6. How can do things before and do more securely on the cloud
• Future of IT (two path for IT organization)
  1. One – strives for best of breed technologies
  2. Other – will just keeps the light on
  3. Roles are changing
• Example of most innovative way to leverage cloud
  1. 2 examples – Helping twitter to scale from few sales force to 100s of salesforce. Helping them implement tool like Salesforce.com and other cloud based solution
• How clients are using project management tools:
  1. Immediately value is people are using the tool, more adoption among users
  2. Managers have full visibility to data that was not there before
  3. Help make real time decision
  4. Cut timesheet process to days to hours
  5. Customers (Marketo) are teaching them how to best to use theirs own software
• How customers learned more about the information using Cloudlook
  1. 60 seconds to instal in any size organization
  2. Data on the dashboard is eye opener for the customer
  3. Moving from windows based servers to cloud based solutions
  4. Once organization gone from traditional file servers application to Google Apps, it is very hard to go back.
  5. Paradigm shift, data does not belong to server anymore.
• Perspective on cloud adoption of companies that already invested heavily on Legacy applications
  1. Collecting information from the different system and putting in front of users. Start with that then extend to other services. (Front office first, collaboration second, HR and other services next)

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the Business Intelligence in the Cloud Presentation.

Moderator: Phil Wainewright, Procullux Ventures
Speakers: David Abramson (LogiXML), Eileen Boerger (CorSource Technology Group, Inc.), Vincent Lam (Information Builders), Roman Stanek (GoodData)

Discussion Points:

• There are benefits to the cloud and there are benefits to on-premise
• Cloud is not a zero sum game. If you go to cloud you do not have to lose out on-premise
• Cloud offers a new paradigm and there is an audience for Business Intelligence in the cloud, on the flip side there is an audience for Business Intelligence for on-premise.
• At the end of the both Cloud and on-premise here to stay. The challenge will be to how to make both cloud and on-premise to work together
• Roman disagrees with Vincent think it is zero sum game and he build his company with that notion and IT is generally moving in towards the cloud direction.
• How cloud is different:

1. Cloud based services can scale better and faster than the on premise services
2. Additionally cloud services can easily extend to different types of devices (mobile devices, laptops etc)
3. Enable collaboration

• Cloud provides real time data and Business Intelligence that was not easily available for on-premise system. For on-premise systems real time BI was available in the form of real time warehouse
• Cloud enables BI accessible to other members of the organization, not just the Business Analyst. BI is not just for the analyst.
• Two solutions to cloud BI:

1. If data is to tell story, it cannot be isolated, it has to be visual and cloud enable that. Standardizations are happening around data visualization so user can easily understand that data at various time spent.
2. Data should be measurable.

• Users are becoming data savvy and also consumerization of BI is happening.
• Important words to related to cloud BI Deployment:

1. Agility
2. Adoption
3. Planning and understanding
4. Success

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the Power of the Customer presentation.

Moderator: Shubber Ali, Accenture
Speakers: Todd Bursey (FinancialForce.com), Dominique Levin (Totango), Jon Miller (Marketo), Jeff Yoshimura (Zuora)

Discussion Points:
The context of the discussion is how the power of customer is changing.

• Subscription Economy
  1. Focus changed from one-time transaction to subscription base meaning calculating the value for customer over lifetime
  2. Value of the customer is calculated based on monthly recurring revenue. Also based on influence revenue (is the customer a good referral source)
• Where is big gap in information and who is going to fill it?
  1. People’s action is lot louder than their words. People leave digital footprint all over, in their engagement, in their transaction. Measure what people do vs. what they say.
• How consumerization of IT changing customer’s behavior?
  1. The way people go about research and buy things have changed. People are different than they were very recently. Marketer need change their tactics to how they engage with customers.
  2. Customer know more about the companies that the companies though the customer knew.
• How do you retain and sustain customers?
  1. Pace of innovation is picking up. If a company is not paying attention the competition will be leap frogging. If no innovation then the company will fall behind.
• How do you build trust with customers?
  1. Trust is tied to emotion and emotion is heavily involved in B2B decision making. In B2C aspiration and positive emotion plays role is decision making.
  2. Companies are moving away from attending trade shows and creating more content to build trust with customers.
  3. The content are consumed by the customer without marketing shield, so with this process the companies can build relation and in turn build trust. Trust is super important as a marketer companies can encourage trust by building great content.
  4. Beyond content companies can build trust my giving away product
  • 44% offer free trial model
  • 14% offer freemium
  1. 3 dimension of stuffs that can be put out there
  • Expertise
  • Utilities – Free trial, freemium, free product
  • Affinity – Community, community affiliation will drive inbound marketing

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the Boundary-Free Enterprise: The New Master Architecture Presentation.

Presenter: William McNee, Saugatuck Technology Inc.

Discussion Points:

• New Paradigm – mix of technology will define the new era
• Cloud can mean many things to many people (mobile/social/integration)
• Key trends -
  1. Industry leaders fully embracing cloud enabled business computing architecture
  2. Big CIOs fully accepted the cloud
  3. CIOs will tactically and strategically use the cloud
  4. Cloud is seen as catalyst for rapid innovation
• Sea-change in perspective about the use and value of the cloud has occurred
• Hybrid on-premise + Cloud architecture -
  1. European / Asian companies leap-frogging in adopting pure play cloud
  2. New role for IT is emerging
• Data integration and automated workflow remains critical to businesses
• Cloud provider will increase
• Among the CIOs/CTOs the level of importance increased from 2.2 to 3.7 from 2010 to 2012
• Based on a survey results of 225 respondent the on-premise solution remained 50% in 2012 and peaked on 2014; however cloud based solution increased dramatically from 2012 to 2016. On 2016 75% of new Enterprise IT spending will be on cloud based solution.
• eCommere/collaborative commerce solution will increase the most from 2012 to 2016
• Most long term benefit (65%) of cloud is greater business flexibility and agility vs. cost savings. Cloud provider lock-in also important (50%). Cloud based solution exceeded value expectation. 32% say cloud is costing more than what was anticipated.
• New Master Architecture is emerging not from single computing paradigm, but multiple technologies and platform working together. Cloud, Mobile, Social and Data Analytics (CMSA) plus the integration define the new Master Architecture and will make the boundary free enterprise.
• Evolution of IT
  1. Significant shrinkage of IT staff
  2. Shifting from client server architecture to boundary free architecture (CMSA plus integration). Intersection mobile and social. Intersection of cloud and analytics.
  3. Primary mission shifts from business operation to enabling business innovation.
  4. Mission of system development shifts from standardization for technologies to standardization of interfaces to enable the ecosystem of providers to work together. (both internal and external)
  5. Standard approach to IT development and delivery shift from buy build and adopt and outsource to vendor subscribe and may be to outsource.
  6. Integration of data to integration of data and process and processes
• We are in the midst of very significant sea-change