Business units are creating silos by bypassing IT and using public cloud services. Here’s how CIOs can create order. Many of the CIOs and technology leaders who I speak with are embracing the cloud as a core component of their IT strategy. In the beginning, lots of these leaders were hesitant in regards to the implications of cloud with the aid of security and accountability issues. However, today many have come to terms with the inevitability of the cloud. More than anyone else, business leaders are forcing the rapid movement to the cloud because they perceive that traditional IT structures are simply not consistent with the short pace of commercial change. They’ve been using public cloud services for development and storage for years a good way to bypass IT and get new business initiatives off the floor. Mutually, organizations are using software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications as opposed to on-premises software. Systems similar to Salesforce.com and Workday have gotten commonplace in companies across industries. The result is that... Read More »

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff says hiring former Oracle executive Keith Block moved the corporate “to the subsequent level” in selling to special companies. 8 Ways An SMB Makes Most Of Salesforce.com (Click image for larger view and for slideshow.) Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff had three goals for his company going into 2013, and on a type of goals — closing more deals with large customers and dealing more closely with systems integrators — Benioff says success could be attributed to the hiring of Keith Block, the previous executive VP of Oracle’s North America sales and consulting organization. Benioff worked with Block when he, too, was at Oracle, and he had tried to recruit him for no less than 10 years. “But i could not get him until [Oracle President] Mark Hurd relieved him of his duties,” Benioff told a handful of journalists following Wednesday’s Salesforce1 event in Manhattan. “i feel the largest mistake Mark Hurd ever made was letting Keith Block leave Oracle, because he’s... Read More »

VMware has struggled to bring end users under the authority of its x86 virtualized datacenter. AirWatch could be the missing element. VMware’s purchase of mobile device management and mobile security vendor AirWatch, announced January 22, raises two big questions. First, how is AirWatch different from its other end-user oriented acquisitions, akin to SlideRocket, which it held for under two years before divesting? Indeed, it shed SlideRocket with out clear return at the investment. Second, VMware paid a premium at $1.54 billion for a 1,600-employee company. What did it get besides increasing VMware’s headcount? Does AirWatch fit into the entire VMware strategy better than SlideRocket and Zimbra did? AirWatch is another variety of end-user company from SlideRocket, which VMware purchased in 2011 when then-CEO Paul Maritz was looking for the top-user applications that could lure the loads onto virtualized desktops. Maritz is gone, moved directly to head the Pivotal spinoff, and so are the top-user application acquisitions. [Wish to learn more about how VMware balances R&D and... Read More »

Google’s 60% cut in block-storage pricing is a move intended to unseat Amazon’s dominance in cloud infrastructure. 8 Great Cloud Storage Services (click image for larger view and for slideshow) The highlight of Google’s coming-out party for Compute Engine’s general availability as supported infrastructure was the pricing on its virtual servers and storage. It shows a heretofore absent determination on Google’s part to compete with the market leader, Amazon Web Services, and secondarily, Microsoft. Amazon has made it difficult for competitors to draw customers by repeatedly lowering prices on standard virtual servers and storage. Microsoft has matched its moves, particularly on storage. With its announcement this week, Google has come with reference to matching AWS’s virtual server prices while, in a clever move, it has flipped prices around on storage to undercut Amazon. It cut the cost for storage attached to working virtual machines by 60%, making it cheaper than Amazon’s Elastic Block Store. It made up for that massive cut by leaving prices on... Read More »