WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, May 27, 2011

Good ideas most of the times run up against internal IT priorities and face a lot of resistance in small and medium businesses. This constant debate has created enormous opportunities for new business models to enter and remove the obstacles for innovation. This new business model is known now as “Software as a Service”, or “SaaS” for short. It is revolutionizing the software development industry on a global scale and is gaining momentum. If success is measured by revenue growth, then the comparative growth statistics presented in the graphic below present a convincing financial story for this “breakout” service model:

The reasons behind the success of SaaS are mainly less cost, less internal requirements and flexibility. Read More

Where's Your Cloud Model?

The SaaS companies around today were the pioneers; they battled the naysayers and grew an industry and a new way of doing business from nothing. Because they were first, they didn't worry so much about system redundancy and the attendant headaches - like how to pay for it. But today everyone worries about redundancy because everyone is concerned about when and where the next outage will happen. This has led to many companies reconsidering their cloud model.

Cloud and the reshaping of business

Bill McNee, CEO of analyst group Saugatuck Technology says, “The issue about cloud is not just at the technology level, it’s about the reshaping of business and new business opportunities.” There are two facets to this, he points out. On one hand, for those prepared to innovate, there’s the power of the cloud to increase competitiveness and realize new opportunities. On the other hand, there’s the threat posed by the cloud to those established businesses that are unable to innovate fast enough.

Cloud computing: How to make the right choices

Cloud computing may have gained in popularity but cloud contracts still contain areas of risk for IT decision makers. Researchers at Gartner found that numerous cloud contracts contained no guarantees of uptime or performance service-level agreements (SLA) - despite many being used for business-critical operations. The report advises that users negotiate SLAs with penalties, especially for services key to business-critical operations. Alex Bona, research VP at Gartner said that decision makers should consider cloud contracts with face value. They should look into the hidden costs and risks involved before coming in terms with a contract.

Should You Move Your MySQL Database to the Cloud?

Considering cloud computing to be next thing after web 2.0, the service that interests database personnel is called Database as a Service or simply DBaaS. It is like having your MySQL database on the cloud. In a DBaaS, the database tier in the backend is being overseen by a management layer that's responsible for monitoring and configuring the database to achieve optimized scaling, high availability, multi-tenancy and effective resource allocation in the cloud. In a DBaaS solution, the developer is spared much of the hassles of the tedious ongoing DB management tasks and operations, as those are automatically handled by the service itself.

We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing are helping you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Appreciate if you can add more to this list and help our readers to keep in touch with the Cloud...

Santanu Das

Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Successful businesses need Immersion

I often ask myself about what does it take to sell and market fashion garments, a herbal pesticide product, mobile paging / radio trunking services, IT outsourcing, business process - content management products and web application development platform on the internet. I know you expect the answer to be vastly and vaguely different, but honestly it folds down to two simple things: Perseverance and Product-Market fitment.

Businesses sell and survive, but rarely grow until the Product-market alignment bond is established. Steve jobs once mentioned, Innovation and success is about saying ‘NO’ to a 1000 good things and that is probably the first lesson one needs to learn to get this alignment working for his/her business. Once you establish this science, your product/service business will lead you forward – you only need to follow this path. This is the candy your business needs to attract paying customers.

Perseverance on the other end is about immersion that leads to astonishing insights, courage, bets and leadership. Some might refer to this as guts; for instance, in the context of your journey as an entrepreneur. If you are one of those - planning a career as an entrepreneur and most importantly that of a product start-up, I recommend you pay deep attention towards your mental map and the art of Immersion. Immersion is more than passion and wonders begin to happen when you begin to immerse yourself.

Like most cases, it just might be fate that lets you crisscross paths with an awesome opportunity but that is never enough to put your life and everything else for it. A rebel or no rebel, it takes deep insight at one end and simplicity on the other end to risk your own life to bring your baby into this world.

Sunny Ghosh
Director & CEO, WOLF Frameworks


NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, May 20, 2011

With the crackling success of cloud computing more and more companies are moving their applications to the cloud. Migration is a very important business decision in companies today. There are multiple ways applications can be migrated to the cloud. Organizations seeking to move applications into the cloud have five options: rehost on infrastructure as a service (IaaS); refactor for platform as a service (PaaS); revise for IaaS or PaaS; rebuild on PaaS; or replace with software as a service (SaaS). This decision is not solely an issue of migration but is truly one of optimization: Which cloud platform and migration techniques offer the chance to optimize the application's contribution to stated and implied business and IT goals? Those business and supporting IT goals, described next, should be driving any cloud migration decision -- not a rush to experiment with new toys.

Read More

Some of the other interesting discussions and market information on cloud computing are listed below.

The five keys to building a successful cloud services business

To survive in this fierce market where competition is cut throat you have to keep on changing. Organizations that are grabbing the market share are adapting to these market changes. 5 key factors to consider in this cloud computing market are:

• Differentiate and focus 
• Capitalize on new opportunities created by cloud services 
• Realize not every IT challenge is answered by cloud 
• Leverage the right platform to deliver services customers demand 
• Utilize every resource available to succeed 

Asia lags on Cloud Computing

Cloud adoption is held by back factors ranging from a lack of broadband readiness to concerns around security, vendor lock-in, performance, availability, reliability and a general understanding of what cloud computing is. On top of that, or cutting right through it all, is the issue of Asia's fragmented regulatory framework, which is one of the biggest challenges in the region.

One size fits none: How to secure cloud computing in the enterprise

A recent study by IBM's Institute of Business Value found that 77 percent of the IT managers surveyed believe adopting cloud computing makes privacy protection more difficult. Half are worried about data breaches or losses, meaning only 20 percent of the usage of cloud computing is for mission-critical, enterprise applications. The key to profiting from the cloud is learning to manage the new security it risks creates. Here are three ways to do so:

• Follow a "secure by design" methodology 
• Focus on a workload-driven approach 
• Extend security with services 

Cloud Computing Is Here to Stay

A recently published study (registration required) realized by IBM based on face-to-face conversations with more than 3,000 CIO worldwide has concluded that cloud computing has grown significantly in enterprises’ priority over the last two years. Cloud computing has jumped from 33%, very low on the list of priorities in 2009, to 60%, on par with Business Process Management, and not far behind Business Intelligence, Mobility Solutions and Virtualization.


We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing are helping you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Appreciate if you can add more to this list and help our readers to keep in touch with the Cloud...


Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks



NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, May 13, 2011

Cloud Computing has become a discernable trend over the past years and has become a very important factor for uprooting traditional IT. Technicians with cloud computing experience have been hot in demand. System administrators have been impacted the most with more number of companies moving to the cloud. The gradual increase of enterprise cloud computing adoption is driving the change in skill sets required. The ones that possess technical skills and experience in sales environments are mostly sought after, as they tend to be much attuned to the market, and can take advantage of the changes in business environments. Read More

Some of the other interesting discussions and market information on cloud computing are listed below.

How Is Cloud Computing Like an Airplane?

A cloud computing service is like an airliner - even though it can experience devastating crashes that affect many people, it is still safer than driving your own car…or IT infrastructure. Focusing more on backup, redundancy and resiliency should help you in minimizing the outages. Still you are better off in the cloud than doing things your own way.

Enterprise dilemma: To cloud or not to cloud

Cloud computing is not the exclusive domain of large enterprise and the public sector. In fact, the SMB and mid market segment can hugely benefit by leveraging public cloud services that deliver IT services and applications that they need. The question is, 'To cloud or not to cloud?' The right answer is to define a cloud strategy that best aligns with your business model and organizational goals. The best place to start is an infrastructure assessment of your enterprise data center on the level of preparedness for eventual cloud migration.

Cloud computing shines a light on IT money pits

It has been years that companies have been trying to fathom their IT spending. Today with cloud computing they can find out whether they are getting their return on investments with minimal efforts. This detailed insight into IT spending will not only help businesses determine whether they are paying over the odds but will also allow spend on IT services to be matched to user demand for aspects such as availability and security of that service.

7 Truths about Cloud Computing

• It's too soon for cloud service standards 
• But end-users can't get locked into cloud solutions 
• Network operators who want to develop cloud services should move fast - with caution 
• Cloud services represent another way to go vertical 
• Mobility and cloud services are a natural fit 
• There are many partnership options for cloud services 
• Still very early days for cloud, change is on the way 

We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing are helping you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Appreciate if you can add more to this list and help our readers to keep in touch with the Cloud...


Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, May 06, 2011

At times it seems cloud computing has no more definition than the atmospheric phenomenon after which it is named. From Dot.Coms to Cloud Computing, What’s Old is New Again. Is cloud computing enabling the next generation of information accessibility or simply a marketing campaign devised by technology companies to peddle more of what they are already selling? The answer lies somewhere between those extremes. Much of what makes cloud computing tick—the Internet, mobile computers, networked data storage, software housed in data centers and delivered over the Web —has been available since the beginning of the dot-com era more than a decade ago. What is new, or at least more recent, is the greater variety of content that can be delivered online to a wider variety of gadgets. Read More



Some of the other interesting information on cloud computing are listed below.

Can you save money with cloud computing?

Digging deep to find out how much money you can save with cloud computing, Forrester analyst James Staten makes the following points:

• Low costs per employee can add up. A $99 a month deal for an on-demand CRM system works if you have just five employees. For larger companies, the math gets tricky. Toss in modules and you could be looking at a hefty annual bill.
• Infrastructure as a service can add up with usage—especially if you add other services like storage, load balancing, monitoring, content delivery and other items.
• You still have operational costs. You still have to manage, secure, backup and recover cloud deployments. 

Cloud Computing Era Could Mean MSP Extinction

Managed Service Providers will be obsolete in years to come. The cloud will put MSP business out of the business. Companies who had infrastructure and asset management as a core feature of their business will slowly start depleting once people move to the public cloud. MSPs hoping to avoid the junk-pile of IT services can take advantage of two trends:

• Hybrid cloud environments, where some but not all of a customer’s applications are hosted
• Cloud consulting, which should be a no brainer for VARs that have long practiced the “trusted advisor” role. 

Three Dirty Little Cloud Secrets

Like a coin has two sides, every path breaking technology has both good and bad. Cloud computing is not left alone. Cloud also has its three dirty little secrets:

• Some public cloud computing providers are falling and will fail.
• Public clouds don't always save you money.
• Using clouds can get you fired. 

10 Make or Break Questions to Ask Your Cloud Computing Vendor

Because many vendors look good on paper, you’ll want to cover the most important selection criteria to minimize your risks and increase your comfort level. How do you know which cloud vendor will match its headlines? Ask the following 10 make-or-break questions before you sign on the dotted line:

1. The Basics
2. Security and Availability
3. Migration Services
4. Integration
5. Support Professionals
6. Uptime Metrics and Reports
7. Assess the Vendor’s Sales Process
8. How is Pricing set up?
9. Multiple Services
10. Ask for References 

We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing are helping you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Appreciate if you can add more to this list and help our readers to keep in touch with the Cloud...


Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Bringing up your product startup - Level 0.1

If you are wondering whether your first 10 customers are a good indicator that your baby is growing well and that you can multiply numbers fast, I would recommend that you rethink!!!

Most product startups do well when it comes to initial marketing and product sales. The challenge appears only when you want your sales to multiply in shorter cycles and you expect customers to buy-in.

It appears to me that it might be a lot easier if you are addressing an Enterprise market rather than a consumer segment, but in any case the principle is almost the same. Here's how it reads:

"The narrower you are the more chances of your business becoming successful." Geoffrey Moore termed this phenomena in his classic business management book "Crossing the Chasm" as winning customer segments and not just selling into them.

When markets and customers begin to "buy-in" to your product/service - it's more likely that your initial sales will soar without even selling hard. This state gives you clarity in accurately understanding why your product sells today and who does it attract, but most importantly it opens up the opportunity for you to sense which are your low hanging fruits and high value customers and how you would like to play or change the rules of the game.

How do we get to this state? My personal favorite is Personas, but you can start with the simple - what, how and why.

One thing that distinctly stands out here is that before customers buy your product they buy into you. So you must choose wisely - what? Your why's, how's and what's in the product ...


Sunny Ghosh
Director & CEO, WOLF Frameworks


NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Entrepreneurship - Where do you want to take your startup? and how do you exit?

Incremental innovation, familiarity & easy replace ability will give your idea/product faster adoption in the marketplace.

Innovation brings better competitive strengths (long term higher value) with delayed customer adoption.

If you can crack the initial adoption cycle, you will survive and can demand better cash flow for your innovative product. Scaling adoption of innovation will require time and smart marketing, sales and financing strategies. Nothing that is proven though…

How far do you want to stretch your dreams for large scale product adoption and make your business wait for customers?

Is it sensible for your business to start small and then introduce incremental innovations?

Isn't it a fad that if you innovate now your business is secure? And you will not need to innovate again?

Isn’t it true that you are in it for shareholder wealth?

Good Exit comes when you attract less risk capital - maybe Private Equity at a slightly matured stage.

Bad exit happens when you attract high risk and early stage capital - maybe VC at a very early stage?

Desperate sale gets you a job at a large company with all stock deal - maybe?

Less risky investments will demand sound customer base and long upward struggle and the ability to play the game.

So it seems like the problem and the solution - both are UNKNOWN !!!

Step back and enjoy your journey, the dots will connect by themselves (remember Steve Jobs outstanding speech at Stanford?)

This is a science that needs art....

Sunny Ghosh

Director & CEO, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.