Marketing Cloud Computing

Since I talked about using virtualization in various forms in my last 2 blogs, this is a natural seque to adding the seriously hot topic of Cloud Computing into the mix. While virtualization serves as an important infrastruture component behind cloud computing, there’s a whole lot more to the cloud and what needs to be done to market it.

I’ll begin by providing some evidence of how important this is to both the vendors and buyers of cloud computing technologies. As an example, I recently attended (May 5-6) the Microsoft Developers Conference in NY City. While I don’t put myself into the core developer space, I certainly try to listen to and learn from the developers of technology. This years conference was in fact MC’ed by a couple of Microsoft executives that come from their Cloud Computing Platform Group, Doug Hauser and Mike Werner. Both of them talked about the committment that Microsoft is making in terms of material, equipment and people resources to their internal and customer-focused use of cloud computing.

Companies such as Microsoft, as well as Amazon and Google, each have their own strategies around cloud computing, including Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s S3 and Google’s AppEngine. They are also buying up massive amounts of computing power to fuel their expansion and provide a new layer of centralization for software and internet services. Some estimate that these companies are buying upwards of 20% of the world’s output of servers. Even one of my daily reads, the Financial Times of London, stepped in on March 26th and did a one-page review in their daily Analysis page titled, Cloud Control.

Cloud computing is essentially architected around a stack of services and applications that can be accessed from inside or outside the firewall (corporate or personal). What that boils down to is that the end-user can gain access to a variety of software programs and services that no longer have to reside locally (on your laptop, desktop or local server). For instance, I not only use Microsoft Outlook on my local system but I have also been expanding or complementing those capabilities with services from Google, such as Gmail and their web calendaring system. And companies such as Salesforce.com have been delivering powerful internet services applications for quite some time.

What’s new here is that businesses are redesigning some of their traditional IT centers to become more nimble to take advantage of these cloud services while architecting their internal portfolio of applications to mimic the way cloud computing is being delivered externally, but controlled within their corporate firewall.

So how are vendors marketing cloud computing? Here’s some of the benefits that I have captured in my own words:

Free – OK not everything is free, but for many businesses you can’t get much cheaper than this – such as Gmail, Google’s calendar and contact. Essentially this is a pay as you use service over the long term.
Fast – you can get access to application and services quickly, without investment in software, time and people resources.
Functional - you can try different versions of similar services (CRM, etc) and compare their capabilities and functions, side-by-side, to determine which services meet your needs and situation best.
Failure-proof - this is a win-win for IT and Lines of Business. The IT department isn’t saddled with software that requires mounds of technical expertise and the business lines are free to experiment a little.
Fun – with all the above, hopefully cloud computing opens up some of the latest capabilities of delivering and trialing software and internet services in a benign, safe and unobtrusive way.

I’ll conclude by focusing in on one of those last words, safe. To market and sell services, vendors and providers of cloud computing services must guarantee the safety and security of any data that we entrust to them, whether it is our email or business content. This key precept will be one of the important building blocks and of course marketing fundamentals for a succssful cloud computing service.

Keep my data safe and provide me with a service that I can’t get inexpensively, quickly or easily on my own, and you’ll always have my attention and wallet.