What Musical Theatre Can Teach Us About Business Strategy
Musical theatre actors are amazing strategists. The similarities between the types of strategic decisions by a single actor in a musical and someone running a large organization are striking. Those … Continue reading
You’re Not Failing if You’re Learning
How “learn-fast” thinking can improve innovation and combat fear of failure “We’re a large organization. We can’t fail fast and break things!” It’s the type of statement I frequently encounter, … Continue reading
What being half naked on an airplane taught me about innovation
How to tap the true power of innovation and avoid building new products nobody wants. You never forget being half naked on a fairly full airplane. But what can that … Continue reading
The innovation pot of gold you may not know you already have
There’s nothing like success to suck the innovation out of a great team. I have seen it many times. A team has a great, innovative idea. They have that magical … Continue reading
Supplier partnerships are a strategic weapon in the application economy
What being a cloud provider taught me about licensing and supplier relationships. “Please don’t make me count.” Just as we were celebrating that we had solved a tremendous business agility problem with … Continue reading
Cloud Computing’s Shockwave and How It Can Benefit Your Business
The value of cloud computing is becoming widely understood, with many reporting that it has delivered beyond their expectations. But there is an opportunity for even greater return from cloud … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: Embrace Diversity and Avoid The Money Pit
If we have learned nothing from the recent Snowden revelations and stories of cloud outages the one irrefutable lesson we have learned is that you should always choose the most secure, most resilient cloud service, right? … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: Regulatory Complexity Requires Systems Thinking
In a recent article Peter Wayner cautions that “No one knows which laws apply” in reference to the fact that a customer may be in one jurisdiction and the cloud instance they … Continue reading
Cloud Computing Myth 7: Cloud Only Makes Sense for Large Deployments
In recent weeks there appear to have been an increasing number of articles written about cloud computing myths. I am not complaining about that. In fact, I have written a few … Continue reading
Preparing for the Cloud Computing SLA Cold War
In a recent article, “Cloud Providers Ready to Strike With Nuclear Option“, Simon Phipps stated that issues related to cloud service level agreements (SLAs) are “under acknowledged and overdue for … Continue reading
Measure the Cloud for Business Value
Despite decades of talk about how IT needs to align to the business, in many organizations, IT and the business are not speaking the same language — if they’re speaking … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: The LAN That Time Forgot
Four caveats for those evaluating the costs and benefits of cloud solutions Recent announcements ranging from mergers and acquisitions, to movement of key personnel, to changes in licensing models have … Continue reading
Private Clouds Deliver No Value (Part II)
People who live in glass houses should throw dashboards In Part I of this series I discussed some of the challenges and value (or lack thereof) perceptions facing private cloud … Continue reading
Private Clouds Deliver No Value (Part I)
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing” – Oscar Wilde As a private cloud provider I dealt with widespread perceptions that private clouds (and internal … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: A Tale of Two Write-Downs
It was the best of times, it was a cell with a view Recently there has been a lot of discussion and debate regarding the capitalizing and amortizing of cloud-related … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: Keep your friends close, and the Finance Team closer
I agree, Dick Benton, a partnership with Finance is critical to private cloud success Dick Benton recently published a two-part article on “Calculating Cloud ROI” in which he states that … Continue reading
Innovation, Technology, and Life in the Cloud 