When it comes to procurement, any technology or service should be evaluated
with a good set of criteria. Executive decisions should not be weighted
solely on a single selection criterion such as price. This applies to any
cloud computing service as well.
The twelve criteria listed below (see Chart 1) forces executives to take a
broader review of the many elements of the total cloud computing service, and
not just price. Each criteria starts with an R, F, or P which makes it easy
to remember the total framework for the Yardstick for Technology Procurement
(RFP).
Chart 1: Yardstick for Technology Procurement (RFP)
RELIABILITY
At what percentage of reliability is the service? 99.9% 99.99? 99.995? How is
this measured? What costs are associated with increasing reliability?
(Cost/Benefit Analysis)
REDUNDANCY
Can the system survive a major disaster or is there a single ... (more)
Most CEOs I talk to have a jaded, if not skeptical view of marketing. While
they recognize the importance of marketing to their long term success, they
have a hard time understanding and measuring how well marketing is doing. And
while more mature organizations have a good handle on very well tuned
marketing metrics and measurement, the question is still always out there.
With the advance in marketing automation, new channels of communication, and
the avalanche of marketing data now available, marketing has evolved, in many
CEOs view, from a black art, to a black science.
Hidden... (more)
"Hadoop is an enormous opportunity in big data and cloud computing as
companies today need to store and analyze massive amounts of structured and
unstructured data," stated Shawn Price (pictured left), President of Zuora,
as it was announced that he has joined Datameer's Board of Directors.
Founded by Hadoop veterans in 2009, Datameer is a provider of end-user
analytics solutions built on Apache Hadoop. It offers a data analytics
solution built on Hadoop that helps business users access, analyze and use
massive amounts of data.
Price brings to the company a wealth of successful ... (more)
"How resilient are the cloud computing solutions being sold today?" This
appears to be a question not asked often enough by those who are immediately
lured by the hyped positives of the concept before there is enough data to
substantiate the claims made by the vendors as well as the documentation of
failures of applications.
One concept that I have preached and that has held true for decades is
"leading-edge organizations do not maintain their position with trailing-edge
technologies." The need to constantly evaluate, assess, select and apply new
technology-driven capabilities i... (more)
"It is what is on the inside that counts." How many times have we all been
told that? Personally, I can't even remember. However, just because it is
perhaps overused and undoubtedly cliché, does not make it any less true. In
fact, I rank it right up there with the golden rule as mantras that one
should try to live by. But this is ostensibly a cloud computing blog, so what
am I rambling on about? Well, it turns out that it's what is on the inside
that counts in cloud computing as well!
To explain this, let's take a look at the process for deploying applications
on the cloud today... (more)