Data Footprints by Generations [Infographic]

As data is continuously collected and created, companies have difficulty just storing it, missing any opportunity to leverage the information. The wave of big data has the potential to flip the burden of data management into the opportunity of new value creation. Yesterday’s solutions don’t accomplish this today and will be even less effective tomorrow. […]

Cloud Computing 2013: The Amazon Gorilla Invades the Enterprise

At its AWS re:Invent conference in November 2012, Amazon presented a compelling story about how it intends to permanently alter the enterprise computing landscape generally and infrastructure services specifically. Executives from Amazon were clear that they had no intention of mimicking the business models of traditional enterprise service providers. Rather they intend to disrupt the current order and bring Amazon’s low margin retail mentality to enterprise IT.

As a result, IT organizations (ITOs) will see continued pressure from CEOs and “Shadow IT” to improve agility, simplify IT operations, and cut costs. While prudent CIOs will focus on data governance, privacy, security, and other organizational risks associated with moving to the Public Cloud, the reality is that intensified partnerships with cloud service providers are probably in their future.

Recent Wikibon research shows that successful cloud service providers will not try to take Amazon head on in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. Rather they will put forth a clear value proposition to CIOs that delivers business value through a partner ecosystem. The most appealing to enterprise IT customers will come from services that are either industry-focused and/or best-of-breed and offer significantly better shared-risk models than Amazon.