Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Marc Ferrentino, CTA Of Salesforce (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

About Salesforce
Salesforce.com is an enterprise cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco that distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce.com hosts the applications offsite. It is best known for its customer relationship management (CRM) products and, through acquisition, has expanded into the area of social enterprise. It has been one of cloud computing’s biggest champions through devising and delivering its cloud-based CRM, collaboration, and platform services to its customers.

Salesforce.com has its services translated into 16 languages and, according to Wikipedia, currently has 82,400 customers and more than 2.1 million subscribers. Its CRM solution is broken down into several broad categories: sales cloud, service cloud, data cloud (including Jigsaw), collaboration cloud (including Chatter) and custom cloud (including Force.com).

About Marc Ferrentino
Marc joined Salesforce.com in February 2007. His responsibilities included early-stage product development and marketing, evangelism of the Force.com platform, and promoting Salesforce.com’s open source initiatives. Marc is also involved with developing Salesforce.com’s collaboration and platform strategies. Prior to Salesforce.com, Marc served as the vice president of Engineering at Vettro Corp, a global leader in mobile on-demand applications. Prior to Vettro, Marc served as vice president of development at InternetCash.com. Over the course of his career, he has held technology positions at Goldman Sachs and Westinghouse/Cutler-Hammer.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Marc. Welcome to the Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing series. Would you please give us some background on your role at Salesforce and also on Salesforce’s perspective on the cloud today from where you are. >>>

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Jay Leader CIO, Of iRobot (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Siddharth Garg and Rahul Nagpal

About iRobot
iRobot designs and builds robots that make a difference. iRobot was founded in 1990 when Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticists Colin Angle and Helen Greiner teamed up with their professor Dr. Rodney Brooks with the vision of making practical robots a reality.

In 2010, iRobot generated more than $400 million in revenue and employed more than 600 of the robot industry’s top professionals, including mechanical, electrical, and software engineers and related support staff. iRobot trades on the NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol IRBT.

About Jay Leader
Jay Leader has nearly 25 years of international IT management experience. His areas of expertise include IT management, strategic planning and financial management, and infrastructure and security management. Prior to joining iRobot, Leader was CIO at Nypro Inc., a $1.2 billion injection molding and contract manufacturing firm with 66 locations in 18 countries. He was responsible for worldwide IT operations, managing support and development organizations in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and China. Earlier in his career, Leader served in IT management positions at Coopers & Lybrand LLP, Groundwater Technology Inc. and Data General Corporation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in government and international relations and a master’s degree in business administration, both from Clark University. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Frank Modruson, CIO of Accenture (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Siddharth Garg and Rahul Nagpal

In this interview we spoke with Frank B. Modruson, CIO of Accenture. He leads a high-performance global IT organization that directly supports the business goals of a $21.6 billion company. He oversees all business applications and technology infrastructure, helping to enable more than 223,000 employees in 52 countries worldwide to work anytime, anywhere. Modruson has transformed IT into a strategic asset for Accenture. Under his leadership, the IT organization has produced an ability to run IT as a business, implemented a comprehensive governance model, and streamlined the technology infrastructure, and more. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Diane Bryant, CIO Of Intel (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Siddharth Garg and Rahul Nagpal

About Intel

Intel Corporation is an American global technology company and the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue.

Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation and is based in Santa Clara, California. Outside of California, the company has facilities in 63 countries and regions internationally, including China, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Israel, Ireland, India, Russia, and Vietnam.

Intel also makes motherboard chip sets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

In this interview, we spoke with Mandy Edwards, the global chief information officer at Sitel. Sitel is the leading business process outsourcing (BPO) call center provider, as ranked by the Black Book of Outsourcing, a Data Monitor company. Sitel’s customer interaction outsourcing solutions span more than 135 domestic, nearshore, and offshore call centers in 26 countries across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific. The company has more than 52,000 employees. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Chris Burchett, CIO Of Credant Technologies (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

About Credant Technologies
Credant Technologies’ Mobile Guardian solutions are designed to protect endpoint data wherever it resides, helping to ensure endpoint data security and demonstrate compliance while avoiding the costs and complexities of full disk solutions.

Named in 2007 and 2008 as the fastest-growing privately held security company in the Inc 500 survey, Credant Technologies’ goal is to enable customers to leverage the business productivity benefits of highly mobile endpoint computing without the risks or operational constraints imposed by other technologies. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

About VMware
VMware (NYSE:VMW), the virtualization and cloud infrastructure company, delivers solutions designed to accelerate IT by reducing complexity and enabling more flexible, agile service delivery. VMware enables enterprises to adopt a cloud model that addresses their unique business challenges. The company’s approach accelerates the transition to cloud computing while preserving existing investments and improving security and control. With more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware has solutions to help organizations of all sizes lower costs, become more agile, and preserve freedom of choice. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Klaus-Michael Vogelberg, CTO Of Sage Group Plc, Newcastle (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing (TLCC) returns with an interview with Klaus-Michael Vogelberg, CTO of Sage Group Plc. Before diving in, readers new to the series may want to read more about its purpose and goals, which are set forth in Cloud Computing Trends And Opportunities

About Klaus-Michael Vogelberg
Klaus-Michael was R&D director and partner of the German KHK Software Group, acquired by Sage in 1997. In 2000, joined the Group team to assist Sage operating companies and the board on software architecture and technology strategy. Between 2004 and 2007, Klaus-Michael acted as R&D director for Sage UK and Ireland before taking up his current post of Group chief technology officer.

About Sage
Sage Group Plc provides business software, services, and support to small and medium-sized businesses. Founded in 1981 in Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, the company has grown to become a major provider of business management software and services. It employs more than 13,400 people in a global operation that, in the year ended September 30, 2010, generated revenues of £1.435 million.

Traditionally, the company has been associated with accounting software, but over the past twenty years it has applied its experience here to other areas and now has a range of solutions to help businesses from front to back office. Functions addressed include accounting, payroll, customer relationship management (CRM), financial forecasting, payment processing, job costing, human resources, business intelligence, taxation and other products for accountants, business stationery, development platforms, e-business, and enterprise resource planning (ERP). >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Judy Spitz, CIO Of Verizon (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

What is a typical user’s expectation of a tolerable speed of mobile connectivity? Connectivity today spans telephony, infrastructure and service access speeds, application speeds, and perceptible performance. Having been in the business of managing ever-higher customer expectations for telecom providers, Judy Spitz, CIO of Verizon, has a witty answer to this question. She says that for a typical user, the slowest speed they are willing to tolerate is the fastest speed they have ever experienced! >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sankarson Banerjee, CIO Of IndiaInfoline (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Will the cloud level the entrepreneur playing field and smooth out some of the ugly bumps encountered during a typical startup journey, especially in an Indian context, similar to how India leapfrogged years of telecommunication lag through its mass adoption of mobile technology? What are some of the barriers, challenges, and blue-sky opportunities for new offerings and newer businesses in India based on the cloud? In the following interview, Sramana and Sankarson Banerjee, CIO of IndiaInfoline, dig into several aspects of cloud computing technology adoption and market needs in India. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO Of RightNow (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

The Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model of cloud computing has seen steady and overwhelming growth that has cut across industries, verticals, and big and small enterprises. Worldwide SaaS revenue in the enterprise application software market was pegged at $8.5 billion in 2010, up 14.1% from 2009 revenue of $7.5 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The projected shift in total SaaS revenue from just over 10 percent of the combined markets in 2009 to more than 16 percent of these combined markets in 2014 due to widespread adoption of SaaS, is creating newer opportunities for cloud computing entrepreneurs. The SaaS space is no doubt crowded when it comes to innovative solutions, but there is a clear gap, especially in terms of solutions that address concerns of SaaS adopters such as cloud provider lock-in and the ability to interoperate from one cloud to another – be it infrastructure, the platform, or the solution itself. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Paul Wilcox, CIO of HMH Publishing (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

It was not so long ago in the history of books – 1936 – that publisher Allen Lane started Penguin Books Ltd. in what would be the first major successful attempt to print and sell cheap but high-quality fiction and nonfiction books on the mass market. Today, the advent of iPads, Kindles, and e-books coupled with the availability of cost-effective, efficient, and scalable cloud computing technology is creating another shift in the publishing industry. Valid environmental concerns about electronic publishing aside, cloud computing seems to be spurring on trends in publishing world such as self-publishing, which can entail additional effort from authors but can also get more books to market faster, cheaper, and on a larger scale. Besides Amazon’s self-publishing technology there are others such as Lulu and Mimeo that are latching on to this trend – Author Solutions saw 50%-70% cost and time reductions with cloud-based publishing workflows. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Elementary, secondary, and university education in the United States is rapidly evolving to address the needs of changing times and those of a competitive and more flat world. Until now, publishers have generally been responsible for providing learning material, a lot of which takes the form of paper textbooks. But the proliferation of gadgets that bring the power of information to the fingertips of students and academics through devices such as the iPad, and the growing popularity of e-books, are changing the face of the market. The U.S. education technology market is estimated at $500 billion with three broad sectors – instructional materials and assessments, data management and analysis, and supporting services. Among entrepreneurs and educators, there is a spurt of interest in creating innovative products for the education sector that is driven by several factors, such as the Web technology evolution; the emergence of flexible, scalable, and cost-effective options such as cloud computing; advances in Internet connectivity; the spread of home broadband; wider adoption of state learning standards; and, to some extent, the Obama administration’s emphasis on education. The K-12 segment is ripe for change since the market is fragmented, there is no clear leader, and K-12 is technologically lagging behind higher education. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

When it comes to giving an edge to businesses through IT, cloud computing is leveling the playing field in more innovative ways than were once conceivable. On one hand, widely popular Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and pay-per-use pricing models have brought the capital expenditure barrier to its knees, giving a fillip and a more fair chance to startups and SMBs. These models have also brought a larger market within the reach of startups and SMBs, without the need for big sales muscle, unlike large enterprises. On the other hand, cloud has helped large enterprises to reach out to the masses, enabled them to take advantage of their ‘power users’ through social networking, and provided them with the means to sell their market-leading solutions, which earlier could be bought only by those with deeper pockets, in the form of more affordable pay-per-use products and thus harness the long-tail phenomenon. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Carol Kline, CIO Of TeleTech (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

We have here an interesting cloud adoption use case with generous insights into the world of a large global business process outsourcing (BPO) enterprise, TeleTech, which manages global-scale contact centers. Over the past seven years, through private cloud adoption, TeleTech has not only moved to the next level of operational efficiency; it could also enter into a new line of business of on-demand outsourcing by playing to its strengths in contact center management and using cloud computing. We saw another similar example of creation of a new line of business through cloud adoption at Cycle30 in one of our earlier interviews in this series. >>>