Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jon Freeman, CIO of MyCroft, Inc. (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think we understand the business at this point and your core competencies and design principles. This series is part of the One Million by One Million effort, which is to help a million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in annual revenue around the world. A huge part of our audience are entrepreneurs who are trying to understand from people who have a unique vantage point into an industry and its problems and can shed light on open problems wherein people could start companies to solve these problems. Would you give us a perspective on the open problems on your radar screen? >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jon Freeman, CIO of MyCroft, Inc. (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of where it exists, are you saying that you also provide data center facilities to host a private cloud implementation of your solution?

Jon Freeman: That’s correct. We have many customers today who may own data centers but also have either co-lo facilities or use service providers to host some of their technology. Because of that, you may find yourself hosting or putting some of your services within an external service provider, an IBM or a Savvis or a Rackspace, for example, on behalf of an organization that’s also using those services. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jon Freeman, CIO of MyCroft, Inc. (Part 3)

Jon Freeman: The next design principle is that it has to be based on proven security technology. You can’t be inventing an authentication system or adopting authentication systems that haven’t been tried and tested. You have to be able to demonstrate that this software and the solutions and the services that you’re bringing forward are, essentially, industry strong. There’s no initialization of a startup with a decision to say, I have a better way of doing encryption, and this is my encryption. It needs to be able to be demonstrated that it has adhered to and has been developed around industry best practices and standards. Things like SAML 3.0, XACML, SPML, these are all of the underlying security technology standards that need to be incorporated. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jon Freeman, CIO of MyCroft, Inc. (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So, this is not a software as a service company; it’s a professional service company.

Jon Freeman: It is. It is a professional services company that now has [characteristics of] a software as a service company. So, if you’re looking at whom we compete with as a software as a service, we’re more security as a service. The list is very short. To be honest with you, we’ve look at the simplified to the world that are offering a pure software security as a service and identity as a service solutions, and they tend to cater more to organizations that are looking for a cloud-based solution. The solutions that they’re trying to address are about how the organization integrates with the cloud. Our solutions do both. Our solutions offer a strategy for cloud integration as well as the enterprise security requirements that all organizations face. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Jon Freeman, CIO of MyCroft, Inc. (Part 1)

The convenience of computers is undeniable, but the security issues that go along with using them can be mind boggling. That’s where companies like MyCroft, Inc. come in. MyCroft serves government, healthcare, insurance, finance, enterprise, and higher education industries. The company’s list of services include identity and access management, data protection, and managed security services, and offers compliance solutions in areas such as HIPAA and SOX. A global company that has been around for more than three decades, MyCroft has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and India.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Indu Kodukula, Executive VP of Products and CTO, SunGard Availability Services (Part 9)

Sramana Mitra: Is that an opportunity that is similar to what Salesforce.com has done in customer relationship management, or are you saying more domain-specific applications inside enterprises or vertical applications and so forth?

Indu Kodukula: No, I think it’s across the board, even for horizontal applications.

SM: That is happening, though, the horizontal application is happening in droves.

IK: I think it is, but even Saleforce.com is not truly a utility model when you look underneath. Eventually, if they start building on top of relational databases service, and if they really allow the scale-up, scale- down, not just from a single instance perspective but across  all of their customers, I think that’ll start to be more interesting. But you are right, I think for horizontal applications, there isn’t any company today – maybe with the exception of Salesforce – who could effectively compete with the Oracles of the world. I think that needs to change. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Indu Kodukula, Executive VP of Products and CTO, SunGard Availability Services (Part 8)

Sramana Mitra: So, let me go back to the question I asked. Are you doing something proactively in terms of offering incentives to entrepreneurs to set up their cloud services on your platform?

Indu Kodukula: Absolutely. First of all, you can come and deploy your services on us. If you don’t, we offer you essentially a way to not have to continue to use it if don’t want to. The cost is  always a consideration. More important, we are building up a team of solution architects who are going to be able to sit down – we see that as an investment – the solution architects would actually sit down with entrepreneurs and walk them through, or sit down with them and, in many cases, help them design their applications so that they run the right way on the cloud, absolutely. >>>

Adobe Focuses On Web Tools

Adobe yesterday announced several major initiatives targeted at tablets including a cloud service and web design tools. It also announced the acquisition of web typography innovator Typekit and its agreement to acquire Nitobi, creator of PhoneGap. The shift in focus toward Web technologies is a welcome development especially in the wake of Microsoft joining Apple in not supporting Flash on tablets. Let’s take a closer look.

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