Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What are you hearing from Microsoft in terms of collaboration? You said you don’t have a lot visibility into the Google products roadmap, but what is Microsoft telling you about its product roadmap? This comment that Google is better at collaboration tools in the office environment has been said for years, right? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: With respect to the security concerns, I am hearing the same from a lot of other people. I think that the cloud vendors have a better capacity to provide solid security than what you can provide in your internal IT operation.

DM: I have said this for the past five years. As a mid-sized company, I can’t justify having a full-time security person with the salary that a full-time security person should cost. Security is not a one-person operation. For an IT team, dealing with security for a mid-sized company becomes a part-time job for all of our IT personnel. For a typical cloud provider, their reputation is on the line if they have a security breach. So, they have a team of dedicated security experts and individuals whose only job is to be able to deal with security. As a mid-sized company using a cloud service, I get the same security value as one of the Fortune 100 and Fortune 10 companies on Salesforce.com. That is how seriously they take it. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Interesting! So, you basically leap-frogged the previous generations of on-premise technology and went straight to cloud computing because that is what makes sense right now, that is where the good stuff is in terms of time to market and rapid adoption, right? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Okay, got it. With the kind of integration and expansion or extension strategy you are following, what is the cost of integration? What did the cost of these enhancements turn out to be? Is that a big part of your budget?

DM: No, because we do all the integration internally and the solutions that we have in place are scalable. Therefore, we are not paying for a number of new connectors within the environment. It is all included in the sunk costs at the beginning. Many of our integration services simply involve some amount of development time to achieve that. There aren’t a whole lot of costs associated with it. The biggest challenge is defining the change management and making sure that the departments where these integration points happen are in synchronization at all the times. We need to ensure that each of the departments that are integrated is in sync with what is supposed to happen with the system. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What is the architecture of these solutions?

DM: The architecture is built off the Apex code. The Apex code as well as the Web services interfaces that we write are inside Salesforce.com. These Web services include everything from .NET to Cold Fusion. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Doug Menefee, CIO of Schumacher Group (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Let’s talk about where Schumacher Group is in terms of cloud deployment. What is your philosophy as a CIO, when you think through cloud computing, and what is the status of your organization in terms of cloud computing adoption? >>>

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. >>>

What’s Clouding The Cloud For The Insurance Sector?

By guest author Simon Walker of Blue Cod Technologies

The technology world loves its buzzwords. Attaching a catchy term can help grab attention and define a broad technical evolution in a simple way. It can also overcomplicate a new process or technology, put its evolution at risk, and drive buyers to focus on the mechanics versus the value. When buyers sense complexity and focus on the technical minutiae instead of the business value, the perceived risk increases and the barriers to real business adoption go up. >>>