Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Ric Telford, Vice President Of Cloud Services, IBM (Part 5)

SM: And how far along is that?

RT: Well, the skeleton is there for approval. The workflow engine is integrated inside the private cloud infrastructure. Now, on the public cloud side, the overriding request is clients want to have variability in their billing. That’s what is different about the cloud compared to a traditional hosting or outsourcing arrangement. What people are looking for is variability in one form or the other – if they need to save money, they can cut back on their usage and have that reflected immediately. They do not have to renegotiate contracts. So, how you deliver variability with all the different kinds of billing models, whether they be subscription, usage based, or any other types, I don’t necessarily see one type prevailing over another because it is workload dependent. For e-mail, the variability is how many mailboxes you sign up for; you pay by the number of mailboxes per month. For infrastructure services, it’s the number of virtual machines per hour, or gigabytes per month, whatever makes more sense. You can have many kinds of billing, but the common theme seems to be to be able to flex it based on real usage and not estimated usage.
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From Steve Jobs’s Soulmate To Founder Of Fotopedia: Jean-Marie Hullot (Part 7)

SM: What is Fotopedia’s business model?

JH: The first step is to build significant traffic. We are not there at this point. We have been operating for one year, and we have learned how to get the community contributing content. Until recently, we did not spend enough energy on learning how to allow people to consume those images. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Ric Telford, Vice President Of Cloud Services, IBM (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra, Pablo Chacin and Saurabh Mallik

SM: What is your sense of the integration issue? Is that a barrier to adoption? Is it something people are worried about? Can the integration costs and risks surpass the advantages of cloud computing?

RT: It all depends on the scenario. At least in the work we have done, especially when you have automated integration systems such as Cast Iron where you have a well-defined set of data that you want to integrate, it is really not that much [of a barrier]. >>>

From Steve Jobs’s Soulmate To Founder Of Fotopedia: Jean-Marie Hullot (Part 6)

SM: Did you spend very much time learning how Flickr operated?

JH: I never spent very much time focusing on one specific project except when I was younger and I was programming. I had a lot of questions in my mind, and I am not a very organized person, so I spent time sorting things out in my mind. I was not making a precise study of Flickr, but I spent a lot of time using it. >>>

One Million by One Million: New LinkedIn Group

Folks, all of you who are interested in supporting and contributing to the One Million by One Million movement can now join our new LinkedIn Group. See you there!

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Ric Telford, Vice President Of Cloud Services, IBM (Part 3)

RT: That’s a good question. Generally, it’s reports – customized reports for sales people who could use that data, for example, average deal size for customers in a city, or the top twenty opportunities. Finance organizations see common usage of IRR, ROI, and other business calculations such as financial risk and liquidity. Sales and distribution are tracking the rate and pace of product sales and relevant trends in our markets globally to determine the best mix of products to introduce. In addition, we see common use of scorecards, dashboards, and BI reports for traditional performance management activities in and among the brands and business units.
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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2010: Ringio

By guest author Praveen Kumar

Ringio is a cloud-based phone system service for small businesses. The company considers its product to deliver “rich calling” – a system that goes beyond virtual private branch exchange (PBX) and call routing and integrates call routing and CRM data. By bringing the context of a call to a conversation, the company aims to help employees make their business calls more meaningful and productive and offer better customer service. By creating the solution in the cloud, Ringio can bring capabilities previously available only through call centers and proprietary customizations to small and medium-sized businesses. >>>

From Steve Jobs’s Soulmate To Founder Of Fotopedia: Jean-Marie Hullot (Part 5)

SM: After NeXT was acquired by Apple, did you have any involvement at all with the company?

JH: No. I traveled for some time, and while I was traveling I met Keith Teare at a conference in Bangkok. There were very few Internet cafés in Bangkok, and we ran into each other at one. >>>