Apple named Salesforce Chatter the best iPhone business application in the App Store Rewind 2011. “Chatter Mobile enables users to stay connected to the people, groups, data and files that matter most when they are away from their computer. Chatter users can update their status, post comments, upload photos and much more right from their smartphone or tablet.” Also, the application is free! Curious? Download it here.

• Chatter Mobile: Best iPhone Business App in 2011

Nourse argues that it is most effective to manage all constituents in one database rather than having multiple databases. When using one system, reporting is simpler, training is more straightforward and comprehensible, and having all of your data in one places gives you the opportunity to reach out to multiple constituencies as needed. Moreover, your relationship with your constituents will change, and it is easier to make these changes in one system. A database such as Salesforce.com is flexible and allows you to make these changes and easily managable.

• How Salesforce.com Enables Non-Profits to Manage All Constituents in One Database

A lot of concerns surrounding trust, reliability, compliance and security arise while looking for a cloud provider. Business Cloud News provides us with some best practices for choosing a cloud provider: perform an audit report of your provider’s environment to build your trust for them, select a service provider that understands regulatory requirements, understand the security responsibility of your provider, know the location of where your data is actually kept in case there is ever an emergency, and finally, evaluate your cloud provider based on their key controls and security responsibilities. Moreover, it is important to continually evaluate your cloud provider, as the best cloud providers will continue to make improvements.

• 5 Steps to Choosing the Right Cloud Provider

This week, RightNow Technologies announced that “nearly everyone voted in favor of the previously proposed merger with Oracle.” The proposed merger between RightNow and Oracle was announced a few months ago, with Oracle agreeing to acquire RightNow for $1.5 billion in cash. RightNow is a cloud-based customer service company that helps other companies manage customer interactions across multiple channels.

• RightNow Stockholders Approve $1.5 Billion Merger with Oracle

An ongoing discussion regarding what was the biggest development in cloud computing in 2011. Responses so far revolve around greater development in the cloud and mobile accessibility. Add your responses to the discussion below.

• What Was the Biggest Development for the Cloud in 2011?

Delivered Innovation loves a good Salesforce success story, and this case study on Citizen School’s usage of Chatter brings to light one of it’s greatest features- collaboration. Citizen Schools uses Chatter to promote staff collaboration while working outside the school at external engagements, such as fundraising, volunteer recruiting, and policy/advocacy. They used Chatter to share their best-practices, support, and news with each other, creating a community and a place to share inspiring ideas even though everyone is working remotely. Moreover, Chatter Desktop application made this process even simpler, because no one had to have Salesforce open in order to post, they could simply do it from their application.

• How Citizen Schools has Deployed Salesforce Chatter- Part 1

There are five key statistics Business Cloud News wants you to take away from 2011: The size of the cloud computing market will reach $150 billion by 2013, Amazon.com’s AWS expects to earn a total of $750 million in 2011, 7/10 companies currently using cloud services will move new applications to the cloud in the next few years, 54% of respondents listed security as their top concern for adopting the cloud, and lastly, 60% of server workloads will be virtualized by 2014. What do all of these statistics mean? The cloud is growing and expected to grow quicker in the next few years, so perhaps you should consider moving to the cloud, too.

• 5 Cloud Computing Statistics you May Find Surprising

Cloud computing skills are in high demand, and companies are scrambling to hire people with specific skills. Linthicum outlines three jobs in which you will surely find work. The first he lists is Cloud Service Architect, which is someone who understands how cloud providers can autoprovision and autoscale, and apply that knowledge to cloud-based apps and infrastructure. The second job he lists is Cloud Migration Specialist, this individual should be able to take existing legacy applications and relocate them in the cloud, which would allow them to take full advantage of the elasticity of the cloud computing platform. Lastly, he lists Cloud Security Specialist. As we stated above, 54% of respondents listed security as their top cloud concern, so a Cloud Security Specialist who understands the difference between identity and encryption would be very beneficial to any company. Positions in cloud computing are in high demand, so if you are looking for a change, consider educating yourself in these positions.

• How to Get Rich in the Cloud

CSC announced a recent survey that states, “33 percent of survey respondents cited accessibility to information through multiple devices as the most important reason for their decision to adopt cloud computing.” Cloud computing allows companies to adopt to solutions when they need it and only pay for what they use, instead of committing to a specific service or solution. Today, both businesses and people need freedom and flexibility, and the cloud provides this.

• The Freedom of the Cloud

It’s Friday, the holidays are around the corner, everyone is busy spending time with family and friends, so there are not too many articles surfacing the internet right now. So, I leave you with this one, one of the funniest iPhone apps I have seen, Jotly. Jotly is used to “Rate Everything,” which means you can rate which ice cube in your glass is the best, which nearby items are the coolest, how great that parking meter to your left is- literally rate anything and everything around you. Click the link below to watch the ad and find out where you can download the app.

• Jotly Lives! Parody App Goes Live in iTunes

KPMG came out with a recent study on where cloud computing is heading, and what is compelling this change. Out of the 806 executive participants, 81% said that their organization has already moved at least one business activity to the cloud, and 10% said their organization is already running their “entire core IT services on the cloud.” Why are these companies moving to the cloud? 80% reported process improvement as their main reason; 79% of users stated technical benefits, and 76% said cloud computing has strategic benefits, such as “transforming their business models to gain a competitive advantage.”

• How Companies Are Adopting and Adapting to Cloud Computing: KPMG

Cloud computing has a lot to offer for various businesses, and might also be considered crucial for startups. Most importantly, cloud computing reduces your startup costs significantly, can get you going right away with out of the box mobility, and allows for pay as you go resources and customizable plans. Cloud computing can also offer faster time to value, which means the quicker a startup can begin to look towards profitability. Other benefits they list are easier collaboration and partnering, faster access to IT enhancements, fewer IT people, and improved security.

• Cloud Society: Ten Reasons Why Cloud is Good for Startups

It looks like the Australian market is most adverse to cloud computing, and are “skeptical about the speed at which cloud computing [is] being adopted elsewhere across the globe.” However, despite their skepticism, Australian businesses are quite possibly the best-positioned market to adopt to the cloud, with 67% of their businesses already utilizing some form of cloud technology. From what it sounds like, their main, possibly only, issue with the cloud is security, which is something covered a lot in our blog and various other cloud computing blogs. The cloud is not any less secure than say, hosting your data on an in-house computer. Why so much hesitance? We’re not quite sure, but for their sake, we hope they catch on soon.

• Australian Market Most Adverse to Cloud?

In case you missed it, Force.com held a Siteforce webinar earlier this week. It is now available for viewing. Check it out to learn more about how to create and run a web site on Siteforce!

• Siteforce Webinar Now Showing

Major companies such as Salesforce, Oracle, and IBM are integrating their CRM with the social cloud. According to SugarCRM’s CTO, CRM is yet to become established. He states, “I can guarantee it will take off massively in the next few years… We have a whole new generation of social collaboration users- who we call the Facebook generation- that expect these tools to be in front of them.”
I agree with this article’s argument that businesses need to turn social, especially at the brink of the “Facebook generation” coming into the workforce; however, I do not agree when it states that Salesforce is “1st generation SaaS” and that SugarCRM and Oracle are “2nd generation, 100% open” SaaS. Marc Benioff’s whole keynote at Dreamforce was dedicated to the social cloud, (remember, “We were born cloud, and we’ve been reborn social” comment that had people tweeting #DF11 away?). Especially with the ease and effectiveness of Chatter, Salesforce seems to have the social cloud concept figured out pretty well. What do you think?

• Social CRM: The Facebook Generation Demands it

“Cloud computing is real. Cloud computing is a game changer- it requires new skills, is an opportunity with benefits, costs, risks and legal implications. Cloud computing can be an engine of growth.”
-Larry Dribin, Panel Moderator

Recently, our CTO, Michael Topalovich, participated in MIT Enterprise Chicago Forum’s event, “Cloud Computing-Practical Guide to What Belongs in the Cloud and What Doesn’t.” Personally, we are tired of answering the question, “what is cloud computing?,” and were excited to discuss cloud computing more in depth.

Alongside Mike sat Chad Thibodeau, Director of Project Management at Cleversafe, Brandon Freitag, Cloud Specialist at VMware, and James Kunick, Attorney and Principal at Much Shelist. All the panelists added great insight from different point of views on cloud computing.

I’m just going to run through some of the Q&A during the event and keep it short and sweet. If you have any further questions or want to hear more about the event, comment below.

Is the cloud safe?
We expected this to be the first question, it is always the first question. Bottom line, of course it is safe. Security is measured in a lot of different ways, and there is a lot of room for potential security breaches and area for vulnerability. Chew on this: if you store all of your information locally, such as on a laptop, what happens if you leave that laptop somewhere? It can easily be hacked, more easily than hosting your data in the cloud. Rather than storing it on one device, the cloud allows you to protect your data in multiple locations, through multiple passwords and ip address verification. We used Salesforce as an example (since it’s what we know best), Salesforce knows what they are doing and do it well. They have experience keeping your data safe, companies depend on it, and have a great history of securing sensitive information in the cloud.

How do you determine what to put in the cloud?
This question is hard to answer because every company approaches the cloud differently; every company has different requirements and will use the cloud accordingly. A good cloud candidate is email; almost every company, if not all companies, could utilize email in the cloud so you can access this anywhere with internet access.

If a company puts their whole business in the cloud, it has to spread out across multiple vendors. Doesn’t this get nasty?
It is continually getting easier to manage your cloud applications. For Delivered Innovation, we integrate almost all of our cloud services, such as Quickbooks, Basecamp, and Optify, into the Force.com platform, directly into our Salesforce. This makes it easy to manage four different cloud services from one service provider. Yes, the concept is complex, but it is getting easier, and will continue to get easier over time as more companies such as Jitterbit and Snaplogic provide more cloud service integration.

If a company is interested in putting an internal application in the cloud, how much architecture is actually involved?
This is a heavy loaded question- how much architecture involved depends on the situation. The dependencies are what do you currently have in place, what provider you are depending on, how much you want to move to the cloud, etc. Force.com is actually a big leap of a faith, solely because it is completely different than say, Amazon or Azure. However, if you are looking for a basic cloud service with little architecture, you might want to consider something like Amazon, but you won’t get all of the benefits of the cloud such as multi-tenancy.

Force.com (and the cloud in general) was described as a ‘leap of faith,’ what else would you say to give skeptics comfort about making this leap of faith?
To be honest, it is hard to make people completely comfortable with the cloud before they start using it. However, the selling point usually comes when they see the capabilities; when they see how much more you can do now that you could not to previously. This is when concerns start to melt away.

I inserted Larry Durbin’s direct quote at the top of this post because I think it summarizes what was discussed during the panel. Can cloud computing be a risk? Yes, but a risk worth taking. Cloud computing is something to get used to, but once you start to get involved in it, you really start to see how the vast majority of benefits outweigh the small amount of setbacks. We enjoyed sitting in on this panel, and hopefully people found the Q&A to be helpful.

If you have any other questions about this panel, our responses, or cloud computing in general, please feel free to respond below. We welcome any discussion!

Chicago is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money, becoming the number 1 in technology companies in the Midwest. As a result, tech hiring is growing in Chicago. According to Naperville’s TechAmerica, a predicted 1,500 job openings in tech, including software engineers and network and system administrators, will open up annually until 2018. Moreover, as Alter points out, “these aren’t just jobs, these are good jobs.” Tech companies pay top dollar for talented employees, an average $82k a year. So, if you’re looking for a tech position, consider the Chicago tech scene.

• Chicago Leads Tech Hiring

Many myths have developed to combat all the hype surrounding cloud computing. A large one I hear about consistently is cloud security. However, cloud security and vulnerabilities are not at all greater than traditional enterprise infrastructures. In fact, they are quite similar; “security, performance, scalability, and reliability are the vendors’ areas of business focus, so each is clearly a high priority.” Other myths this article touches on are hidden costs that make it more expensive over time, the loss of ownership and control over systems (just because you are in the cloud does not mean you lose control over your information and software), inaccessibility to your data if you switch vendors, and the “one size fits all” idea (the cloud is very customizable and can fit a variety of needs).

• Five Evaporating Myths About Cloud Computing

According to a recent study by Ovam, the global public cloud services market will grow from £11.4bn ($17.8 billion in US) to £42bn ($65.6 billion) by 2016. North America will most likely continue to dominate the market, but see a dip from 54.6% to 50% in 2016. However, the Western European public cloud market is expected to grow 31.2% from 2011 to 2016.

• Ovum Says Public Cloud Services Market is About to Explode

McKendrick outlines nine questions to ask yourself before making the final switch to the cloud: Is your business vertical? Do you have a competitive differentiation in your processes? Is this differentiation IT based? Are there any impediments to outsourcing business? Are there impediments to cloud adoption? Is the primary business driver compatible to the cloud? Is the business logic separated from the underlying technology? Will the cloud solution be a platform? Lastly, are the hardware, operating system and application custom-made or specialized? Answering these questions may allow you to uncover aspects of your business you have not yet considered, and possibly re-evaulate and align your objectives for moving to the cloud.

• Cloud Computing: Nine Questions to Ask Before Casting Your Servers Aside

Blaisdell argues that cloud computing is a safe bet for the future, but nevertheless, there are challenges associated with switching to the cloud. A major challenge revolves around lack of knowledge and understanding. “There are many misunderstandings about what the cloud can and cannot do,” and seeking out cloud case studies and networking with people who have adapted the cloud would be helpful to clear up any misconceptions. Moreover, the fear of trying something new, issues surrounding security, and reliability are all common worries about moving to the cloud. However, as Blaisdell states, “nothing worth doing is not without challenges,” and the benefits of the cloud are “definitely worth it.”

• 5 Challenges in the Journey to the Cloud

As Marc Benioff pointed out this week at Dreamforce, the social enterprise is here, right now. It can be used to find out who your customers are and what they like, or even to create an employee social network within your business. Find out what’s new with Chatter and the Sales Cloud through the link below.

• Welcome to the Social Enterprise

Missed Benioff’s kickoff keynote? This article runs through the gist of it. Benioff’s goal is to get companies involved in the Social Enterprise. To do this, companies must develop a social media profile to monitor their customer’s needs and wants, create an employee social network so employee’s can exchange information and collaborate internally, and lastly, companies need to develop a Customer Social Network and a Product Social Network, which would be specific to that company or product, such as Toyota Friend. If companies do not start taking advantage of what social media has to offer, they are going to fall behind.

• Salesforce’s Benioff: “We Were Born Cloud, Now We’ve Been Reborn Social”

When the internet came into our lives 15 years ago, people were saying it would change everything, and it has. Now, cloud computing is going to change everything in the next 10 years. We will reach a point where all applications are delivered over the cloud, and CD software installation will be obsolete. Consumer needs are changing, we are all adapting to rely on the internet and the cloud to store our information, to run our business, to keep in touch with our friends and family. These changes over the next decade will be subtle and hardly noticeable, but like the article states, “we will wake up one day, look around and realize that the old ways have faded away.”

• Cloud: The Last Great Shift in the Software Industry

Earlier this month, Salesforce.com quietly acquired Navajo Systems, an Israeli cloud security encryption vendor. This acquisition will ease future cloud security concerns, which is a popular discussion and fear when it comes to moving to the cloud. “Customers are increasingly wary of storing corporate data in the cloud and expect certain guarantees that the data will be safe and protected when it is accessed,” and encrypting data will be the standard for easing those fears.

• Salesforce.com Acquires SaaS Encryption Provider Navajo Systems

Different companies have different needs for cloud computing. However, these three are universally important aspects to any business. The cloud is cost efficient, provides on demand utility, and is the way of the future. The cloud is estimated to increase 200% by 2015, therefore “it is time to embrace the future.”

• The Three Greatest Reasons to Move to the Cloud