• Chromebook: Web Applications Put to the Test

An interesting article about Google to compare to Aderson’s comments. Google announced that they have been using offline version of three of their main applications for a few months now- Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. Coming this summer, all users will be able to access and use these apps offline as well. All the more reason to look into the Chromebook.

• Coming This Summer: Fully Offline Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs

On Tuesday, Skype officially announced that Microsoft will acquire the Internet communications company for 8.5 billion US. Skype believes this acquisition is the best way to “extend Skype’s reach” and allow more people around the world to take advantage their product. They promise that the acquisition will create, “a new era of generative ways for everyone to communicate.” Many comments below the announcement seem negative, it will be interesting to see how this acquisition actually plays out.

• Microsoft Will Acquire Skype

A simple blog post on the joys of Chatter. Taulli states that after using Chatter for a short period of time, “it became a regular part of our business. It has actually reduced email volume and the number of meetings.” Chatter, being a Facebook-style social networking tool for businesses, promises an average of 32% email reduction, 28% fewer meetings, and a 36% increase in collaboration within your company. And what do you know, it actually works.

• Chatter: Bringing Facebook to the Enterprise

Check out the freebie for the week- free Salesforce training podcasts are now available on iTunes. All the yummy salesforce.com training you can eat.

• Salesforce.com Training and Certification

• Appirio Acquires VMG, Directing Attention to the People Part of Cloud Adoption
  

Dennis Howlett brings to light the fact that the term ‘cloud’, “has become so bastardized… it could mean almost anything.” Even though the general public often hears about the cloud, few companies actually know what it truly is and how it can help their business. In turn, companies are wasting millions in marketing over something they themselves do not even understand.

• Adoption? All Over the Map

Author gives their opinion on the future of the cloud, stating that, “the cloud will have a profound impact on the way corporations use IT.”  What the author failed to note is that the cloud already has made a profound impact, not just in IT, but also on how businesses work as a whole. Like we have stated in the past, the cloud changes everything.

• The Future of Cloud Computing

This article adds a different level of credibility to the cloud by putting it in an investment context. F5 Network, salesforce.com, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware are the seven major companies that are rapidly expanding their cloud computing resources. Author Andre Bradley states, “investors can expect to see the shares of these companies climb in the coming years,” and suggests that investors begin looking into it and investing now.

• 7 Cloud Computing Stocks You Should Own

Looking for an excuse not to move to the cloud? Cloud Tweaks lists 65 reasons why you might not want to make the switch. Just a few to get you started: “6. You would be bored- No more coordinating the configuration, test, development, and integration of hardware and software? What would you do all day? 30. Your internal security is 100% guaranteed- much more secure than having your data in the cloud. 56. You’re certain that Cloud computing is just a fad like the Internet was.”

• 65 Reasons for NOT Moving to the Cloud- Proceed at Your Own Risk!

What got me thinking about all of this is the flood of really bad Salesforce “developers” and “consultants” that we have had to clean up after in the past year. For some reason, there is a common misconception among DBAs and traditional (read: non-cloud) platform developers that because Salesforce is so easy to use from the perspective of sales, marketing, and support professionals, it must be easy to configure and maintain. It absolutely can be – but only if you take the time to understand the underlying multitenant architecture and how it applies to every area of the application and platform architecture. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t see the remnants of traditional system thinking that have been incorrectly applied to Salesforce data modeling, UI design, and business logic development; in many ways I am continuously reminded of the horrors that I witnessed (and had to fix) when the Microsoft-certified “boot campers” burst onto the scene and were hired up by companies desperate for Microsoft resources. Obviously salesforce.com has been smart enough to learn from this, because their certification program is structured to ensure that their customers are not condemned to repeat the history of Microsoft’s blind ambition to build an army to spread marketing gospel…which subsequently spread the talent pool to razor thin levels.

When I signed up to take the Salesforce development certification at Dreamforce last year, my inner skeptic couldn’t help but feel that it was an exercise in “going through the motions” in order to get a piece of paper to maintain DI’s status in the SFDC partner program. But when I emerged from the testing room dry-mouthed and in a cold sweat, I realized that I had earned the distinction of being a certified Salesforce developer, and that the entire exercise meant something. The test was nothing like the Microsoft test that I had taken a dozen years prior, where the “right” answer was the one that best demonstrated why Microsoft was better than everyone else (I almost walked out after the fifth “Here’s why Windows NT is so much better than Novell Netware question / answer combo), but a true measurement of my ability to grasp the core concepts of Salesforce and Force.com, and more importantly, how to apply these concepts in solving real business problems.

What really got me thinking about the value of Salesforce certification, though, was the regular refreshes that were required throughout the course of the year to maintain the certification. Any of the million+ users of Salesforce already know that the 3x per year upgrade cycle is a major competitive differentiator and value driver for salesforce.com; but what I was most impressed with was the fact that all certified administrators, consultants, and developers have to take additional tests after each and every one of these upgrades in order to maintain certification status. When you buy the ticket, you take the ride, and you have to commit to staying on top of new functionality as it rolls out. Fall behind the curve, and you lose the right to display the certification logo on your resume and business card. Now that means something – as a Salesforce customer, you can rest assured that a Salesforce certified resource knows what they’re doing and that they didn’t “boot camp” their way to a certificate like the “paper MCSEs” of the previous decade. So when you’re looking to staff your next project or hire a trusted partner, insist on Salesforce certified experts, or you risk having to bring them in later to clean up after the “how hard can it possibly be?” crowd now entering the game.

To start, an article on how end user executives confessed at the SIIA OnDemand Europe conference in London that cloud ERP is more reliable, more secure, and less risky than the on-premise alternatives.  Phil Wainewright, the author, has voiced these sentiments before, but was delighted to hear it come from real-world business executives.  More proof that cloud providers are superior to in-house systems:

• End users explode cloud myths at #ODE10

Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, will be leaving his post, and he also is leaving a strong message for the “Post-PC” world.  He penned a memo named “Dawn of a New Day” which warns Microsoft to move away from the PC and towards “continuous services” in the cloud.

• Ray Ozzie Has Seen The Future, And It Looks A Lot Like Google

Ray Ozzie’s memo is creating a lot of buzz as we have another article explaining his message.  This article goes into the difference between “moving to” and “building for” the cloud and why it’s important to have a well-designed cloud roadmap for your enterprise.

• ‘Moving to’ versus ‘building for’ cloud computing

Has data storage in the cloud become completely commoditized?  Box.net, a cloud content management vendor, is proving size does matter.  They are allowing for larger storage space with the free edition going from 1GB to 5GB, and business edition goes from 15GB to 500GB.  The article talks about box.net’s eventual desire to achieve “infinite storage.”

• Sometimes Box Size Does Matter

Last but not least we have a post with Appirio’s first State of the Public Cloud Survey.  It includes a short video that explains the unique perspective of their cloud survey – that only early cloud adopting IT decision makers were surveyed – and a link to a free white paper that examines the actual business results and impacts those companies have experienced.  The findings are encouraging and eye-opening.

• Introducing Appirio’s first State of the Public Cloud Survey

There’s no doubt that Microsoft entering the Cloud Computing game gives the philosophy / movement / model instant mainstream credibility.  But I’m conflicted as to whether this is a good thing; on the one hand, I can see that the day is almost here where I don’t have to spend half of a sales cycle educating clients on SaaS, PaaS, or “The Cloud.”  On the other hand, when Microsoft enters a market, Microsoft doesn’t conform to the market – it tries to mold the market in its own image.  SaaS, SOA, and Cloud Computing are too important to be co-opted by the traditional IT vendor paradigm, let alone be “Microsoft-ized.”

It will be interesting to see where all of this leads.  I am not anti-Microsoft by any means, and I have a lot of respect for the brainshare in Redmond.  Unfortunately the company has a fairly lengthy history of grandiose announcements and aggressive ambitions that overshoot either the company’s ability to execute or the market’s willingness to adopt the Microsoft way of doing what it has already adopted elsewhere.  I still use Microsoft Office on Microsoft operating systems because the former is the bedrock of productivity tools, but I have not seen anything from the company that I could get excited about since the announcement of Exchange 2000 back in the day when I managed a 10,000+ seat Exchange 5.5 organization.  That was almost 10 years ago.

The fanfare surrounding Azure has been a boon for everyone involved in the Cloud Computing space – a “rising tide lifts all boats” scenario – but our take is that this project will take Microsoft years to complete, and in the end it will prove to be too grand a proposition for them to get out the door in the timeframe necessary for it to be truly game-changing.  What we will see in the late 2009 / early 2010 timeframe is a limited framework, scaled back significantly from what was evangelized on the initial Azure roadmap, that provides access to small-scale “widget”-like functionality that marginally extends the functionality of only a handful of core products.  By that time, the thought leaders in the utility computing / Cloud Computing space will be pushing far more compelling envelopes, and the ability to run Office through a web browser and write cool widgets for it will elicit a collective yawn from all but the deeply entrenched enterprise CIO-types that can claim adoption of “The Cloud” in the most conservative (i.e. non-pension-threatening) manner possible.  But hey, thanks for the millions of marketing dollars to help educate the mainstream, Microsoft!  We’ll be sure to ride on those coattails for as long as the checkbook remains open.

Gartner: Microsoft’s Cloud Vision Reaches for the Stars but Is Grounded in Reality

Phil Wainewright: Windows Azure: Microsoft mainstreams the cloud

Dave Rosenberg: Microsoft’s Azure–I remain perplexed