As unemployment rises, many professionals seek entrepreneurship for full-time employment. Startups used to require a lot of capital, and launching was not easy because of what it took to hire talent, market and promote, find office space, etc. Now, with cloud computing and social networking resources, this is all significantly easier; “today’s entrepreneurs have an incredible resource available at their fingertips at minimal cost- cloud computing.” Thanks to the cloud, we may be on the brink of an explosion of startups and new entrepreneurial activity.

• How Cloud Computing is Fueling the Next Startup Boom

Human Resources is having trouble picking up, and even defining, cloud computing. A writer from HR magazine states, “I am not convinced this really addresses our core HR challenges.” However, out of a poll from this same magazine, 91% of the HR professionals surveyed said they believe that they are not using the cloud effectively in their organizations; an interesting juxtaposition. The cloud can be useful not just to technology companies; many healthcare, entertainment, and consumer goods companies utilize the benefits of the cloud. Just peek at Salesforce’s case studies and see the wide variety of users yourself. HR may adapt slowly, but they’ll get there.

• Cloud Computing Turns from Buzzword into Business Reality- But Not Yet in HR

Cloud computing is a great resource, but make sure your organization goes about it the correct way. This article offers three ways that you can screw it up, so make sure you do not make these mistakes. First, do not put the wrong people on the project. Make sure those setting up your cloud resources have architectural and technical skills to make it happen. Second, do not put security as an afterthought. The cloud is secure, but only when an organization makes certain that it is. Lastly, do not select the wrong business problem to solve with cloud computing. Instead, pick a new or exisitng application that is meaningful to your business, and one that is not “mission-critical.”

• 3 Surefire Ways to Screw up Cloud Computing

Force Architects had an important post this week dealing with the legalities of cloud computing. We spoke with James Kunick, Principal at Much Shelist, about the legal implications of the cloud. His advice? There are 2 major issues in cloud computing: first is loss of control over your data and applications, and second is protecting the privacy and security of your data. Make sure your contract explicitly states that you have the right to access and retrieve your data at any time, during or after the term of the contract. Moreover, consider what happens when your contract terminates, and lay these details out in the contract.

• Legal Implications of Cloud Computing

Make sure you don’t miss these important developer events in November, such as Cloudforce NYC on November 30th, and the webinar on November 18th going over how to develop and deploy Ruby apps on Heroku. Keep checking the Force.com blog for more events and updates.

• Developer Events in November

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

WSJ: More Tech Start-Ups Call It Quits

The last thing we want to do is add to the doom and gloom, but we found this article compelling because it is a good summary of the challenges that an emerging market such as SaaS faces when most of the market entrants are early stage companies and the economy is not in a cooperative mood.  Granted, a fair share of the startups that are winding down aren’t core to the future of technology (how many Twitter-esque services do we really need?), but a number of truly innovative companies are shutting their doors, stripping operations to the absolute core and simply surviving, or seeking bigger fish to gobble them up for pennies on the dollar.  While it’s true that every market eventually matures and goes through a period of shakeout and consolidation, the credit lockdown has forced some capital-intensive and highly compelling concepts to fade before their true promise could be unleashed…and that only sets us back in the grand scheme of things.