This week, I had the great opportunity to meet 12 UK Cloud and SaaS companies as they visit the US on a “Cloud Mission to Boston and Silicon Valley.” The UK Trade and Investment government organization sponsored this mission with a goal of fostering knowledge-sharing and investments. NaviSite was fortunate to be given the opportunity to sponsor a lunch and lead a panel.
The panel “2010 Cloud Reality Check: Applications and Infrastructure – Moving from Early Adopter to Early Mainstream” featured Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies, John Treadway of Unisys, Fergus Wilson of Replify, and myself, William Toll of NaviSite. With a packed room that included UK cloud and SaaS company representatives, Massachusetts technology leaders, startups, and VCs, we had a great discussion… I’d like to highlight two of the more lively threads:
The panel all agreed that, to date, most of the applications that have successfully moved to the cloud are things like CRM, Email and ERP. The next wave of applications will be more vertically focused. There is a great opportunity for companies in the US and UK — and elsewhere — that focus on helping enterprises take advantage of the technology and opportunities that the cloud enables. A great example was called out during the discussion of one of the UK companies – Kognitio. With the cloud’s massive scalability in processing, storage, new database structures and technologies there is an opportunity for enterprises to run analysis on data like never before. Companies like Kognitio, with expertise in data analytics, data warehousing, and BI, are poised to benefit.
Another thread that generated a lot of interest was around standards, certifications and security. One of the great things about the cloud movement is that the rate of innovation and world-wide participation is tremendous at the moment – primarily due to the focus on cloud technologies. All this interest and activity spurs diversity, which is key to pushing the envelope without creating a standard that would hold back innovation. John Treadway highlighted the fact that we don’t necessarily want one standard technology as that would make the attack surface large and visible. We all agreed that great organizations like the Cloud Security Alliance and Cloud Audit are helping to guide enterprises and providers to discuss and factor security concerns into their assessments and solutions. Citihub, another one of the UK Cloud Mission companies said that many large financial institutions are very interested in the cloud – both private and public – and are employing phased approaches and performing massive due diligence checks on all aspects of a cloud environment. These challenges are great for the hosting community.
I want to thank the UKTI teams for organizing this event and reminding the US audience that the cloud is an international movement. There are some great companies in the UK, Europe and Asia that are contributing both on a local and international level. Hosting providers with cloud services that span multiple geographies, like NaviSite, have a great opportunity to grow an international customer base with a truly international set of products and services.
About William Toll
William Toll, VP, Marketing at Yottaa, Inc., has held Marketing and Product Management positions in the Web hosting and Internet infrastructure industry since the late 1990s. Currently William is driving the marketing strategy and implementation for Yottaa, Inc. Yottaa, The Web Performance Company, provides innovative cloud services enabling its customers to assess, benchmark, monitor and optimize their websites and Web applications for a better user experience and improved ROI. Most recently William was at the leading managed hosting and cloud services provider, NaviSite. At NaviSite, William was responsible for developing and marketing the company's hosted product lines, including managed cloud services, managed hosting, managed business applications and shared and dedicated hosting for SMBs. In past positions at companies such as Affinity Internet, Inc., Intermedia.NET, and NTT/VERIO, William was the driving force in launching and enhancing successful SMB focused services including: Shared Hosting services, Microsoft Exchange and hosting add-on services like Online Marketing and Web Design. William received a BA in Marketing from New England College. William Toll can be found on Twitter: @utollwi
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