All posts in “cloud computing”

Why I Love the Cloud

Jordan Benedet is a Manager on the Client Strategy and Innovation team at Social Media Group.

The “Cloud” is a word that is being frequently used by both companies and individuals. Corporate adoption is taking off, with small to medium businesses projected to spend $68 billion on cloud computing by 2014!

The Cloud is a buzz word right now, meaning people tend to use it very often, and sometimes out of context. The cloud can mean a variety of different things, such cloud computing, or cloud storage. Over the last couple of years, the cloud has continued to evolve as the use of mobile devices and tablets increased. The cloud isn’t just a backup system, but a method for syncing and sharing files, music, photos, and videos no matter where you are.

Consumer cloud storage is offered by many companies, such as, SugarSync, Dropbox, Box, and of course, Apple iCloud. They all offer similar functionality, both PC Mag and 9to5Mac have great comparisons for those who are interested. This post centres on consumer cloud storage, specifically SugarSync, and why I dig it.

Personal Use Case

Let’s go back to 2002, a time when the Euro was born, and Ja Rule was on top of the charts. I was in university and decided that I was going to buy my first digital camera, the Kodak LS420. “This thing is amazing!” I thought. Thinking back though, the camera was expensive, slow, had a terrible LCD, and an even worse white out flash – but it was mine (and it still works).

A few years passed, and thanks to my trusty Kodak, I built up quite an extensive collection of digital memories. Friends and family marvelled at how I could store so many pictures on my computer without having a scanner! Then it happened – my hard drive failed without warning. At the time I didn’t have a backup system for my precious data. I lost everything. Years of pictures, movies, and memory-sparking files were wiped out in seconds. Data recovery efforts failed, everything was gone.

It’s Just Easier with the Cloud

The problem I had would have been solved 100% by the cloud. Although I have accounts with the brands I previously mentioned, SugarSync is my primary platform. It allows me to sync important files or folders from my personal PC, work laptop, and mobile devices. Any changes made are automatically updated in the cloud. My pictures and movies would have been safely, and securely stored on remote servers, which could have been easily downloaded again once I fixed my computer.

File syncing also makes working remotely much more convenient. For example, I wake up sick and can’t make it to the office but I have a presentation that needs a few changes before it is due to a client. Solution? Download the backup from the cloud, edit, send, voila!

How many people do you know that have lost their cell phone, and along with it, all of their contacts? With the cloud, contacts can be stored and backed up wiht ease – I personally use Google Sync on my iPhone.

I’ve written about SmartTVs in a previous post called the Connect Evolution. The cloud is a new addition to SmartTV functionality with Samsung recently announcing native SugarSync support on any AllShare capable TV. Most big brands are sure to follow suit and offer their own TV cloud integration soon. Lenovo has also partnered with SugarSync, so their PCs and tablets will include cloud functionality out of the box.

iCloud has recently brought the term, and functionality to a mainstream audience. It’s only a matter of time when the cloud is no longer just a feature, but the expected norm.

'On-Demand Computing: Soaring with the Cloud' Tackles Current Tech Issues

I’m Michelle McCudden and I’m the new intern here at SMG.

We are excited to let you know about an event our friends (and clients) at SAP are helping put on later this month.

On September 28, MyVenturePad, along with SAP, will present “On-Demand Computing: Soaring with the Cloud.” This four-and-half hour global summit will cover cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology. This summit is specially tailored to high-growth enterprises, so if that describes your business, you should definitely check it out.

Attendees will have the opportunity to hear A-list speakers like Reid Hastings of Netflix, John Byrne of C-Change Media, Brent Leary of CRM Essentials, and Doug Merritt of SAP discuss SaaS, the ins and outs of On-Demand, and how cloud computing can impact your business.

By registering, you can attend all or part of the summit, or just view the archive of the event later. If you’re already involved in On-Demand or want to learn more about it, visit the registration page here and sign up for this exciting event.

Enterprise 2.0: What if sales lived in the “cloud”?

I’ve attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference every year for the last three years. I’ve met good friends there for the first time, put faces to old friends I hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting IRL and I always look forward to catching up with many of the brilliant people I am lucky enough to be acquainted with. Ultimately, however, it’s not the sessions and speakers that really get me going intellectually. It’s the hallway convos and debates over drinks. This year was no different. In fact, I heard from many attendees that it is now official: the sessions are not the draw at E20 – the lobby is.

So what did I take away this year? A number of things, but one thought in particular I have been chewing on for some time, especially because it aligns with our Enterprise Services practice, which is all about change management. I shared it Andy McAfee just before the social media panel I participated in on the second day (and which was very sparsely attended – social media being the red-headed stepchild of E20), and it goes a little something like this:

1. There is a dramatic proliferation of touchpoints between the enterprise and the market. Two-way conversations used to happen via your 1-800 number, your reception desk and your sales and PR teams. Now hundreds, even thousands of employees across the company can be communicating with the entire market via dozens of social channels in real time (no surprise here).

2. Consumers perceive brands/companies/institutions as speaking with one big voice. They don’t care if it’s CRM, sales or marcom. These artificial divisions may mean a lot inside the org, but outside, no one cares. You’re Company X. End of story.

3. Internal integration across these silos is critical to avoid missed opportunity and potentially generate solid ROI – the communications person will be encountering CRM issues, the CRM person bumping up against sales opportunities, etc.

4. It’s within that last point that I find a most compelling question. How does the sales function integrate with a company’s social media activities? How does it become nimble and horizontally integrated in order to take full advantage of the opportunities presented at all of these different touchpoints? How and when does it engage effectively?

5. What if your sales org could become something that lives in “the cloud” (please see below for a great video that answers the question, “What is Cloud Computing?”), meaning it is accessible from any point within the organization and any time in the sales cycle, rather than being a linear process that starts with a suspect at the top of the funnel and ends in a sale at the bottom? (Colin Douma, a brilliant guy who is now the VP of social at an agency in Toronto, had some interesting thoughts about what the sales funnel actually looks like in the age of social media, and Joe Jaffe recently wrote a booked called Flip the Funnel, so I’m not alone in thinking about this).

The end state? If sales is now horizontally integrated across the org, living in a kind of “process cloud”, when someone in customer service or communications or research identifies a prospect with an itch their product can scratch, they can feed that lead right into the appropriate node in the sales pipeline. Opportunity seized.

This is of course both a technology and a workflow challenge, but one I suspect will increasingly become an issue as engagement matures and a return on all of our socializing must be demonstrated. A spurned prospect is also more that just a lost opportunity – it’s someone who’s likely pissed off, since no one enjoys being ignored.

[full disclosure: I attended E20 2010 on a complimentary press pass]