As interest in the cloud computing space grows, and the technology becomes more mature and more widely deployed, I thought I would reach out to some of the leading companies in the space to see what their thoughts were regarding the opportunity that lies ahead for this market, especially in light of the current economic conditions facing businesses of all sizes.

 

For this second of three articles (see my interview with IBM’s Dennis Quan and my interview with EMC's Chuck Hollis) I reached out to Peter Coffee, Director, Platform Research at Salesforce.com (News - Alert) to provide some insight into what Salesforce is doing in the cloud computing space, and to describe what they see as the key benefits that enterprises large and small are able to derive from leveraging this technology.

 

 

PC: Salesforce.com is the leader in enterprise cloud computing, bringing business applications and revolutionary custom development capabilities to customers of all sizes. Every day, more than one million subscribers in almost 52,000 salesforce.com customer organizations enjoy the cloud computing benefits of rapid deployment and immediate scalability with no on-premise infrastructure.

 

Salesforce.com continually extends its commitment to combining the efficiencies of multi-tenant architecture with the power that enterprise IT demands for core applications. Unique Salesforce.com technologies include Apex Code (the first multi-tenant programming language) and Visualforce (a framework enabling rapid development of a customized user interface with no client-side code).

 

PC: Everyday use of Internet tools like Google, and vigorous growth of on-line communities such as Facebook (News - Alert), have created widespread individual acceptance — and even preference — for IT that “just works,” with nearly zero need for end-user installation or training.

 

Meanwhile, enterprise use of cloud infrastructure services (such as Amazon’s) has established a “new normal” of enormous computational power being employed on a pay-as-you-go basis — with many compelling examples of extraordinary projects that are being carried out with startling speed at astonishingly little cost.

 

PC: When communication becomes a cloud-based service, it enjoys the same kind of rapid deployment of new capability and affordable handling of high peak workloads that are making the cloud a generally attractive model. Further, putting communication in the cloud makes it far more practical to deliver on long-standing visions of integrated communication without costly and time-consuming construction of complex on-premise systems with cumbersome software stacks.

 

PC: The cloud-computing customer can ignore the details of how a service is performed. Business units can evaluate and adopt solutions without costly technical assistance. Issues of space, electrical power, cooling, and head count disappear entirely from the list of preconditions and concerns for carrying out a new project.

 

The benefits of multi-tenancy, elasticity (pay as you go) and the subscription model make cloud computing a high-value, low-risk proposition with the fast payback demanded by customers in the current economic environment.

 

IT security and other advanced skills need not be furnished by the customer, but can instead become “part of the service” with the costs spread across tens of thousands of customers. Disaster preparedness, including widely separated redundant facilities, achieves a level that’s rarely found in most companies’ in-house IT.

 

PC: Cloud computing services were once seen as mainly of interest to small and medium business, but today’s customers of companies like salesforce.com include the world’s premier names in a variety of sectors. These customers come to the cloud because today’s powerful arsenal of integration technologies makes their legacy IT assets far more productive, combining established IT baseline capability with new innovation at Web speed.

 

The cloud enables click-to-connect construction of customer communities and partner ecosystems, putting cloud-computing adopters far ahead in the race to the future.

 

PC: It’s the inherent nature of multi-tenant cloud computing that every user gets the same world-class uptime, security and ease of use as every other. A provider may offer various packages of services at varied prices, but the smallest customer with the simplest package can still rely on the same core strengths.

 

PC: Current economic conditions are spurring many organizations to re-examine the fundamentals of what they pay, and what they get, in every area of their operations. Finding the time to consider a new approach becomes a higher priority when the old way is clearly no longer good enough.

 

Global expansion of markets for talent and capital, shallow talent pools for critical technical skills, and rising marketplace expectations for the ease of doing business with suppliers and partners are combining to make many companies take their first hard look at the cloud — and one look is usually all that’s needed.

 

PC: Customers are rapidly losing their tolerance for the old IT model — with its burdens of capital investment, disruptive upgrade cycles, and unexpected costs just to keep things working. All major providers of conventional software are struggling to maintain marketplace interest in their intellectual property by promising to bring forth cloud-based extensions and access points for their systems.

 

The future of the cloud is the future of IT and the future of workplace communication and collaboration. If it’s not happening in the cloud, it’s merely being maintained until it’s practical for a cloud-based upgrade to go live.

 

PC: Marketplace indifference to the next generation of conventional desktop and client-server applications and operating systems will threaten the viability of the world’s largest software companies.