At the Dell Annual Analyst Conference (DAAC), a very corporate look predominates with oceans of blue suiting, dark ties, black shoes and serious demeanors. The setting is the Four Seasons Austin, a lovely and somewhat formal hotel with more subtle luxury than first meets the eye. Dell, too, had more to say than first met the eye.
Mike West
Michael West is Vice President with Saugatuck Technology. His areas of research and consulting expertise include Cloud Computing, “Enterprise Ready” SaaS, ISVs in transition to SaaS, Cloud Development platforms, SaaS Integration, Social Computing platforms, and GRC. In 2000, Mr. West joined Saugatuck as an early co-founder after leaving Gartner, Inc., where he served as Vice President and Research Director. In 2004-5, Mr. West spent a year in Washington, D.C. at the Corporate Executive Board as Practice Manager of the Information Risk Executive Council, before returning to work at Saugatuck and re-focusing his interests on Software-as-a-Service and Cloud platforms. Mr. West has over twenty years experience in Information Technology at John Hancock, Fidelity Investments, Apple Computer, and Gartner. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and other industry events on a wide range of topics concerning technology and business strategy. He has written and presented research on information management, data administration, applications development, application integration, object technology, client/server architectures, graphical user interface and usability strategies, web site development and Internet applications, network computing, electronic commerce, portals, hubs and communities. Mr. West has an A.B. from Williams College , M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and M.B.A. from the Boston College Graduate School of Management. He has taught IT Strategies in M.B.A. programs at the Boston College Graduate School of Management and at the Haas School of the University of California at Berkeley.
What is Happening? As the emerging Master Architecture takes shape, enabling the Boundary-free Enterprise™ with solutions that free the mobile knowledge worker and executive from their desks and build on the Cloud, as well as other capabilities (such as social/collaboration, data analytics and integration), will stimulate business innovation through synergies of value.
According to a current article in the trade press, a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Projectand Elon University, indicated that by 2020, the majority of U.S. consumers will use smartphones to pay for goods and services. While we believe this is an exciting development, Saugatuck regards the real interest in this trend to be in the way in which mobile payments will become a part of the emerging master Architecture and enable business innovation in the Boundary-free Enterprise™.
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An emerging and disruptive master architecture – combining Cloud, Mobile, Social and Data Analytics plus Integration to on-premises Data Assets – is now forming to enable the Boundary-free Enterprise™ that Saugatuck foresaw in 2008. The Boundary-free Enterprise will not be constrained by organizational boundaries and firewalls, but can enable a new model of work and facilitate new business relationships that are not bound by time or place. Nevertheless, there are new risks and challenges that must be managed for its rewards to be fully realized.
Table 1 - Convergence in the Cloud: 21st Century Organizations, Boundary Free and Global
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In September 2008, we introduced the Saugatuck Cloud EcoStack™, a model describing five functional layers of the Cloud and their interrelations:
- Level 4 - Cloud Services
- Level 3 - Cloud Business Solutions
- Level 2 - Cloud Platforms
- Level 1 - Cloud Infrastructure
- Level 0 - Cloud Technologies
We’ve just published a Strategic Perspective in which we discuss two key uses of the Saugatuck Cloud EcoStack™, one for vendors to plan their Cloud strategies and identify business opportunities, and one for enterprise IT and users to apply in planning their evolving business solutions portfolios.
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Many adopters of Cloud technology worry that their commitments in the Cloud will be isolated from their more essential on-premises crown jewels, and thus create challenges and additional costs to make it all work together.
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