887RA The Business Reality of the Cloud: Takeaways from Saugatuck’s Cloud Business Summit

What is Happening? — Earlier this week, Saugatuck hosted its inaugural Cloud Business Summit (see Note 1) in New York City, an invitation-only conference that brought together 125 senior business strategists and technology executives’ from large enterprises to explore what is possible, what is real, and what is not in the Cloud today. This Research Alert summarizes highlights and key takeaways from each session. Future Saugatuck research publications will provide further depth of analysis and guidance developed for, and derived from, the Cloud Business Summit. In addition, Saugatuck readers should be on the lookout for YouTube video highlights from the event sessions within the next couple of weeks that will be published on Saugatuck’s YouTube Channel.

Why is it Happening? — The Cloud has begun its unstoppable spread into all aspects of business, for IT and business strategists, business executives and users, and IT providers. Its impact is already huge, and yet largely unknown. That makes planning for and managing Cloud IT critically important even while its potential and costs are still being explored.

The combination of confusion and uncertainty amid widespread Cloud use stems from pressures of working within the early stages of Cloud IT, and thus the early stages of Cloud Business. Cloud IT helps businesses drive operational efficiencies and evolve toward hybrid business application architectures that provide significant process improvement. At the same time, however, the Cloud also helps to transform business and drive revenue through the creation of new Cloud-enabled business services, all while changing and forging new and evolved supplier / partner relationships. Business unit desire for, and adoption of, Cloud technologies and business solutions is forcing IT organizations to adapt or break – thus the need for the business to respond accordingly.

Below are the highlights of the Cloud Business Summit, by session, with a summary the key takeaways of each.

Keynote: A New Reality: Cloud IT and Cloud Business

• Saugatuck CEO Bill McNee used the company’s latest research and analysis to illustrate the true extent of Cloud in IT and business, focusing on the current uncertainties and emphasizing adopters’ potential for both significant business opportunity, and significant business (and IT) risk.

• Key Takeaway: The focus for Cloud adopters and Cloud providers needs to be not only how the Cloud can be consumed internally to help save money and for business process improvement, but on Cloud Business – how we can do business better using the Cloud, and how the Cloud can create, and has already created, innovative new business opportunities and risks across a wide range of industry segments that McNee profiled.

Featured Presentation: Realizing the Benefits of Cloud Computing

• IBM Software Group SVP Robert LeBlanc shared his perspectives on the reality and future of Cloud IT and business, using the experiences of IBM itself as well as partners and customers to illustrate and emphasize lessons learned in the deployment, adoption, and business impact of Cloud IT. LeBlanc introduced a series of important themes that were repeated in later sessions, including that the Cloud itself is not new, but the ways in which we access it, use it, pay for it, and manage it, are extremely disruptive due in large part to the exceptional scale made possible by today’s technologies. With such massive scale come massive opportunities to improve efficiencies throughout IT and business. But these opportunities must be effectively managed – something that is often beyond the scope of today’s IT organizations.

• Key Takeaway: Properly implemented, managed, and governed, through the combined and coordinated efforts of IT and business strategists and executives, the benefits of Cloud IT are significant and achievable, but will require improved and more effective business and IT management awareness and effort.

CIO / CTO Panel: Transitioning to the Cloud

Saugatuck Head of Research Bruce Guptill led an engaging panel including James Powell, CTO of Thomson Reuters; Pat Toole, former Corporate VP and CIO for IBM; Manesh Patel, SVP and CIO of Sanmina‐SCI; and Chris Perretta, EVP and CIO of State Street Bank, on what they and their business counterparts are doing, have done, and plan to do to create business advantage using Cloud IT. The panelists’ experiences and insights were wide-ranging, but with core themes that repeated again and again

• Complete buy-in and coordination between IT and business units / executives are necessary to create and benefit from Cloud opportunities; and

• That buy-in and coordination builds from IT building and articulating solid, simple business cases endorsing and supporting core aspects of Cloud adoption and use, from cost improvements to areas of business improvement and business creation.

Key Takeaway: Though the roles and resources of IT need to change, the IT organization. . .

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Most research firms can explain what happened; some can explain what is happening. Saugatuck Technology excels at understanding both in order to explain what else is likely to occur, and to guide its clients toward the actions that deliver them the greatest business value while enabling the safest business path.
To accomplish this, and to continually improve the value of Saugatuck’s work to clients in a Cloud-obscured marketplace, Saugatuck SVP and Head of Research Bruce Guptill pushes his team to continually re-examine and re-invent the company’s research programs to focus more on the costs, benefits, effects, and value of an ever-changing mix of technologies and providers in different markets.
Guptill’s own technology and business background laid a solid foundation for such a flexible, yet stable, approach to IT research value for clients. His technology research work includes mobility, collaborative IT, telecom, data networking, web commerce, and electronic marketplaces; his research work for enterprise IT and business clients includes return on IT investment, total cost of IT ownership, and business planning for IT. His research and guidance on vendor channel management, market identification and development, and buyer behavior analysis has enabled hundreds of established and startup IT providers to find, enter, and profit from new and traditional markets, while helping to guide user enterprise leaders toward optimal IT procurement and vendor management.
Guptill’s research background includes several years as a VP and research director with Gartner, senior positions with TeleChoice and Robert Frances Group, and editorial work within the IDG companies, including four years as a writer and editor with NetworkWorld. His marketing business focus was honed as VP of marketing for firms ranging from custom development providers to non-IT firms in aviation and other industries. His sales and channel experience started by traveling with a sample bag, then working for IT VARs, then advising telecom and wireless carriers on partner choices, to developing partner programs for traditional and Cloud-based software development firms and ISVs.
Guptill holds an MBA in marketing and finance, and a BA in the psychology and business of mass media communication. He is licensed to fly airplanes, drive boats, and sell houses; he is also a certified baseball coach, serves on the boards of regional civic groups, and is a serial home renovator. Married with three children, Guptill resides on Cape Cod in southeastern Massachusetts, and is a lifelong fan of the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and the University of Connecticut Huskies.

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