1138RA Cloud Business Summit 2012 – The BfE Comes to NYC

What is Happening? — Saugatuck Technology research among enterprise business and IT executives makes clear one of the most substantial and disruptive trends seen since the advent of the Web, email, and distributed computing:

The pace of Cloud-driven business innovation is outstripping even the accelerating pace of IT innovation – and therefore is outpacing the abilities of established IT and business management organizations and structures.

The net result: Increasing complexities and costs of doing business and managing IT, in a time when Cloud promises to help organizations and leaders deliver exactly the opposite.

Why is it Happening? — The complexities with which IT and Finance (especially procurement) organizations have to struggle with stem from a lack of practices, cases, and policies, all of which come from a lack of experience with an increasingly undefined, free-range work and life environment without clear boundaries between entities, systems, and processes.  Saugatuck’s name for this exceptionally liberating and challenging situation: The Boundary-free Enterprise™ (1052CLS, Boundary-free Enterprise™: Empowered by the New Master Architecture, 11April2012).

How we do business tends to be defined and limited by what technologies we use and how we use them. Suddenly, we have more technologies that can be used in many different ways, many of which were unplanned or unforeseen – which makes them practically unmanageable using current methods.

It’s not just Cloud that is enabling or driving these changes and these accelerations in complexity and cost. More exactly, it is Cloud-enabled, and user-inspired, innovation that is causing both the changes and the dizzying pace of change (906MKT, Cloud Drives New Innovation and Business Velocity, 22Jun2011).

This innovation is not coming directly from the technologies or from the services that rely upon and deliver the technologies. The innovation is coming from within the enterprise, within the user groups and organizations that suddenly have more technologies that work in ways they desire, using devices that they are comfortable with, creating the ability to build, refine, adapt and use practically any aspect of business and consumer IT, almost anywhere they want or need to be (918MKT, When Innovation is the Norm, Adaptation – Not Speed – Must be the Standard, 15July2012).

Put another way, users are taking advantage of Cloud, Mobility, Social/Collaborative IT, and Advanced Analytics to create and adapt ways of doing business that were often significantly less than optimized, because they relied on specific sets of technologies used in specific ways in certain situations.  

Now, there are fewer and fewer ways to delineate and isolate those technologies, systems and situations. That means that, although we continue to use and rely on them, our ways of managing those technologies, systems and situations are increasingly inadequate – and therefore increasing our risks, liabilities, and costs.

Market Impact — We know how to describe the Boundary-free Enterprise™ and its underlying, enabling IT architecture.  Figure 1 presents Saugatuck’s vision of the core elements.

Figure 1: Saugatuck’s Boundary-free Enterprise™ Architecture

Source: Saugatuck Technology Inc.

But seeing it only helps us identify the broad scope of what it looks like; understanding how it works, especially how it acts as the engine for a never-ending, accelerating cycle of innovation, requires more analysis, insight, and guidance. 

Saugatuck’s 2012 Cloud Business Summit on November 14 in New York City is, to date, the only single source to provide IT and business leaders with the knowledge, insight, experience and guidance to prevent business and IT organizations from the risks and costs that continue to go unseen, or unmanaged, as a result of the accelerating pace of IT and business change.

Attendees will participate and interact with Cloud-savvy, experienced executives, learning key pitfalls to recognize and avoid, critical steps to make, and leadership practices to prevent or overcome the most threatening challenges - and to profit from the most promising opportunities.

Scheduled topics and sessions include:

• IT and business leaders from American Express, Citi, GE, News Corp., Pitney Bowes, and The Washington Post discussing what’s working, what’s not working, and why, when it comes to business and Cloud, Mobility, Social Business and Analytics.
• Technology and business influencers from Cit, Dept. of Homeland Security, Illumina, Marsh, PwC, Unicef and others on assessing, managing, and profiting from risk and reward in the constantly-changing IT and business environment known as “the Boundary-free Enterprise.”
• Insights on responding to and benefiting from the accelerating pace of innovation and change in Cloud and business with investors and analysts from Trident Capital, WellsFargo, Soundview Research 2.0 and Saugatuck Technology.
• Peer discussions and media insights on every important aspect and impact of the Cloud on IT and business through 2015.

Further information regarding the #cloudiz12 agenda, content, and participants can be found at the event website: http://cbs2012.saugatucktechnology.com/. 

NOTE: As a result of Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the northeastern US, Saugatuck has extended our special discount registration offer through Friday, November 2^nd, using event code "CBS1220PAE1”. Come join us on the 14^th. Click here to register. We want you there!

Early registrants will also receive four complimentary Saugatuck premium research reports with additional insight and guidance to effectively and safely manage the innovation and pace of change enabled, and threatened, by Cloud business and IT. 

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