Collaborative Strategy Guild » Cloud Computing

How Much is Your E-mail Worth?: Quantifying the Total Value Investment (TVI) of SaaS E-mail to Small and Medium Businesses

Karen Hobert — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:52:28 +0000

We’ve published another report!

How Much is Your E-mail Worth?: Quantifying the Total Value Investment (TVI) of SaaS E-mail to Small and Medium Businesses

CSG members Pete Lindstrom and Karen Hobert conducted and authored this study on quantifying the Total Value Assessment of SaaS E-mail. A worthwhile read if you’re trying to figure out how much your e-mail options will really cost you.

You can download the white paper here or go to our Research page.

Mitigating Risk and Finding Opportunity in Software as a Service (SaaS) E-mail for Small and Medium Businesses

Karen Hobert — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:47:40 +0000

Announcing the latest CSG publication, “Mitigating Risk and Finding Opportunity in Software as a Service E-mail for Small and Medium Businesses.” You can download the white paper here or go to our Research page.

Software as a Service (SaaS) e-mail offerings provide some operational productivity benefits at lower prices, although it is not a silver bullet, and should not be considered a compromise to existing solutions. SaaS e-mail service bundles can provide capabilities not previously available with existing e-mail solutions especially with operational aspects of managing an e-mail infrastructure. Although total cost of ownership (TCO) is a leading driver for choosing SaaS e-mail, customers should approach SaaS e-mail options based on how the solution will improve the e-mail experience and increase user and operational productivity as well as mitigate risks.

Gauging the Real Value of SaaS E-mail

Karen Hobert — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:07:06 +0000

I‘m pleased to announce the publication of “Gauging the Real Value of Software as a Service (SaaS) E-mail for Small and Medium Businesses,” a Collaborative Strategy Guild white paper on SaaS E-mail and productivity. You can download the paper here or go to our Research page.

The e-mail market is rapidly evolving as new business-grade software as a service (SaaS) e-mail options become a viable alternative to the traditional on-site e-mail by competing on price and value. Information Technology (IT) decision makers are pressured to reduce costs, so they’re considering a move to SaaS e-mail solutions, which is driving businesses to scrutinize current e-mail strategies. Making a SaaS e-mail decision depends upon the unique needs of the business and how available options not only offer cost savings, but also productivity value.

In this paper, Collaborative Strategy Guild founding member, Karen Hobert, focuses on the SaaS e-mail market, its impact on small and medium businesses (SMBs), and how to find the real value in different product offerings.

Softening the Social Bite

Karen Hobert — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:11:10 +0000

Remember when email flaming was all the ..er..rage? It took a while for people to learn to turn off the caps lock. Surely there is a learning curve with social sites. In the meantime the stakes are pretty high, like losing your job.

The minidrama is an increasingly familiar one as companies and workers navigate the landscape defined by sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Firings and reprimands over postings to social networking sites have become commonplace over the last year.

Surely, as individuals, we’ll eventually learn to balance who we “let in” to our social networks, how we reveal our thoughts, and consider who might see what we say or do. I wonder how tolerance levels for “past deeds” will play out in the future. I think we’ll become more tolerant when just about everyone has had the experience of putting too much out there. It’s like traffic in LA (I get to say this cause I’m from LA); the best excuse when you’re late for a meeting is to blame it on traffic, everyone commiserates with you especially if there was an accident on the freeway. For an interesting read on putting stuff out there take a look at this New York Times article from 2007 (funny how this article keeps coming up).

But the answer does not solely lie with the end user. Companies need to frequently communicate with their employees on what they will tolerate and not just rely on draconian measures after the fact. What’s the phrase, “an ounce of prevention…”? Most companies have some sort of policy on cyber-flaming; although it’s probably obtusely named something like Electronic Communications Agreement that employees my need to sign (but not re-read) once a year. Usually the agreement includes broadly written rules that only do well to serve as blunt instruments when it’s needed or is useful. Typically signing the agreement is made part of employment terms but the rules are dictated rather than communicated. When was the last time you read the entire licensing agreement when you installed a piece of software? And do you think of it every time you use the software? Same idea. If a company wants to avoid embarrassment and leaked information then it should take measures to help employees understand what is tolerated and help them to do the right thing.

AP Reporter Reprimanded For Facebook Post; Union Protests | Threat Level | Wired.com

Thinning Clouds? Report Questions Value Of Cloud Computing – Software – IT Channel News by CRN

Karen Hobert — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:34:05 +0000

Follow the link in the article to the McKinsey report, it’s a highly worthwhile read. I think the last comment sums of the net effect of McKinsey’s observations and how nascent the market is, especially for cloud services:

But IBM said it is seeing many customers adopt a mix of public and private cloud models to reduce the cost of supporting specific applications such as business resiliency, information protection and collaboration services.

Thinning Clouds? Report Questions Value Of Cloud Computing – Software – IT Channel News by CRN

Cloud Services: What do you want?

Karen Hobert — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:54:33 +0000

I ran across this IDC chart on what customers want with cloud computing service providers. The survey is from August 2008 so it’s pretty current.

Overall not so surprising that cost and performance are at the top of the list. I was a bit surprised that an established provider fell into a lower percentile. I guess that’s mitigated by the #4 response, the ability to “move offerings back on-premise”; assuming that means being able to move data back on-premise. I would have figured that being an established provider would be more important.

A recent Information Week article on the closure of Goghead (a low-cost application platform hoster) highlights the risks of cloud computing, especially when the provider goes out of business. Still I guess if you’re joining the cloud frontier you’d expect some risk. Even if it’s a “large, established” provider there still are risks in the “how do I get my stuff back” area. As IW the article points out:

Choosing a stable vendor can reduce some of the risks of cloud computing. But even Google acknowledges that the migration path off the Google App Engine, should its customers want one, needs some work. “This is an issue, and we know it’s not as easy as it should be,” said product manager Pete Koomen.

The Fog of Cloud Computing

Karen Hobert — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:41:03 +0000

I spent a good part of the last hour following links to stories about security and privacy lapses in Google Docs. I started out with a TechCrunch article detailing additional security loopholes that a security expert had recently uncovered including:

Embedded images in protected documents that never go away and that get saved to an open server
The new diagram feature of Google Docs saves all previous versions of the diagram and makes them available to anyone who can read the doc, even if you’ve set the diagram to view only mode
Sometimes users still can access documents after their permissions have been revoked

These are pretty serious issues for customers who use Google Docs in a true collaborative fashion; where internal contributors create content, collaborate on it, and produce a final version that is shared with a new audience that is only intended to see the final product.

As I followed links in the post I found that earlier in March a Google Docs user uncovered a bug that was overzealous when setting document permissions on collections of documents. I can actually envision the flawed logic of the code behind that button. Burr. Google reacted and took steps to remedy the problem ultimately notifying customers that they created an automated fix that removed all permissions (except the authors) from the affected documents. Pretty dramatic, and having been through things like this before, not without its own risks of corruption and locking people out of documents for good; what would happen if the author is no longer available?

According to the account of the person who reported the bug, the two weeks that Google took to respond and remedy the problem was admirable, despite the fact that “ultra-secret” information was shared with people who should not have seen the information. Not only does this raise the question of how enterprise-ready Google Docs development is but also what customers come to expect of cloud service providers. I wonder if two weeks would have been admirable if this were Microsoft instead of Google. Not to harp on the customer. He was satisfied and the problem was remedied in part due to his own pro activeness.

Bottom line is the stakes are high when it comes to offering enterprise services in the cloud. Not only for the provider but also for the customer. I had considered using Google Docs for a recent project but decided against it because I did not know where the information was going to be stored. Since it was client information I was working with, and not my own, I opted for the much more cumbersome email approach to sharing files. I’m glad I did. The problems caused by posting embedded images to a separate, unprotected store that subsequently does not remove images when the document is deleted is a reminder that users of cloud services have no control over the architecture or infrastructure of the system (unlike an in-house system) and that they are trusting Google is doing the right thing. In this case Google isn’t doing the right thing; at least not right now.

To me this begs the question of whether or not Google’s developers really understand developing for enterprise requirements. Sharing and collaborating enterprise content is not new (I keep saying that around cloud services) and there are many developers who brought us products like Lotus Notes and Groove that understand the issues in creating systems to share and secure content. What is new, however, are vendors building sharing platforms in the cloud as if they were enterprise-deployed solutions. They are doomed to make the same mistakes that were made in the early days of collaborative systems if they do not tap into the knowledge that enterprise solution developers already know. And customers will fall into those traps if they aren’t careful. I recall a customer account of how an unprotected HR file that listed salaries of all employees made it into the company’s shared store only to be accidentally displayed in a searching demo to executives. Scary as it was, the problem was contained within the intranet. Imagine if that had been in the cloud?

Google Docs is a 2.5-year-old beta product, which should tip customers off to the fact that it’s all one big experiment still. It is one development model to continue to stumble along, make the same mistakes that companies like Lotus and Microsoft spent years learning, and to use its customers as guinea pigs. If the price point (free) is worth it, then customers of Google Docs can have little recourse when something goes terribly wrong. Customers need to consider all cloud services as carefully as they would consider in-house solutions. Checking out the technical facts as well as their risk tolerance before “buying” is likely to mitigate buyer’s remorse. Don’t count on users to be cautious once you bless the service. Users will not be concerned about how a system is implemented to ensure that the information they post is secure. If the tool makes their work easier you can be assured it will be used heavily. Therefore, it’s up to the people who understand IT to make sure that the cloud services that the company uses are satisfactorily implemented and is secure.

The recent Business Week article, Cloud Computing: Understand the Risks, chimes in the risks to consider when evaluating cloud services:

There are two kinds of risks in putting your data online. One is that you can never be quite sure who has access to your information once it has migrated beyond the hard drives and backup storage devices in your home. The other risk is that the information, and sometimes the applications you need to make use of it, may be available only when you are connected to the Internet and the service is up and running.

A Bigger Microsoft Cloud

collabstrategy — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:32:25 +0000

from Karen Hobert’s Connecting Dots by Karen Hobert

Since its announcement of the Software+Services strategy in 2006, Microsoft has been steadily refining and growing it’s online offerings. Over the last two years Microsoft has unveiled it’s strategy at regular intervals. Thus far we’ve been taken from the S+S strategy in the summer of 2006 through the general availability of US-based consumer and business grade hosted messaging, communications, and collaboration services in November 2008. Last week Microsoft’s cloud got bigger with the general availability of worldwide Microsoft Online Services for any sized company. According to Microsoft’s press release:

…the Business Productivity Online Suite, part of Microsoft Online Services, is now available for trial to businesses of all sizes in 19 countries. In addition, Microsoft will release Microsoft Office Communications Online, for instant messaging and presence, and the Business Productivity Online Deskless Worker Suite, an extremely economical e-mail, calendaring and collaboration service for the occasional user.

This steady cloud formation is formidable and steps up the competition in the emerging cloud-based platforms market. There’s lots of ground that still needs to be covered, especially when it comes to supporting enterprises, however. Microsoft is still not likely to suck the air out of the enterprise hosting room until it can make the entire platform (e.g., messaging plus all of its supporting services) affordable and secure. Cheap mailbox services are a good selling point but enterprises tend to look at (and need) more than just better mailbox service costs. The cloud maturity model looks more complex than one-stop shopping solutions when you get to the enterprise. Flexibility, adaptability, and risk mitigation are the keys to enterprise hearts. The cloud is still too squishy and moist for many.

Microsoft Online Services Available Worldwide: Microsoft signs agreement with GlaxoSmithKline to deploy Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting for employees worldwide.