
Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2013. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Jeremy LaTrasse, CEO and Co-Founder of Message Bus and Co-Founder of Twitter
More and more critical business functions move to the cloud
Enterprises
gun-shy to offload critical business functions like email and infrastructure
are doing a double take at the cost savings the cloud provides. 2013 will see
more and more enterprise organizations moving critical business functions to the
cloud because of efficiency and redundancy and to reduce CAPEX. To be more
specific:
1 Large organizations are going to take
a deep breath and walk their Outlook and Domino servers out to pasture. It's
going to be Old Yeller, and there will be tears flooding the streets. I
wouldn't get too emotional, the liberation of IT resources to service other
business needs like security, building internal systems and working closer with
engineering to create products and infrastructure will lessen the blow.
2 Brave new cloud computing companies
will create more and more specific point solutions to better scale and optimize
business functions such as email, infrastructure, etc. This is the paradigmatic
shift of this relatively new decade. When Salesforce took CRM into the cloud,
it was shocking and maybe even a little off putting but I don't know a single
organization that doesn't leverage some form of cloud-based CRM or marketing
automation. There are stalwarts everywhere, but progress will not be slowed by
fear.
3 Just as Google has convinced numerous
companies to move their corporate email to the cloud, a handful of companies
are working to move large scale email deployments to the cloud. Several
companies have deployed cloud-washed email solutions that are based on
dedicated hardware with an API frontend. This approach, leveraging dedicated
hardware with a 'cloud wrapper', may appear to leverage the scalability of the
cloud but it falls short in keeping pace with growth and possible demand
because of the physical limitations of the hardware that underpin these types
of solutions. Only a cloud-native approach that isn't fundamentally tied to land
based, dedicated hardware can scale infinitely and meet the demand of
organizations with customer bases in the tens of millions that foresee
delivering billions of messages. The future is in providing capacity to meet
the growing interactivity of platforms, devices and networks all fueled and
driven by email - a technology that is decades old and
needs a facelift.
4 We'll see more and more companies
grow weary of maintaining the staff necessary to fight the massive forest fires
caused by poor mailing practices or the glut of knowledge surrounding how to
achieve trust in messaging. These problems will be solved with a cloud-native
approach that ends the catapult slinging of emails. The cloud makes it easier
to listen and provides visionary companies with the tools to build
sophisticated and intelligent platforms to enable communication across an array
of channels thereby delivering on the one to one conversation that every large
organization is desperately trying to have with every one of their customers.
When you look
at the ROI associated with marketing email and the cost savings of
transactional email, you can't help but feel this is the very flagstone of all
digital communication channels.
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About the Author
Jeremy LaTrasse, CEO
and Co-Founder of Message Bus and Co-Founder of Twitter
Jeremy plays a crucial dual role in shaping the
business and technical direction of Message Bus, a pioneer of cloud-based infrastructure
for email, mobile and social messaging. He has been working with technology
companies for the past 17 years. He has extensive experience in planning and
building cloud-based infrastructure as well as day to day technical operations.
Most recently, he was part of the founding team of Twitter and the Director of
Operations where he led the team that built the social network. He is currently
an advisor at Square and an investor of Lift.do, SightGlass Coffee and
Webshots.