Delivered Innovation has noticed a number of requests for entity relationship diagrams (ERD) for standard Salesforce objects within the Force.com developer community, and we have started a program to create these ERD documents in Visio / VSD format. The first ERD document that we are publishing is for the Spring ‘10 Service Cloud. Subsequent documents will be published for Sales Objects, Task and Event Objects, Process Objects, and other objects within the Salesforce CRM and Force.com environments.
Please download and provide us with your feedback.
Delivered Innovation and SilverTree Systems are teaming up to provide business executives with an informative overview and peer-to-peer roundtable discussion of Cloud Computing and how this leading-edge technology can be leveraged to achieve breakthrough business results. Topics to be discussed include:
What Is Cloud Computing? How did we get here?
How does “The Cloud” help me?
Benefits
Risks and Mitigation Strategies
How does Cloud Computing change the way we do business?
Time to market acceleration
Business model enablement
Who are the players in Cloud Computing?
Amazon
Google
Microsoft
Salesforce.com
How do I determine my Cloud strategy?
Customer case studies
Adobe Systems
Polycom
School of Rock
How do I get started?
All attendees receive a copy of Jonathan Sapir’s book, Power in the Cloud : Using Cloud Computing to Build Information Systems at the Edge of Chaos.
Seating is limited to 12 business executives, so order your ticket today to reserve your place at the table.
Agenda
Friday, February 19
8:00 – 8:30 Continental breakfast and networking
8:30 – 9:10 Michael Topalovich, Delivered Innovation
9:20 – 10:00 Jonathan Sapir, SilverTree Systems
Jonathan Sapir is the CEO of SilverTree Systems and the author of Power in the Cloud : Using Cloud Computing to Build Information Systems at the Edge of Chaos.
Michael Topalovich is the founder and CTO of Delivered Innovation. Prior to Delivered Innovation, Michael was a senior IT leader with Siebel Systems where in 2003 he spearheaded the systems management team for Siebel CRM OnDemand, one of the first enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.
Delivered Innovation CTO Michael Topalovich recently presented at the Day of Cloud conference in Chicago with Jonathan Sapir from SilverTree Systems. Michael and Jonathan discuss the Force.com platform from salesforce.com, and Michael’s code deep-dive begins at 32:11 of the video.
Thomas Bittman from Gartner cuts through some of the cloud computing hype and gives us a tempered viewpoint on mainstream cloud adoption. Overview of the four myths:
Bittman takes on Nick Carr’s “Big Switch” view of rapid proliferation of cloud-based services and argues that adoption will be substantial but gradual.
We’ve heard many SaaS and cloud computing skeptics try to minimize cloud computing by calling it a redressing of other philosophies / technologies, but in fact it is the culmination of many concepts and technologies.
Bittman gives us a great line with, “We’re not going to have a handful of megaproviders, we’re going to have thousands of providers, and it will be very Darwinian.”
The fourth myth cuts to the heart of a common cloud computing argument – some see cloud computing as simply a large-scale commodification of traditional IT infrastructure and platform services, whereas the bigger picture view of cloud computing is that the standardization of the lower stacks of the IT architecture will enable a focus on more innovative applications of technology to build new business models and solve once daunting business challenges.
We always love posts like this from mainstream mags such as Forbes. This one is penned by Russ Daniels, described as the “Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cloud Services Strategy” at HP. Some very interesting points, including the parallel between the evolution brought upon by Henry Ford’s assembly line concept and the economic shift that we are experiencing now as the world transitions to a knowledge-based economy. The HP “MagCloud” example he gives is very powerful, demonstrating how cloud-based services (and to a greater extent services delivered in a SOA framework) can open up services that were once so cost prohibitive that their availability was constrained to those with the deepest pockets.
Key quotes:
“The cloud makes it possible to deliver everything as a service–from business processes to personal interactions–and to create altogether new business models across industries.”
“…with this underlying infrastructure in place, both large and small companies can use technology to expand or invent services, open up markets and address some of the biggest challenges we face as a global society.”
“The cloud is making once-expensive information technology available to a mass market through a pay-per-use model. This promises to increase productivity and drive growth. Small and medium-sized businesses can leverage data to drive efficiencies and improve products and services.”
Leena analyzes a McKinsey report that essentially comes to the conclusion that “The Cloud” is not yet attractive to enterprise customers. This in itself isn’t earth shattering, as cloud computing adoption has been predominantly driven by small and midsize organizations; what is interesting is that there seems to be more of a focus in the report on commodity services, which misses the bigger point of cloud computing. The goal with cloud computing is not necessarily to commoditize IT infrastructure, although that is of course a consequence of consolidating services and building economies of scale; cloud computing is driving innovative new services and service delivery models that are changing the IT landscape. To place so much focus on cost cutting and to seemingly downplay the value added through innovation and agility is to perpetuate the status quo and keep the traditional IT model on life support, which only delays the inevitable shift to the cloud for the majority of enterprises that do not derive strategic advantage from their IT services or have a valid business reason to build out their own cloud-like services internally.
The session will be moderated by Jerry Smith, CTO of Symphony Services. Other panelists include R “Ray” Wang of Forrester Research, and Rick Nucci, CTO of Boomi.
Switching software is hard enough to do when you run it in-house. But when you’re moving from one SaaS provider to another, you face new challenges. You may not own your data; you may miss features you didn’t know you were using; and custom code build for one SaaS platform may need rewriting on another. This panel of end-users who’ve made the jump shares lessons learned from SaaS migration.
Another good post from Stacey that provides some interesting angles on cloud computing adoption in the enterprise. Items of note:
The concept of adopting “private” clouds prior to migrating to the “public” clouds, and somehow integrating the public / private paradigm
Early cloud computing adopters in the enterprise space are predominantly focusing on software testing and high performance computing, but most of the market remains skeptical
The adoption of multiple “clouds” to avoid vendor lock-in
The legal implications of where data is physically stored – the tendency to focus on data security / integration tends to overshadow this important consideration
Very interesting piece on the implications of developing applications in “The Cloud.” Good insight from Model Metrics CTO John Barnes on the dynamic nature of being a SaaS / cloud computing developer in an era of constantly moving targets.
