Brokers in the Cloud

(Vision on the future of the Cloud and the Cloud Brokerage concept explained)

The cloud technologies are steadily getting up the hype curve and even have reached the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ for some concrete cases according to Gartner. More and more companies – be it IT consulting players or internal IT departments of large enterprises – are showing increasing interest for the cloud technologies, propositions and new business models they might bring.

The last news about Amazon permanently loosing client’s data or Sony letting more than 10 mln credit card accounts to be compromised only underline the worries associated with the cloud: “Is it secure enough? Who is responsible in case if…?”

And nevertheless, the cloud continues its triumphal entry. Many name the Cloud a truly revolutionary step in the history of computing. Small businesses and individuals have been benefiting from the different aspects of the cloud. Personally I have been using various Google Apps, music services like GrooveShark or storage/backup services like Dropbox already for quite a while. Larger companies are trying ‘to keep up with Johnsons’ and are gradually making next step from adopting virtualization techniques to the wider applications of the possibilities that the cloud concept can offer.

If you search “Cloud Computing” in Google, Slideshare or YouTube, you will find hundreds and thousands links to various sources. And I see no added value in repeating diverse speculations or what has already become the common knowledge about the cloud. Today I have tried to make a small selection of two topics related to the cloud, which either bring some new idea to the cloud concept in general, or go deeper on a specific aspect of this wide topic.

 

The first presentation is by Peter Hinssen about the vision of the cloud-shaped future. Peter quite proficiently takes the old concept of “The New Normal” and together with a couple of other famous concepts applies it to create a vision for the cloud. The “New Normal” concept was first introduced by Roger McNamee in 2004 and further consequently promoted by McKinsey for business and for IT in 2009. An idea based on that strong foundation together with well-placed jokes and high-quality animation makes the 7 minutes video-presentation well-worth viewing.

 

And the second presentation I’ve made myself. Here I just tried to take a specific cloud-related topic, uncover it to a certain extent and convert the pure theory to something more practical and applied in the end.

The presentation is about the Cloud Brokerage concept, which is basically showing how the role of an intermediary can be realized in the maturing Cloud market. The original idea comes from Gartner. Despite the fact that the company template and some information slides were used, the presentation itself was made in my free time as a hobby and might not be aligned with the official company position.

What do you think about these two pieces? Do you know any other worthwhile presentations on the cloud topic? Please let me know in the comments.