The cloud is revolutionizing computing as businesses and organizations shift from client-server model to cloud computing. In the next years, technology experts and users expect to ‘live mostly in the cloud’ as they work through cyberspace-based applications accessed from networked devices.
Cloud Marketing is where traditional marketing meets Software as a Service. As a concept, it involves the migration of all marketing assets into the Cloud. Such migration allows all parties involved to access material as well as create, modify and share.
Marketing activities are based on various platforms which are maintained by third parties. Through utilizing such services, companies are able to gain revenue by leveraging market awareness, lead generation as well as benefiting from the inherent value already contained within the Cloud platform itself. Cloud based platforms are leading to a whole host of online developments which are allowing businesses to have increased connectivity and streamline efficiency.
With Cloud Marketing, everyone benefits. Channel Partners and resellers benefit because they get instant, customized help and expertise from the vendor that is based on market research and brand quality. Vendors, manufacturers, and marketers benefit because partners are communicating a succinct, cohesive, and consistent message at all customer touch points.
One argument for Cloud Marketing is shared in general with Cloud Computing: companies have the ability to concentrate on day-to-day operations. A third party manages the back-end system giving the company the freedom to concentrate on innovation and its core business.
With such advantages so imminent, enterprises not using such services will not be able to avoid the move for long. They will need to adapt to a SaaS based innovative marketing approach which will impact the entire marketing value chain.
a) Generating more contact points with its customers, enabling a more ‘continuous marketing’ with opportunity for better targeting to purchasers and particularly to end customers
b) Cloud Marketing requires a different mix of partners
Enterprises need to adapt their strategy along the whole marketing value chain. Capturing and leveraging a larger amount of insights will help enterprises to target their clients better. An optimal channel strategy with the right mix of partners needs to be defined, in order to manage an emerging channel conflicts. Enterprises will need to design a new sales engagement model, ensuring that the right tools, processes, skills and resources are in place.
Systems are getting “smarter”. IBM, Cisco, HP, GE, Siemens, and many other firms are investing heavily into this new industry and revenue expectations are high. Smart Systems considerably contribute to the development of the so-called ‘Internet of Things’, in that they provide smart functionality to everyday objects, e.g. to industrial goods in the supply chain. With the help of new technology like RFID, the concepts of M2M, wireless sensors, real-time sense and response capability, energy efficiency, as well as networking functionality, objects will become smart objects.
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) refers to technologies that allow both wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same ability. Location based services (LBS) are a subset of M2M. According to Juniper and IDC, the global M2M market is projected to be worth $18.9B in 2014, with 412 million M2M devices expected to be connected. From millions of end points for personal computers, and billions of smart phones and PDAs, we can expect smart objects/smart machines in the trillions by the end of this decade.
Although I mentioned some key players above, the ecosystem of players is still very fragmented. We can roughly differentiate between services, network, software and hardware players. Some of the larger Solutions that these players target are around Health, Utilities (Smart Grid), Safety and Security and other industries. An interesting field is also what IBM calls Smarter Cities or Cisco calls Smart and Connected Communities. Huawei, HP and GE have also a significant stake and interest in these Solutions. Smart Cities can be identified (and ranked) along six main axes or dimensions. These axes are: a smart economy; smart mobility; a smart environment; smart people; smart living; and, finally, smart governance. These six axes connect with traditional regional and neoclassical theories of urban growth and development.
But back to the concept of Machine-to-Machine. I predict that only the B2B side will have a significant and sustainable growth over many years. On the B2C side, or specifically location based services (LBS) will find the peak in consumer revenues in 2013. Although the amount of LBS users is growing with a CAGR of 76% in the US (2008-2013e), the average pay-per-use transaction price is falling sharply and premium services are becoming a commodity. Expect the monthly subscription ARPU for these services to fall by 50% over the next three years.
In summary, we’re looking at an extremely attractive market which is still fragmented and industry heavyweights are investing strongly. With a global market for M2M alone of $18.9 billion by 2014, it is strongly recommended to secure stakes now and refine the approach with a well though-through strategy.
I am finally posting about CloudTimes.org, the premier source for thought leadership and latest news on Cloud Computing. This media site is focusing mainly on Cloud Marketing related topics, like Marketing Automation, Lead Generation, Marketing ROI etc.
Some of the latest articles:
There are also sub-sections, like a How-To page, Cloud Computing Events, Resources, a Glossary and a Forum.
The usual social media integration is here:
Open APIs are a no-brainer in the IT landscape of 2010. I have been talking myself to hundreds of people over the last years, trying to convince everybody to build and publish an API. However I’d like to share some thoughts on what I believe is next. Will we still be talking about APIs, API management, etc in a few years from now? What role do APIs play in a multi-channel distribution play?
Not having an API today is like not having a website in the 90s. There are tons of great use cases out there: e.g. ebay – $7bn worth of items on ebay were added through APIs (Mark Carges, CTO ebay). Twitter, Amazon, Salesforce.com and many other best practices. However, we have also learned that building an API is relatively easy, but its distribution is not. Not everybody is as successful as Amazon Web Services with over 300,000 customers using their API, or Google’s APIs which are in the millions. The key topic of this article is therefore to look into how the distribution issue can be solved.
First, I’d like to look at Web Service Business Models and their evolution:
Open Platforms are the lever that allows to create a network effect which is required to succeed in the new distributed ecosystem.
Why should enterprises care about?
An overview of this new system shows the graphic below. I call it the “Open Computing Value Chain“. The sourcing part can be seen on the left where direct access to APIs and indirect generation of additional value add is derived from a developer community. On the right side I split between direct channels, such as the website or open APIs, and multi-channel platforms, such as Enterprise Platforms (Enterprise App Stores) and Consumer (mobile) App Stores which serve B2B as well as B2C customers respectively. In the end we are talking about multi-channel management represented in multi-channel platforms which will leapfrog pure API strategies in its ability to distribute to the market and increase its reach dramatically.
At Booz & Company we also call this phenomenon Social Apponomics, in which a Social OS allows the convergence of cloud functionality. The big trend is expected towards monetization. Expect only 2 to 3 social networks dominating the social landscape and a strong commercialization of social sites. While the social networks were mainly focusing on brand building today, within the next 18 months social sites will become commercial portals and e-commerce will be hosted on social sites.
Expect a “gold rush” just as we have seen it in consumer app stores where Apple has been the game changer beginning of 2009. After some early pioneers like Handango or Pocketgear, we are seeing hundreds and thousands of App Stores today, asking themselves the question “how to get a place in the game”. Almost every of the over 700+ mobile operator worldwide are thinking of launching an App Stores. This might not make sense for most of them, but it shows the upcoming abundance of players to come:
In the end, all of the above have different agendas but they are competing for the same audiences – developers and customers.
On the Enterprise Platform site we have a similar picture, with Enterprise Platform Enablers like Jive Software, IBM Enterprise Application Integration or Jackbe. But also full scale Enterprise “App Stores” like IBM Smart Market, Intuit and more developer platforms and PaaS-plays like the Alcatel-Lucent Open API service, Google App Engine, Salesforce/Force.com or Windows Azure. The common goal of all is to generate competitive advantages.
With such an abundance of players it is critical to ask what the key success factors to attract both developers and customers are.
The “right to win”, will have these companies that leverage their exisiting capabilities and assets in a coherent way to determine their best strategic play.
Key messages I wanted to bring across:
Thanks to Sam Ramji from Apigee/Sonoa who organized the API Open Mic Night where I presented these ideas first.
I finally fulfilled my favorite side project and built my own search engine using Yahoo BOSS: Suchmaus (which means ‘search mouse’ in German – I know, a bit immature). I created a German and an English version. It also comes with a cloud tag of most searched terms. The results page has images, news and a web search. This is certainly just a first version – expect more to come.
It would be great to see some traffic on the site, so have a look. Cheers.
How big is Amazon’s cloud computing business? To determine an estimate on the cloud computing market size it certainly helps to look at Amazon’s financials for their web services businesses. AWS is one of the leading players in cloud computing. Although still a relatively small division of Amazon’s business, AWS had a net income of $58.2 million in 2010 and will make $100.7 million in 2011. By 2014, AWS expects $393 million, or 83 cents a share. Om Malik wrote an interesting analysis about the report that was conducted by UBS Investment Research analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald.
Earlier market sizing efforts by IDC came to the following conclusions:
Interesting Series from Sramana Mitra on Cloud Computing: Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Overview. I totally agree that cloud security is and will remain one of the main concerns of cloud computing, although I think it is solvable. There is lots of critical discussion on cloud computing e.g. by McKinsey in their report on “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing”. Time to analyze the topic in a thorough way. I’ll add some more thoughts on security concerns later on.
Read Sramana’s first interview with Pat Toole, CIO of IBM.
Yesterday was arguably one of the best SFNewTech. Congrats for the 4th anniversary, Myles! Zuumer is certainly an excellent new way of transportation and I’ll try to get one as long as the price comes down a bit. But the tool I used immediately was Apture. I found Apture a great tool for any content and media site that wants to retain users on their site. Simply add a JavaScript line and done. It couldn’t be simpler. Great job, guys! While you are reading my blog – check it out.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=83bb862b-3849-420b-b48c-25b0d6399379)
First of all I have to say that Austin is a lovely city. I was very positively surprised… and imagine – not everybody has a Bluetooth headset, talking to an iPhone and a Mac on his laps – must be that I’ve been to the Bay Area for too long already. Live music on the street, in the airport, in almost every bar around town. Nice stuff.
SXSW is a huge event that draws a major crowd – mainly from the US, but also with growing participation from some European countries – mainly Germany the UK and France, hosts three parallel events SXSW Music, Film and Interactive.
Although I found many talks and sessions a bit mainstream, the crowd, the atmosphere, the geeks, the parties made it a very worthwhile event. The best contacts I actually got from the nightly events, aka parties – numerous of them every night, with a cool and relaxed crowd covering a wide range of the industry.
Not surprisingly, APIs are on the rise. In most talks they were a core topic, the expo was full of them and several companies organized extra shows like Mashery’s Circus Mashimus or Alcatel Lucent’s Eleven API. APIs are certainly mainstream now, at least in the US, while many Internet businesses begin to receive the first positive returns from their investments. However, many of them are still at the beginning of exploiting their value. While companies have opened access to their original services, content and functionality (good!), it is absolutely crucial to manage APIs correctly. Nobody would ever think about not securing their systems against regular HTTP access misuse. The whole Internet industry by now is focused on HTML websites as a distribution channel and revenue stream. I predict that by SXSW 2011, we’ll have a similar understanding for APIs as well. Manage your API correctly, secure and manager its access, monitor and analyze its usage and monetize the traffic! Watch this interview about the API industry here with Laura Merling from Alcatel Lucent, Sam Ramji & Greg Brail from Sonoa Systems as well as Martin Tantow, co-founder of 3scale.
Location was certainly a big topic as SXSW. I’d say – not as big as everybody predicted, but Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Google and many others have certainly made location based services (LBS) mainstream. However I would argue that new software like HTML5 (geolocation) alone will probably have at least as much effect.
Apart from enabling location integration on their site a few days ago, Twitter launched a new subdomain, sxsw.twitter.com where you can track Twitter employees around town. Nice idea. This should be white label so that other companies could use it for their own purposes. But the biggest surprise (at least for me) was that Twitter is finally going monetization and launched @Anywhere, Twitter’s new advertizing platform. This makes lots of sense. Although details about @Anywhere are yet to follow – think Google, think their ad revenue stream, and think back Twitter and their growing relevance in crowdsourced content. You got it. Twitter has gathered a who-is-who of the industry, namely Amazon.com, Yahoo, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Bing, Citysearch, The New York Times, eBay and several others as their initial partners. Although this is not the maximum version of an ad network on Twitter itself, it shows the further revenue streams for the company. Twitter API monetization anyone?
What am I gonna do differently next year? I’ll stay for the Music event as well. Awesome show, Austin!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7173f14f-ce7c-4e58-931d-846ab824efc0)
