NextGen enterprise – all cloud all the time

By Subraya Mallya - December 2010 | Topics - Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing has created enough of a challenge for companies. On the one hand, they have investments made into traditional on-premise technologies which has developed firm roots in the enterprise, thanks to all the customization, resources etc. On the other hand they see these new Cloud solutions, all of which they wished their existing vendors were – agile, no CAPEX, low support costs, equitable risk share and much more customer focussed.

But if you were starting a company today, you have no baggage of the old IT investments or legacy maintenance. With almost every possible solution available as a cl0ud based service, you can easily to evaluate, procure and use Cloud based solutions, what would a next generation enterprise look like. What are some of the off-premise technology choices to effectively run a company. Here are my suggestions

Financial Capital Management

  • NetSuite, Intacct

Human Capital Management

  • SuccessFactors, Taleo, Workday

Sales Automation

  • Salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel On-Demand

Customer Service

  • RightNow, ZenDesk, GetSatisfaction

Sales Compensation

  • Xactly, Varicent

Marketing Automation

  • Marketo, Hubspot

Community Engagement

  • Lithium, Jive

Document Management

  • Dropbox, Box.net

Collaboration

  • Google Apps, Jive, Atlassian Confluence

Business Productivity Suites

  • Google Apps, Microsoft Office Live, Zoho Apps

Content Management

  • Alfresco, Box.net

Web Conferencing

  • Cisco WebEx, Citrix GoToMeeting

Project Management/Work Management

  • Clarizen, Atlassian

Purchasing/Spend Management

  • Concur, Coupa

Custom Application Platforms

  • Salesforce.com Force.com, Microsoft Azure (for .NET), Google AppEngine (for PHP, Python, Java), Engine Yard (Ruby on Rails)

Identity Management

  • Ping Identity, Symplified

Payroll

  • ADP, Intuit Paycycle, PayChex

Version Control (in case you still fancy building custom apps)

  • GitHub, Codesion

Voicemail, Messaging, Fax

  • Twillio, eFax

and finally, if you still wanted to hug servers then for application infrastructure, redundant backup, replication

  • Amazon AWS

I could go on with all the other activities, but you get the idea.

Just like companies over time have given up building their own telecom network, power generator (I know I will get a lot of heat for this analogy !) it might not be far when we see a next generation enterprise just focus on its core competency and leverage all else from cloud.

To finish off let me leave you with video from the guys more creative than I am from Box.net relaying the same message

Thoughts shared by readers (2)

  1. Barry Allard Says:

    This is a great article.

    Collaborative productivity apps:

    Real-time copy editing :: iEtherPad

    Diagrams :: LucidChart

    Mind mapping :: MindMeister

    Presentations :: SlideRocket

    Pastebin :: GitHub Gist

    Teamwork with history :: HipChat

    Computer remote control :: TeamViewer

    Desktop screen sharing :: Jing

    App discovery :: Wakoopa

    Last, but not least:

    Infrastructure :: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  2. Peter Klement Says:

    I can think of two reasons to have at least part of an IT infrastructure in-house (of course this depends on the business):

    1. Data security considerations: You don’t want to have certain data outside our own data center.
    2. Functionality: You need business functionality that is not available in the cloud. (You may “outsource” functionality, that does not differentiate you from the competition, but you may want to have very specific/unique functionality the enables you to differentiate you .)

Trackbacks For This Post (10)

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