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Re: The Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing: Efficiency and Sustainability

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:01:30 -0000

Managed cloud services are, in my opinion, a logical progression for qualified managed network service providers. Companies with a proven track record, such as AT&T, can point to customer case studies -- where they have experience. Clearly, people involved in the procurement of public or hybrid cloud service would find this insight useful.

However, for business decision makers who are very new to the concept, or are just entering the cloud service buying cycle, I’m wondering if there’s a need for purchase related tools – as part of the initial solution discovery process.

As an example, I worked on producing a simple tool for managed network service buyers, and I am wondering if cloud services buyers would benefit from s similar FAQ-like guide?

Here a shortcut to my example, “How to Select a Best-Fit Managed Service Provider” http://scr.bi/eIamuC

Re: A “Smarter” Grid Will Lead to a Smarter Consumer

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:40:34 -0000

I used to live in Arizona, and that's the first time that I encountered a "load controller" device that's attached to the side of a house -- it's used in conjunction with electric service tariffs that vary in price -- based upon the time of day.

These devices were add-on systems that are purchased by the home owner. I'm not sure if this is mostly an Arizona phenomenon, due to the hot summers and peak demand created by air conditioning equipment, but I'm wondering if this was considered a U.S. utility energy management best practice?

My experience was more than a decade ago, so perhaps Arizona utilities were a pioneer.

Granted, consumers have a vested interest in monitoring an managing energy consumption. That said, you would think that utility load controllers would be a standard feature in upscale new homes -- similar to security systems and structured wiring.

Re: Cloud opportunities force telcos outside �comfort zone�

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:43:42 -0000

Numerous service providers have already moved up the value chain -- towards the provision of managed cloud service offerings. While I would agree that improved marketing will increase adoption, we should be specific about what activity is proven to attract new prospects.

Customer case study stories are by far the most effective marketing communications vehicle for operators. Unfortunately, these detailed testimonials are rare -- it's the one key area in their market development process that service providers should invest more time and energy.

Re: Verizon enhances cloud computing services

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:29:26 -0000

CIOs and IT managers typically don't look to broadband service providers for cloud services, but that will change over time. Meanwhile, published case studies will help Verizon and others to demonstrate expertise. Also, the value of bursting to 1 Gb/s could benefit from an application scenario, since that would offer some meaningful context.

David Deans
Business Technology Roundtable

Re: Dude, where�s my TV going?

David Deans @ BTR — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:00:34 -0000

Vince, once you have used an OTT service like Netflix, it significantly changes your viewing habits. I'm sure fans of TiVo say the same thing. Agreed, traditional TV isn't dead, it's just not the family-room focal point that it used to be. The cost of buying TV commercial time should reflect this fact (and decline over time, as the audience does).

Re: Cisco Wants To Roll 1Gbps Broadband Network In US - ITProPortal.com

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:51:55 -0000

FYI, there's a public webcast where Cisco will share details http://bit.ly/Next-Generati...

Re: Analysis: Four reasons gigabit 'demo deployments' won't matter

David Deans @ BTR — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:31:35 -0000

FYI, there's a public launch webcast where Cisco will share details http://bit.ly/Next-Generati...

Re: Join me at Webrazzi Agenda “Mobile Internet” February 10th 2010 in Istanbul

David Deans @ BTR — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:21:32 -0000

Monty,

FYI, Cisco will announce new insight about the Mobile Internet market opportunity (including the latest VNI market study results) at an upcoming webcast - details are here http://bit.ly/mobile-internet

Re: Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet

David Deans @ BTR — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:28:44 -0000

Re: Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet

David Deans @ BTR — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:01:59 -0000

Brian,

Re: Ground Truth Lifts Veil Of Secrecy In Mobile By Mining Carrier Data | mocoNews

David Deans @ BTR — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:44:01 -0000

Tricia,

Re: Only 10% of IP addresses left unallocated!

David Deans @ BTR — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:11:15 -0000

FYI, Cisco has a helpful "Power of Six" video that explains the overall business advantages of moving to IPv6 - here's the link http://bit.ly/IPv4-to-IPv6

Re: Cisco makes collaboration software play

David Deans @ BTR — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:46:59 -0000

Rich, the window of opportunity for SPs to take a leadership position in "managed cloud services" is currently wide open.

That said, the legacy of the relatively slow enterprise adoption of SP managed services perhaps is a key "lesson learned" that a cloud services market development process must include bold and creative marketing.

Once again, this is yet another way that vendors and SPs can collaborate together. Proactively reaching out to the target customer for these evolving services, with information and guidance that accelerates the buying-cycle.

Re: Collaboration paying off, says Cisco-Verizon study

David Deans @ BTR — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:42:41 -0000

Clearly, those companies that extract the highest ROC benefits have an "open culture" that enables just-in-time interaction to happen across their whole organization on a regular basis.

Metrics for "Enterprise Talent Networking," another term for this phenomenon, is going to become a key performance indicator as these collaboration technologies are adopted more by mainstream business -- beyond the early-adopters.

Re: Cloud computing gets cold water splash

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:45:53 -0000

Carol, this is to be expected. Why would cloud service adoption be any different than what we've experienced with managed network service adoption over the last decade?

The earlier-adopters use the window of opportunity to quickly gain a strategic advantage over the mainstream laggards who look for every excuse *not* to execute on the inevitable trend towards progress.

Corporate culture is likely still the primary gating factor that enables laggard CIOs and IT managers to maintain their emphasis on system investment and operational up-time performance metrics that typically have minimal alignment with the IT business impact objectives being set by CEOs.

And, so it goes...

Re: Amazon links cloud to enterprise data centers

David Deans @ BTR — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:40:25 -0000

Clearly, the public vs. hybrid vs. private cloud debate will likely continue to be fueled by reluctant CIOs and enterprise IT managers, meanwhile their early-adopter peers have already deployed trial applications.

Moreover, perhaps the Amazon launch is good for all players in the marketplace, since it creates yet another simple cost comparison for CEOs who would like to assess their own internal utility IT operational costs to this benchmark.

Re: Cisco ups the ante at the Ethernet edge

David Deans @ BTR — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:45:36 -0000

Ed, Cisco's Doug Webster provided additional insights in his related post "Views from the Top", and there's an archive link to the analyst webcast http://bit.ly/2jOKj1

Re: SMBs spend more, enterprises buy more managed services

David Deans @ BTR — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:19:13 -0000

Daley said, "it's because enterprises are more sophisticated in their ability to assess where to best allocate capex and opex dollars and can determine the value of managed services and the return on that investment."

IMHO, that's not the only reason. Look at the typical service provider front-line sales/support talent pool that works on the SMB segment, and then compare them to their peer group in the enterprise teams.

My point: managed service procurement is a value-based determination, and the buying-cycle is more complex than the typical sales or support person in the SMB segment can clearly articulate.

That said, the upside opportunity in the enterprise space is to build upon the managed network service customer-base and upsell those pre-qualified prospects for managed cloud services.

Once again, this is a complex sales scenario -- but the sales cycle will accelerate as more SP account managers learn the inherent value-proposition of cloud services and become skillful in explaining both the hard and soft benefits for buyers.

Re: Are marketing billions being wasted?

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:43:19 -0000

Carol, the CMO Council offers thought-provoking market research that all Service Providers should read -- as an example, their report about customer use of search engines in the buying-cycle is very insightful. Trying to find customer-centric service selection guidance on a typical SP website is very frustrating.

Regarding the latest CMO Council study, and on a more positive note, I see the potential for SPs to re-imagine their current Data Center and associated Service Delivery Platform strategies -- utilizing social media tools to attain a better understanding of current customer needs and wants.

Perhaps you would be interested in working with me on a guest editorial regarding this topic? FYI, I have some ideas that might become the basis for a series of "how to" commentaries that offer meaningful guidance. Maybe this is a theme that's in-line with your website re-launch objectives?

cheers, David Deans

Re: Will telepresence users push for interoperability?

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:05:23 -0000

Carol, is there any indication that the scenario that you describe has actually inhibited the adoption of TelePresence -- at either service providers or enterprise customers?

It's already understood that some vendors that have had limited success with their product portfolio and are attempting to find a niche in the market -- but, beyond that vendor concern, where exactly is the issue being validated as a "problem"?

Re: Legal risks in cloud computing | Telephony Online

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:38:03 -0000

What has changed since the 1960s, when computer timesharing was the norm and many of the same issues existed -- and were clearly overcome?

Does a legacy of four decades addressing this issue constitute a legal precedent?

Granted, young lawyers like Mr. Orzechowski (graduated law school in 1999) would not remember this history. No matter, there are others in the legal system that already understand that the risk is in fact very manageable.

Re: Verizon Business battles 'network' perception

David Deans @ BTR — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:35:31 -0000

Carol, I fully appreciate the perception issue that Mr. Shammo refers to -- I led the national Enterprise Network Consulting team at MCI (many moons ago). Back then, we actually had both marketing and sales support talent that had vertical industry expertise.

Fast forward to today, unfortunately the issue of service provider (SP) value-add solution awareness is still with us because marketing practices haven't advanced much in over a decade -- regardless of the pervasiveness of managed and hosted service sections on the typical SP web site.

Much of the content is still presented from an SP sales-cycle point of view -- not the business and IT decision maker's buying-cycle perspective. Meaning, end-customer buyers are looking for "information and guidance" on how to select the best-fit solution for their specific application scenario.

Details on service features, platform functional specifications, SLAs and the like are of limited use in the early-stages of selecting an appropriately qualified solution provider.

Even when the actionable buying-cycle insights are available, it's likely buried in a .pdf file in some remote part of the web site that's invisible to a Google search on that topic. Therefore, the burden of explaining the inherent benefits of an SP value-add services still mainly falls on the account manager available/assigned to the customer in question.

Frankly, many AMs aren't capable of articulating that meaningful buying-cycle information and guidance that customers crave. Fortunately, there's an alternative approach -- topic-centric microsites that aid the end-customer decision maker and uniformed account manager to build a valid business case for a solution that delivers substantive business impact.

We, the vendors that provide the essential building blocks for these managed, hosted and cloud-based services, can help SPs attain better mind-share and recognition for their offerings -- by collaborating with them to provide the information and guidance tools that we know IT decision makers crave.

The "Business Technology Roundtable" microsite is our first collaborative blog that's unique to the managed services space -- it's focused exclusively on the needs of buyer decision makers. I welcome inquiries from Cisco partners who would like to learn more -- here's a shortcut to the BTR Intro and call-to-action http://bit.ly/10rpwd

Re: Cisco: gigabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, oh my!

David Deans @ BTR — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:04:51 -0000

Abigail, the Cisco report and associated forecasts are based upon aggregate data sourced from numerous independent market research companies.

FYI, Cisco has created several applications (desktop & mobile) to provide a closer look at IP traffic growth around the world. Free download links are available here http://bit.ly/5F0zk

Re: Cisco: IP traffic to hit 667 exabytes by 2013

David Deans @ BTR — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:00:21 -0000

FYI, Cisco has created several applications (desktop & mobile) to provide a closer look at IP traffic growth around the world. Free download links are available here http://bit.ly/5F0zk

Re: Verizon debuts cloud computing service

David Deans @ BTR — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:45:23 -0000

Kudos to Verizon for launch this offering -- especially the private MPLS backbone option, since this partly disarms the security issue that often surfaces in discussing typical application scenarios.

Like managed service buying cycles, I would expect that while customers start with selective out-tasking of a specific project, over time they will migrate to additional applications -- such as the external augmentation of capacity for current in-house apps.

I also agree, the coexistence of in-house and out-tasking makes hybrid scenarios the most likely mainstream adoption model that will stimulate the growth of managed cloud services.