Articles by Jeffrey M. Kaplan

When the concept of "cloud computing" first began to gain attention within the technology industry, I have to admit that I was convinced that it was one of the worst terms ever created. What's harder to get your arms, or head, around than a cloud? Talk about an amorphous idea Don't get me wrong. I have thoroughly believed in the functional potentia...

I'd like to take this space to elaborate on one of the predictions for 2011 I made last month. I suggested that community clouds aimed at specific vertical markets and supply chain relationships would become more prevalent, as various organizations recognized the value of sharing cloud resources and services with their peers. I think this represen...

As the year winds to an end, it is incumbent on all industry pundits to make predictions about what they envision for the coming year. Since I'm often lumped into this category, I'm obliged to offer my views about how the world will evolve over the next 12 months from a cloud computing perspective. First, I'd like to quickly review the pivotal opp...

As I reported in this space earlier this year, a growing number of IT professionals are putting aside their apprehensions about Software as a Service and cloud computing, and investigating how they can utilize these "on-demand" solutions to address their day-to-day IT management requirements Now, a widening array of cloud-oriented analytic tools is...

One of the commonly accepted myths of the Software as a Service (SaaS) market and the broader cloud computing environment is that it is inherently a high-transaction business. This view has been fostered by the rapid growth of many commodity-oriented SaaS solutions and public cloud services However, just as the overall technology and software indus...

A popular parlor game in the technology industry is predicting new market opportunities and forecasting how quickly they're going to flourish. Despite all the investments that have been made in trying to turn this pastime into a science, it is amazing how often the market research firms still get it wrong or miss a rapidly emerging trend entirely.

Since its inception, the cloud computing industry has been the beneficiary of various outputs of the open source movement. The symbiotic relationship between these two forces has helped to transform the technology industry and continues to reshape the marketplace In my view, the open source movement has influenced the cloud computing industry in th...

One of the most vexing problems facing organizations for years has been knowledge management. In the past, the task of capturing, organizing and disseminating valuable information so it could be properly utilized by end-users and business executives was an herculean effort that produced limited results. Today's cloud computing movement offers exciting opportunities to remedy those age-old challenges...

A lot of folks look down their noses at the prospect of Facebook penetrating the corporate world in a meaningful fashion. In fact, many people believe that the IT community will do everything possible to resist this prospect because of the security, privacy and compliance issues surrounding the social network. Most people also discount the potenti...

Whenever people debate the enterprise-readiness of cloud computing, the discussion usually centers on reliability, security, compliance and integration questions. However, underlying these important concerns is an even more fundamental issue that keeps most IT and business decision-makers up at night: customer support The truth is that a growing nu...

A year ago, I suggested that the Software as a Service and cloud computing industry was entering a new stage in which vendors would begin putting greater emphasis on expanding their sales channels to broaden the addressable market for their solutions. Anyone following the SaaS/cloud computing industry knows that this idea has become a reality, as ...

I've written a few times in this space about how IT professionals should embrace Software as a Service and the broader cloud computing phenomenon because these Web-based applications and solutions are delivering tangible and measurable business benefits to organizations of all sizes. IT departments benefit from this trend because it relieves them ...

No software company has been more threatened by the rapid growth of Software as a Service (SaaS) and the broader cloud computing phenomenon than Microsoft. After decades of dominating the technology industry, Microsoft isn't even the most important player in Seattle anymore. That honor goes to Amazon, which single-handedly resurrected the idea of ...

In my last column in this space, I identified 10 important milestones and events that helped to shape the SaaS and cloud computing market in 2009. Now, I'm going to list some of the critical challenges SaaS and cloud vendors must overcome to sustain their growth in 2010, along with some exciting opportunities they can pursue to extend their market...

Plenty of industry observers are already issuing their predictions for 2010, but I think it is worth taking a look back at the past year's events to see how quickly the Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing marketplace is evolving. So, following are 10 events that I consider bellwethers of the rapid evolution process, which could be imp...

In a previous column, I described why many IT professionals within small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as in large-scale enterprises, are beginning to embrace Software as a Service, and why managed service providers (MSPs) can't afford to ignore SaaS. I recently attended an industry event that brought my previous observations to life and a...

One of the biggest challenges in today's rapidly evolving cloud computing market, if you're an aspiring vendor, is how to clearly differentiate your offerings in an increasingly competitive environment. This is especially difficult because of the Web's knack for sucking the value out of everything it touches In fact, one of the primary attractions ...

Like every new generation, today's youth are unlike their predecessors, and they are poised to make a significant impact on society and business as they enter the workforce. While this may not seem like a revelation, what is important to keep in mind is who is pulling some of the strings that are already redefining how today's kids think and tomorrow's workers will behave...

One of my predictions for 2009 was that many of the new Obama administration's initiatives would promote and accelerate the growth of Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing. What I underestimated at that time was how quickly government itself would embrace SaaS and cloud computing to improve its own operations in today's tough economic c...

The initial success and rapid growth of cloud computing is attracting a "cloud rush" of players twisting the original concept to suit their proprietary purposes and confusing IT and business decision-makers in the process. This proliferation process is also accelerating the inevitable shakeout of various startups and causing potential customers to...