Putting The Cloud in simpler terms

I’ve heard a lot of people over the last few weeks ask what The Cloud is. Many organizations say they’re all about The Cloud; analysts say that The Cloud is the Next Big Thing. Suddenly, so many companies are suddenly on The Cloud that it’s ridiculous.

Sure, it's pretty, but what exactly is The Cloud?

So what is The Cloud, and what does it mean for the average business? The technical folks at visionapp may cringe at the oversimplification, but as I see it, The Cloud is basically when a task the user performs is performed over the Internet instead of a local computer. Implementing the task can be started on one’s workstation using a client (Skype is an example of this) or a web-based interface (such as everybody’s favorite SaaS example, Salesforce). The computations, though, are not done on that user’s workstation or in the user’s company’s server room; from the user’s perspective, it’s done “over the Internet.”

In reality, of course, the processing is done (most often) on the software vendor’s own servers in the vendor’s data center. This makes a lot of sense when the task that you want to do requires a large investment on your part. For instance, part of Salesforce’s success is that the in-house resources needed for a CRM system are huge, and it’s much easier to pay $50 a month per user and start today than $10,000 or more to start a CRM project that may not be ready for a few months.

visionapp is actually doing a lot of this today, especially in Europe, with technology based on its visionapp Workspace Management platform. One of the largest telecommunications companies in the world are hosting business applications over The Cloud using visionapp technology. And the telecommunication company’s customers are seeing a much lower initial investment, lower requirements for their own workstations, and lower maintenance costs — adding up to a lower cost of ownership and lower operating expenses.

Marketing lessons from HubSpot?

I attended a Webinar this morning for “Marketing In A Recession,” given by Mike Volpe who is a VP at HubSpot, and one of our marketing vendors.

One of his points was that during a recession, one must use marketing dollars more wisely and use “brains not budget.” For this, Volpe suggested, abandon your external marketing programs like print advertising, direct mail, and telesales, and implement programs in inbound marketing, especially social media. Start a blog, get on Twitter, create content; then publicize the living bejeezus out of it on Flickr and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and FriendFeed and Slideshare and everything else you can think of.

Having been to a few marketing events over the last three months, including the excellent MarketingProfs Digital Mixer, I believe that Volpe and HubSpot aren’t covering the whole story. For marketers who are used to outbound marketing–from the sound of it, the audience of this webinar–the message has to be completely different. For visionapp’s outbound marketing, we focus on special discounts, or features and benefits, or cost savings, or ROI. The goal is to get people interested enough to enter the sales process.

However, for inbound marketing, and particularly in social media, almost no one will be interested in entering that sales process. Many of them got on Twitter because there was too much noise in their e-mail inbox. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who simply sends out sales messages. These new marketing media are vastly unexplored territory, and companies have been told (by many competent social media specialists) that traditional marketing messages and sales pitches absolutely do not work on Twitter or in blogs. No one will come to read your content if your content is simply a marketing message.

I haven’t figured out a way yet to get visionapp customers to enter into the conversation that visionapp employees are having internally–conversations that I really want prospects and customers to provide input on. Questions like, “Do you really think the iPhone ICA client is going to be a success, and will it drive XenApp use in the enterprise?” I’ve put that question out on Twitter and Facebook to no avail. Maybe that means that no one is interested in these topics; maybe it just means that very few people know about visionapp and what we do! But it definitely means that getting our name–and educating our audience–is going to require more than the “if you tweet it, they will come” attitude that Volpe and many, many other marketing pundits are advocating.