Here's How Steve Jobs Helped Invent Cloud Computing, According To Marc Benioff

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is often credited with inventing cloud computing or at least the form of it known as software-as-a-service (SaaS), where an app is delivered over the Internet.

Other people say that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison invented SaaS cloud computing, as he was the inspiration and the financial backer for both Salesforce.com and NetSuite. Benioff was working at Oracle, in a meeting with Larry Ellison, when he thought of Salesforce.com, the story goes.

But on Tuesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Benioff talked about his other mentor: Steve Jobs and his role in shaping Salesforce.com.

Jobs was Ellison's best friend, but that's not how Benioff knew him. Benioff, a child prodigy programmer, worked for Steve Jobs at Apple's Macintosh division at age 19 before landing at Oracle with Ellison.

Benioff idolized Jobs.

"Steve Jobs was a huge mentor. There would be no Salesforce.com without Steve Jobs," Benioff said on Tuesday.

Benioff had to build up the nerve the first time he called Jobs for advice, he said. "I'm having trouble at Salesforce.com and I want to come see you," Benioff told him on the phone.

Jobs agreed and Benioff told Jobs everything about his plans for his startup. "I rolled out the whole corporate strategy" he said.

Jobs told Benioff that he needed to do three things to be successful:

"Number one, be 10 times larger in 24 months or it's over," Benioff recounted. "Number two, you need to get a huge client on the service right away like Avon. The CEO of Avon was on [Apple's] board. Number three, you need to build an 'application economy.'"

Wikipedia

Marc Benioff

Benioff asked him, "What's an application economy, Steve?" and Jobs told him, "I don't know but you need to figure it out."

It took Benioff months to puzzle it out. Eventually, he realized that he needed to turn Salesforce.com into a platform and build an app store for it.

Benioff planned to call it "App Store." He bought  "appstore.com" and registered the trademark. Then he changed his mind and in 2006 launched it as "App Exchange."

Two years later, Benioff was in the audience at the Apple event where Steve Jobs said he was launching the "most important thing Apple ever done." This was something called the App Store, which is where iPhone users could buy third-party apps for their device.

Benioff said it felt like "a spiritual moment" where he was validated that he had the vision right. He had almost chosen the same name for his platform. So Benioff gave his mentor the App Store URL and the trademark as a gift, he said.

Today, Benioff is in the midst of his first billion-dollar quarter at Salesforce.com and on track to do $4 billion in revenue.

But for years the naysayers said that his model of selling software couldn't be done. Especially when nearly all of the first crop of companies that tried it failed.

And Benioff credits Jobs for helping him.

SEE ALSO:  How Infor CEO Charles Phillips Is Quietly Becoming The 'Steve Jobs' Of Business Software

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-helped-invent-cloud-computing-2013-9#ixzz2eav9nlI8

How Cloud Computing Is Accelerating Context-Aware Coupons, Offers and Promotions

Retailers and marketers often face the challenge of getting coupons, offers and promotions delivered at the perfect time and in the right context to their customers.
 
The rapid advances in cyber foraging, contextual computing and cloud computing platforms are succeeding at revolutionizing this aspect of the retail shopping experience.  

Context-aware advertising platforms and strategies can also provide precise audience and segment-based messaging directly to customers while they are in the store or retail outlet.
What makes context-aware advertising so unique and well adapted to the cloud is the real-time data integration and contextual intelligence they use for tailoring and transmitting offers to customers.  When a customer opts in to retailer’s contextually-based advertising system, they are periodically sent alerts, coupons, and offers on products of interest once they are in or near the store.  Real-time offer engines chose which alerts, coupons or offers to send, when, and in which context.  Cloud-based analytics and predictive modeling applications will be used for further fine-tuning of alerts, coupons and offers as well.  The ROI of each campaign, even to a very specific audience, will be measurable.  Companies investing in cloud-based contextual advertising systems include Apple, Google, Greystripe, Jumptap, Microsoft, Millennial Media, Velti and Yahoo.

Exploring the Framework of Me Marketing and Context-Aware Offers
A few years ago, a student in one of my MBA courses in international marketing did their dissertation on cyber foraging and contextual mobile applications’ potential use for streamlining business travel throughout Europe.  As a network engineer for Cisco at the time, he viewed the world very systemically; instead of getting frustrated with long waits he would dissect the problem and look at the challenges from a system-centric view.  The result was a great dissertation on cyber foraging and the potential use of Near Field Communications (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as sensors to define contextual location and make business travel easier.  One of the greatest benefits of teaching, even part-time, is the opportunity to learn so much from students.

I’ve been following this area since, and when Gartner published Me Marketing: Get Ready for the Promise of Real-Time, Context-Aware Offers in Consumer Goods this month I immediately read it.  Gartner is defining Me Marketing as real-time, context-aware offers in grocery stores. Given the abundance of data on transactions that occur in grocery stores, Gartner is predicting this will be the most popular and fastest-growing area of context-aware offers.  The formula for Me Marketing is shown below:

The four steps of the Me Marketing formula are briefly described as follows:

• Consumer Insight and Permission – The first step of the framework and the most difficult from a change management standpoint, this requires customers to opt in to receiving alerts, coupons, offers and promotions.  The best retailers also have invested heavily in security and authentication technologies here too.

• Delivery Mechanism and In-the-Moment Context – The real-time offer engine is used to determining which coupons, offers and promotions are best suited for a specific customer based on their shopping patterns, preferences and locations.

• Select Best Offer – Next, the real-time offer engine next defines a very specific product or service offer based on location, previous purchase history, social media analysis, predictive and behavioral analysis, and previous learned patterns of purchasing.

• Redemption – The purchase of the item offered.  Initial pilots have shown that less frequent yet highly relevant, targeted offers have a higher redemption rate.  It is encouraging to see that early tests of these systems show that spamming customers leads to immediate opt-outs and in some cases shopping competitors.

A Short Overview of Contextual Advertising and the Cloud
Cloud-based systems and applications are necessary for retailers to gain the full value that contextual advertising can provide.  This includes the social context, with specific focus on aggregation and analysis of Social CRM, CRM, and social media content, in addition to behavioral analytics and sentiment analysis.  It also includes the previous browsing, purchasing, returns and prices paid by product for each customer.  Cloud-based integration architectures are necessary for making contextual advertising a reality in several hundred or even thousands of retail stores at the same time.

Geographical data and analysis is also essential.  RFID has often been included in cyber foraging and contextual advertising pilots, in addition to NFC.  As Global Positioning System (GPS) chip sets have dropped in price and become more accurate, companies including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are basing their contextual advertising platforms on them.  Finally the activity or task also needs to have a contextual definition.

Combining all three of these elements gives the context of the customer in the retail store.  The figure below is from Three-Dimensional Context-Aware Tailoring of Information.  This study also took into account how personas are used by companies building cloud-based contextual advertising systems.  The taxonomies shown in the figure are used for building personas of customers.

There are many pilot projects and enterprise-wide system tests going on right now in the area of cloud-based contextual advertising.  One of the more interesting is an application suite created entirely on Google App Engine, Android, and Cloud Services.  The pilot is explained in the study Exploring Solutions for Mobile Companionship: A Design Research Approach to Context-Aware Management.  The following figure shows a diagram of the suite.  This pilot uses Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) which is part of the Android API to link the Google App Engine server and Android client.  Google will most likely add more depth of support for C2DM as it plays a critical role in contextual system development.


Benefits of a Cloud-based Contextual Advertising Platform
For the customer, cloud-based advertising systems over time will learn their preferences and eventually impact the demand planning and forecasting systems of retailers.  This translates into the customer-centric benefits of products being out of stock less.  In addition, customers will receive more relevant offers.  The entire shopping experience will be more pleasant with expectations being met more often.

For the retailer, better management of product categories and more effective gross margin growth will be possible. Having real-time analytics of each coupon, offer and promotion will also give them immediate insights into which of their selling strategies are working or not.

For the manufacturer, the opportunity to finally understand how customers respond at the store level to promotions, programs including the results of co-op funds investment and pricing strategies will be known.  The manufacturers who partner with retailers using these systems will also have the chance at attaining greater product differentiation as their coupons, offers and promotions will only go to the most relevant customers.

References:
Me Marketing: Get Ready for the Promise of Real-Time, Context-Aware Offers in Consumer Goods Published: 24 December 2012 Analyst(s): Don Scheibenreif, Dale Hagemeyer
Tor-Morten Grønli, Ghinea, G., & Bygstad, B. (2013). Exploring Solutions for Mobile Companionship: A Design Research Approach to Context-Aware Management. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), 227. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401212001259

Tor-Morten Grønli, & Ghinea, G. (2010). Three-Dimensional Context-Aware Tailoring of Information. Online Information Review, 34(6), 892-906. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1896452

www.forbes.com

En pañales, la aceptación del Cloud Computing en AL

El Financiero en línea

México, 31 de mayo.- La aceptación de la tecnología del Cloud Computing en Latinoamérica se encuentra aún en etapas de prueba para la mayor parte de las empresas y usuarios finales, por lo que su evolución en la región ha venido siendo lenta a pesar de que su nombre suena en el mercado desde hace unos cinco años.

Para el especialista en virtualización de EMC Latinoamérica, Rodrigo Gazzaneo, las empresas latinoamericanas apenas comienzan a comprender lo que son las soluciones del Cloud Computing, popularmente llamada como la nube, por ello estimó que las tecnológicas del este sector deben “moverse rápido si quieren encontrar el éxito”.

 
“Como una región emergente con muchas limitaciones en la infraestructura, la nube puede tener un efecto más profundo en las organizaciones para competir en un mercado global más agil, pero en América Latina aún está en las primeras etapas de adopción”, estimó el ejecutivo.

 
Debido a la insuficiente adopción, Gazzaneo sostuvo que las firmas que ofrecen soluciones en la nube han comenzado a diseñar ofertas ajustables para las empresas latinoamericanas y las regulaciones de cda país de la región, así ha resultado que algunas ya utilicen soluciones EMC.

 
“Las empresas en Latinoamérica se beneficiarán de estas oportunidades, por lo que esperamos un crecimiento acelerado de la adopción de Cloud y Virtualización en la región. México en particular, ha demostrado estar en una etapa inicial de adopción”, afirmó Rodrigo Gazzaneo.


Según datos de EMC y consultoras como IDC, aseveró el entrevistado, en Latinoamérica el 70 por ciento de los tomadores de decisión en cuanto a la infraestructura de Tecnologías de la Información (TI) “asumen que aún no tienen una visión clara de cómo el concepto de Cloud los puede ayudar a construir sus futuras estrategias”.

 
Este porcentaje de encargados de las TI de sus empresas resaltó que   sobre el Cloud Computing “nunca lo había escuchado” o “tenemos otras prioridades”, lo que demuestra la evolución de esta tecnología en al región.

 
Rodrigo Gazzaneo señaló que la seguridad no es un factor que limite el avance de la nube en la región, pues en economías avanzadas y donde la penetración del Cloud ha arrojado mejores resultados, EMC ha desplegado soluciones avanzadas de seguridad o los clientes también han contratado los servicios especializados de seguridad de terceros.


“EMC y RSA puede ofrecer soluciones flexibles y fuertes en seguridad para infraestructura, administración de identidades, protección de información, así como gobierno de la seguridad y manejo del cumplimiento de normas”.


El experto de EMC respondió que en América Latina “por le momento no” no existe la infraestructura suficiente en als empresas para que puedan implementar soluciones del Cloud Computing.


“Ese es el reto más grande para las empresas latinas”, comentó.


Asimismo, recomendó a las empresas comenzar su experiencia en Cloud a través de las “nubes públicas”, las cuales ofrecen soluciones más sencillas y con seguridad, para luego poder acceder a las “nubes privadas”, más especializadas y con mayor infraestructura. (Con información de Nicolás Lucas/Finsat/MVC)

60% de firmas europeas saltará a la "nube" en 2012

A cinco años de su debut, el cloud computing deja claro que se está convirtiendo en una herramienta crucial en el mundo de los negocios. Según la firma de datacenter Brocade, el 60% de las empresas europeas tiene previsto "dar el salto en la nube" en los próximos dos años, cifra que baja al 42% en el caso de las pequeña y medianas empresas de esa región. "Vemos una aceleración en la adopción del cloud computing entre las compañías y una eclosión de las actividades de los proveedores de tecnología, que están maniobrando para explotar el crecimiento de esta oportunidad comercial", dice Ben Pring, vicepresidente de Gartner. 

Las razones para la rápida fuga hacia la denominada "nube" son claras: reducir los costos (30%); mejorar el rendimiento (21%); y un mayor dinamismo en el negocio (16%), dejando atrás la desconfianza por la seguridad de la información y la necesidad de banda ancha. 

Esta explosiva alza sigue las proyecciones de Gartner que indican que esta tecnología crecerá 16,6% con respecto a 2009, logrando ingresos de US$ 68.300 millones en todo el mundo, los que llegarían a US$ 148.800 millones en 2014.

DiarioFinanciero.com