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Tag Archives: cloud growth

Cloudforce 2010 – Register Now

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It’s that time of the year again. The salesforce.com team are in town and are all set to host Cloudforce 2010 in London.

For those that are new to the Cloud or salesforce.com, Cloudforce is an annual event that allows you to ‘Experience at first hand, the mobile, collaborative and social innovations that are driving the Cloud 2 revolution.’

Join salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and cloud leaders VMware and BMC for the enterprise-computing event of the year. Hear from customers who are adopting Chatter in their business to drive collaboration and increase productivity across their sales and service teams, and the entire enterprise.

It might be that through ROD you’ve been introduced to the Cloud, or that you’re looking to move in that direction. Whichever scenario you’re in then attending Cloudforce would be a great event for you.

Registration is free (but space is limited). Some key elements will include:

See the latest cloud breakthroughs—featuring live demonstrations from companies that are using cloud computing, Chatter, the Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud, and Force.com to lead their industries and grow their business.

Learn how Chatter boosts CRM adoption and productivity of sales and service professionals

Hear how companies are using Chatter across the enterprise to break-down business silos and create collaborative companies

Discover how to make custom applications collaborative and social with just a few clicks

Test drive the latest cutting-edge applications from salesforce.com and our partners

Lunch is included. And you can top off your day by networking 1:1 with cloud computing experts, salesforce.com customers, and partners in our Cloud Expo.

Register by clicking here

If you would like to meet up with any of the ROD team to discuss a career in the cloud, job prospects or training, then please email rod@resourceondemand.com and we can arrange to meet with you.


Should I really be hosting everything in the ‘Cloud’?

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Should you host everything in the ‘Cloud’? Well, lets start by defining what we mean by the ‘Cloud’ – Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand via the internet. In terms of hosting in the Cloud, what we are specifically talking about is using another Companies web serving infrastructure (hardware and software) to store our data and control access to how we use that data.

In short, there are two principal questions; Should we store all of our data outside of our direct control; and should we pass control of who and how our data is used to someone else.

Should I really be hosted everything in the cloud banner

Data security (access) and reliability (back up) become a focus. A simple way to evaluate the questions of access and back up are to explore whether (your) business can offer more or less security of access and back up reliability than the hosting company. On the basis that the Company providing the ‘Cloud’ can accurately communicate the exact level of access security and reliability that they can offer then this should be a straight forward question to answer.

The next part of the answer should relate to the question of ‘should’. For a business to provide a comparative level of security and reliability to a dedicated hosting company is certainly possible, but at what cost. Is the cost of providing the same (or higher) levels worth the cost? Cost in terms of cash yes, but also the return on the use of that cash. Are there other areas of the business who could use that available budget to increase sales or profit? ie the money could be better used to grow the business.

Clearly, the large corporations of this world have the available budgets and IT departments to make providing their own infrastructure a possibility, for SME’s there is just no logical comparison between running a server in a moderately secure office to using dedicated Cloud based services – the feature list for dedicated Cloud hosting is almost certainly going to exceed what could reasonably be acheived by any SME.

As for everything – one would argue that there is certainly no point splitting some data in the ‘Cloud’ with on-premise if it can be avoided. The additional costs of using Cloud and non Cloud infrastructure should make this certainly not a good use of the options, and additional integration complexity can be an expensive problem to solve.


How the Cloud Changed the World’s Oldest Newspaper

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Computer World recently published a very insightful article by Bernard Golden, regarding how The Daily Telegraph embraced Cloud Technology to cut costs but also to increase the offering that they provide to their readers. He writes:

The most fascinating presentation of the event was by Toby Wright, CTO of the Telegraph Media Group, publisher of the Daily Telegraph, the oldest continuously publishing newspaper in the world. Wright presented a cloud adoption strategy that was compelling, to say the least.

Daily Telegraph Cloud Graphic

As background, it’s no secret that the newspaper business is in a terrible state. My local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, suffered something like a 30% drop in circulation over the past five years. The Telegraph is also suffering a continuous shrinkage in circulation as well. So when Wright took over responsibility for IT, his first task was cost-cutting. His next was changing the way IT works at the Telegraph, and cloud computing is a central part of that process.

I was struck by how much the Telegraph is “living the cloud vision.” While other companies are performing cloud strategy assessments or implementing pilot experiments, the Telegraph is moving headlong into an asset-lite, cloud computing future.

To read more of this article, head over to Computer World.


Salesforce.com Makes Forbes’ List of the 100 Most Trustworthy Companies

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This week Forbes confirmed what we’ve long since known, that salesforce.com is not only one of the best companies around, but that they are also ethical, responsible and trustworthy, as they enter Forbes’ list of the 100 most trustworthy companies.

Most notably, salesforce.com was ranked amongst the top 10 of the most trustworthy large-cap companies. The annual list, compiled by independent financial

analytics company Audit Integrity, is made up of the American businesses that have consistently demonstrated transparent and solid corporate governance and management.

“It is a tremendous honor to make Forbes’ List of the 100 Most Trustworthy Companies,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “Business transparency is incredibly important to our organization and we are therefore extremely proud of this accomplishment.”

At Resource on Demand we very much enjoy partnering with salesforce.com in their foundation scheme, which according to their website has given 192,972 volunteer hours, 8,539 donated and discounted licenses and $20,190,348 to enable positive and social change.

Our involvement with the foundation is set to reach new heights soon, so watch this space, but we are immensely proud to work in an ecosystem that has such a positive reputation.

If you want to work within the ecosystem as well, we can assist you in training and placing you with the right organisation for you, just contact us on 020 8123 7769 or email us using rod@resourceondemand.com and we’ll get you started.


Hot demand for salesforce.com specialists

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Demand for cloud computing solutions fuelled an early end to the recession in the salesforce.com ecosystem, reports Lee Durrant, MD of Resource On Demand.

He reports that a jump in the weekly registration of new vacancies from 3 to 10 and a subsequent increase of billings for his company, known as ROD. “Our clients want experienced and certified salesforce.com consultants, developers and administrators. Companies are getting finance approved for implementing salesforce.com throughout their organisations, so specialist consulting and implementation services in this space are on the increase.

Consequently, experienced salesforce.com consultants, developers and administrators are in high demand.”

He noted that salesforce.com consulting companies willing to offer inexperienced people training and experience in this space will reap the benefits in the long term due to the lack of certified & experienced people in the ecosystem. Lee Durrant also says he saw green shoots of recovery in the jobs market in the final quarter of 2009 when RODs billings trebled.

“We hope this will prove to be the turning point,” added Durrant. “We have more client requirements and more and more candidates looking to get into this exciting space.”


Growth in the salesforce.com ecosystem

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The salesforce.com UK partner community has been rapidly growing over the last 2 years.

An essential part of the salesforce.com ecosystem, the early adopter partners for salesforce.com consisted of a hand full of large high profile consulting giants with a smattering of niche and specialised individuals. As the salesforce.com marketplace began to take hold and become established as THE platform for cloud computing, through the latter stages of 2008 and 2009 the partner community expanded three fold in quantity, with a broad range of new partners across the spectrum from small start ups, to prominent middle sized consulting players as well as giants such as BT getting involved.

Now that salesforce.com and cloud computing marketplace seems to be exploding through early 2010 there seems to be new partners popping up almost weekly.

This is very healthy for customers, for salesforce.com and for the partners themselves as variety and choice for customers becomes wider.

2010 is surely set to be a great year for the salesforce.com partners and ROD is keen to support both salesforce.com, customers and the partners in making 2010 the best year yet for the ecosystem.

What do you think the future holds for the ecosystem and will the number of partners continue to grow at this rate?