Cloud Innovation at Dreamforce 2011 and the Evolution of IT
Posted on Tue, Sep 06, 2011
The first week of September turned out to be quite eventful for SaaS vendors as Salesforce.com hosted its annual Dreamforce event – one of the largest conferences in the industry that gathered more than 45,000 attendees at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The importance of this event is not only in its size and the number of attendees but also the overall impact that Salesforce has made as a "cloud pioneer" on the enterprise software industry.
Mark Benioff, Salesforce inspirational CEO, introduced his vision for the company to become a Social Enterprise of the future. He spent a good amount of time during the conference talking about the evolution of the cloud itself and discussing where it is headed. Invited keynote speakers from companies such as Google, Burberry, Facebook, Marketo, and Bluewolf supported Mark’s vision of the industry and shared their own experiences about how SaaS model works for their companies individually.
Looking back into how much progress has been made in the area of cloud-based software, it is worth to note that we’ve come far enough to see how the enterprise IT is moving into the cloud and even going mobile. For example, Tim Campos, Facebook CIO, said while his company has embraced SaaS model from the very beginning, nowadays almost 70% of the in-house applications are running in the cloud.
Below is a timeline (put together by the Salesforce team) that highlights the evolution of IT from the very beginning – from the first IT studios and big mainframes to cloud-based enterprise software and mobile devices. It shows how the enterprise structure has evolved overtime and where it’s going to head. The graphic shows that despite decreasing costs of computing power (and software), the level of innovation expected of CIOs is rising dramatically as modern executives have to juggle between multiple complex systems.
The main challenge lies in integrating these systems, getting more visibility and efficiency within the organization, and moving beyond just “keeping the lights on”. This requires more innovation and collaboration from the CIO’s side. How do we deliver more business value? How can we organize our work effectively in IT? How can we gain visibility? These are the questions that IT decision-makers are asking themselves on a daily basis.
There is definitely more pressure in a today’s business world to innovate and do things differently, embrace more cost-effective solutions and consult industry’s best practices. Then it becomes evident that innovation is a key to success.
- Innotas Team