Dan Keldsen's Library tagged cloud_computing →  View Popular, Search in Google

Software development and test engineers often argue about “that’s not really a bug” or “that’s not a blocker to ship”. But they all agree on one thing for sure: shipping the next cool, new release to market faster and doing it with style and quality is fun and exciting. Yet, the reality of crummy old hardware, limited storage and deadlines often makes shipping quality software on-time a stressful exercise.

Can there be no end to this status quo?
Can developing, testing and shipping software be made fun again?
Can that be done for lesser cost and in far less time than before?

We asked Dr. Becky Hammons, a renowned quality expert these questions. Her simple answer is, “Yes! Use the cloud”. Having worked in the software industry for 30 years and having built many cool new products, Dr. Hammons is no stranger to this stressful cycle. But she has broken out of the status quo. She shared her experience on Aug 19 with 70 other industry peers.

When asked to describe the typical challenges her team faced, she identified a few key ones:

Availability of client, server and network configurations for complex test scenarios
Baseline test configuration growth over time, with limited capital budget for new servers
Cycle time needed to configure test environments, including localized operating systems
Troubleshooting defect scenarios with offshore testers
Sharing test resources with remote development teams
Dr. Hammons wanted to eliminate these challenges for her team. She looked at Cloud computing as a solution.  She felt the cloud model offered several distinct benefits:

Cloud resources enable fast deployment of new test configurations upon demand
Usage is scalable to meet virtual machine and storage needs
Local physical test network can be integrated with cloud network via VPN
Able to expand client and server test load beyond capabilities of our physical equipment
Large variety of client and server operating systems in cloud enable teams to run more concurrent tests without additional capital investment
Reduce cycle time

cloud_computing testing deployment skytap cost_cutting agile_development

The Solution – Federated Identity and Access Management

Merit IAM Solution
Merit selected SinglePoint, a security SaaS solution from Symplified, to tie together end-user business needs and infrastructure security requirements from the CIO's office. Through a single administrative interface, the Merit workforce can be provisioned and de-provisioned through Active Directory to internal and SaaS-based applications with policy-based access rights and more quickly navigate between documents and applications through Google, the e-learning application, and apps inside the Merit data center.

cloud_computing SaaS identity_management federated_identity metalayer symplified singlepoint wikibon

Great writeup by a German SaaS start-up - demonstrating their twist on the freemium model (30-day fully functional trial, instead of perpetual free), and conversion rates to the paid/premium product.

cloud_computing SaaS salesforce mite facts premium freemium casestudy business_model_innovation

I'm planning a longer take on this, but the succinct take, Salesforce hasn't innovated for quite some time, and their offerings in content management and idea management are incredibly light. Do they need to expand offerings to get to $2 Billion? Still plenty of CRM business to take.

"Four years ago, InformationWeek asked in a cover story "Does Salesforce.com Have The Chops To Become A Billion-Dollar Company?" Now that it's on a $1.4 billion-a-year run rate, Benioff has his sites on $2 billion a year, planning to spend on salespeople even if it means slightly slower growth of its profit margin. With only 31% of sales outside the U.S., there's a lot of greenfield out there.

"We're just not in enough deals. ... We need to continue to visualize ourselves beyond that $2 billion revenue number with a fully diversified product line," he said. "That's where we're moving." The next big product in Salesforce's pipeline is Chatter, a Facebook-like collaboration platform it plans to start selling sometime later this year. "

cloud_computing SaaS salesforce global_cio cio informationweek

Interesting, and good point - current Computer Science majors (and even practicing/working CS graduates) need to get comfortable with the idea of having access to huge amounts of computing power. Google is jumping ahead with an education program to do jus

google strategy collaboration wisdom_of_clouds cloud_computing computer_science