Cloud computing's "green" credentials

By R. Edwin Pearce

The market for cloud computing has expanded quickly over the past few years, largely driven by its ability to deliver impressive economic benefits to cash-strapped organizations. But a new study finds that not only can cloud computing keep operations in the black, it also can help them be "green."

Pike Research reports that the growth of cloud computing will have important implications for both energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In fact, by 2020, cloud computing will lead to a 38 percent reduction in worldwide data center energy expenditures, compared to a business-as-usual scenario, Pike Research reports.

“The growth of cloud computing will have a very significant positive effect on data center energy consumption,” says Pike Research Senior Analyst Eric Woods. “Few, if any, clean technologies have the capability to reduce energy expenditures and GHG production with so little business disruption. Software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and platform-as-a-service are all inherently more efficient models than conventional alternatives, and their adoption will be one of the largest contributing factors to the greening of enterprise IT.”

To be sure, cloud computing's "green" credentials and environmental impact aren't the top reasons for organizations to deploy the technology. But they are certainly incremental benefits, particularly for organizations that list environmental sustainability among their strategic objectives.

R. Edwin Pearce is executive vice president of sales and corporate development for eGistics, Inc., a leading provider of hosted document management solutions. Pearce can be reached at 214-256-4607 or via epearce@egisticsinc.com.

Cloud computing grows up

By R. Edwin Pearce

The next year will be big for cloud computing, with the technology transitioning from “early adopter status” into a mainstream platform for IT. That’s according to IDC, a leading research and advisory firm, which ranked the maturation of cloud computing among its top IT predictions for 2011.

IDC predicts that spending on public IT cloud services will grow at more than five times the rate of the IT industry in 2011, up 30 percent from 2010, as organizations move a wider range of business applications into the cloud. Small and medium-sized business cloud use will surge in 2011, with adoption of some cloud resources topping 33 percent among U.S. midsize firms by year’s end.

“[Cloud computing] can no longer be invested in, or managed, as sandbox efforts around the edges of the market. Instead, they are rapidly becoming the market itself and must be addressed accordingly,” warns Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at Framingham, MA-based IDC.

Gens is exactly right. Organizations of all sizes are taking a hard look at cloud-based solutions as a way to avoid the hefty capital investments and ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs associated with traditional on-premise solutions, and to ensure their IT infrastructure remains up-to-date.

In addition to changing the way organizations access business applications, the growth of cloud computing also will bring mobile banking and payments one step closer to reality, IDC predicts. But this also is true of mobile applications in other industries, most notably healthcare and insurance.

What do you think?

R. Edwin Pearce is executive vice president of sales and corporate development at eGistics, Inc. (www.egisticsinc.com), a leading provider of hosted solutions for payments and document automation. He can be reached at 214-256-4607 or via e-mail at epearce@egisticsinc.com.

The Hunt for "Orphan Storage"

By Rich Walsh, Viewpointe (www.viewpointe.com)

Storage professionals are now under pressure to find and use “orphan storage,” rather than buying or building more capacity. Orphan storage is a form of unused or unallocated data in everything from a database to disk drives and storage area networks. The problem seems so universal, that I hear this almost everywhere I go. I recently heard one executive say: “When we buy storage, we know where it is, but now our mandate has become finding unused storage, wherever it happens to be.”

Symantec’s CEO has even gone so far as to tell the market to "stop buying storage." I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment. Not being able to use your existing space or, worse, access the storage you already have – those seem to be the larger problems. Certainly IT executives are probably both gratified and mortified that this issue, which is hardly new to them, is finally getting some attention.

Recently, we asked IDC to take a deeper dive into this issue; and in a whitepaper, IDC noted outsourced storage as a good solution to the growing capacity problem. Generally they concluded that for easy access, as well as appropriate amounts of storage, outsourced systems work very well. Moving data to a hosted repository allows companies to pay only for the actual capacity they currently need, as opposed to an in-house infrastructure that is generally built for future consumption. And, this approach may be better suited for accessing the needed data at a later date.

Right now, IT executives want to make good use of all the equipment and devices that they have already purchased, and that is sound business judgment. Still, at some point, organizations are going to deplete the space they have and simply purging existing files may not be enough to keep up with the increased demand.

However, the question remains: What should companies do once they have determined just how much existing storage they have? Will they continue to buy ad-hoc, only to be faced with the exact same orphan storage problem in a few more months? Or, is it time for a fresh approach to this ever-growing problem?

Online Storage and Privacy Laws

Posted by Mark Brousseau

If you store sensitive files on your personal computer which law enforcement authorities wish to examine, they generally cannot do so without first obtaining a search warrant based upon probable cause. But what if you store personal information online—say, in your Gmail account, or on Dropbox? What if you’re a business owner who uses Salesforce CRM or Windows Azure? How secure is your data from unwarranted governmental access?

Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are investigating these crucial questions in two separate hearings this week. Congress hasn’t overhauled the privacy laws governing law enforcement access to information stored with remote service providers since 1986. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the key federal law governing electronic privacy, has grown increasingly out of touch with reality as technology has evolved and Americans have grown increasingly reliant on cloud services like webmail and social networking. As a result, government can currently compel service providers to disclose the contents of certain types of information stored in the cloud without first obtaining a search warrant or any other court order requiring the scrutiny of a judge.

Against this backdrop, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has joined with The Progress & Freedom Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, and the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights in submitting a written statement to the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees urging Congress to reform U.S. electronic privacy laws to better reflect users’ privacy expectations in the information age. The groups also belong to the Digital Due Process coalition, a broad array of public interest organizations, businesses, advocacy groups, and scholars who are working to strengthen U.S. privacy laws while also preserving the building blocks of law enforcement investigations.

“The success of cloud computing—and its benefits for the U.S. economy—depends largely on updating the outdated federal statutory regime that currently governs electronic communications privacy,” the statement argues. “If Congress wants to ensure Americans enjoy the full benefits of the cloud computing revolution, it should simply reform ECPA in accordance with the principles proposed by the Digital Due Process coalition.”

What do you think?

Google giveth then taketh away

Google’s test of “streaming search” not so short lived

Google has just announced its “streaming search” service, Google Instant, is coming out of limited beta testing and going live for all users.

According to Adam Bunn, head of search at independent search and social marketing agency Greenlight, when it comes to search engine optimisation campaigns (SEO), some websites may now suffer a drop in traffic. This service could also potentially result in complications for rank checking software and impact on search demand figures given by Google’s keyword tools, Bunn says.

With regards to paid search, Matthew Whiteway, director of campaign management (paid search) at Greenlight, says it could play havoc with an advertisers Google Quality Score. Whiteway also says Google’s motives for doing this must be questioned. Given the “longtail” is becoming increasingly important, with search queries, the cost-per-click (CPC) Google can charge for “longtail” keywords is significantly lower than that on one or two keyword search queries, Whiteway says. Therefore the more people search for “longtail” search queries, the less money Google can charge the advertiser, he explains.

Google’s development uses AJAX to dynamically serve search results as you type, Greenlight notes. Each time a new recognizable word or phrase is typed that changes the results set in a meaningful way, Google will fetch the search results for that word – without you having to hit “search.” So, if you’re intending on searching for ‘scary books suitable for children,’ Google might first fetch results when you’ve finished typing ‘scary,’ then ‘scary book,’ then ‘scary books,’ then finally ‘scary books suitable for children.’

Bunn says this is a mightily impressive display of processing power on Google’s part. Now, for every search you do Google may have to process anywhere from a couple to half a dozen different searches. It has got to do this fast enough to keep up with your average typing speed. This, on top of the fact that retrieving and sorting thousands of documents in a split second is already a modern marvel - admittedly one that few people spend much time thinking about, Bunn adds.

What of the impact for SEO?
According to Bunn, SEO campaigns including long multi-word keyword variants may see a drop in traffic for those keywords as a result of streaming search. Why? Users may now find something to click on before completely typing their originally intended search term (depending, of course, on Google being able to provide accurate enough results at an earlier stage in the search). Consequently, to be visible/show up in search results, it may become more important for websites to optimise for the shorter, constituent parts of longer keywords, Bunn says.

“For example, if a website has optimised for and holds good rankings for ‘cheap car insurance UK,’ that term may lose search traffic as UK users find that the shorter ‘cheap car insurance’ returns several relevant looking results, negating the need to finish their sentence,” Bunn says.

Bunn points out that the constituent parts of longer keywords are often the types of generic keywords that are typically dominated by big brands and powerful sites with the cash to maintain rankings in an extremely competitive keyword space.

“So for smaller websites, this could well be a case of first Google giveth (the 'May Day update') then it taketh away (streaming search results). We’ll have to hold tight for the exact repercussions, which could also extend to complications for rank checking software (if AJAX is involved in retrieving search results) and impacts on the search demand figures given by Google’s keyword tools (if each stage in the streaming search counts as an impression)," Bunn says.

Ramifications for paid search
In relation to paid search, the question is whether Google will count each refresh/change of the search engine results pages (SERPS) as an impression for the advertiser. While some advertisers will believe increasing the number of impressions/eyeballs that see their ad will help improve brand awareness and brand recall, from a pay per click (PPC) marketing perspective, this increase in unwanted impressions could play havoc with an advertisers Google Quality Score, Greenlight says.

“At Greenlight, we are constantly looking for ways of reducing wasted impressions for our clients with the objective being to improve click through rate (CTR) and therefore relevancy, one of the most important factors of Google’s Quality Score,” says Whiteway. “If Google is going to count these dynamic changes/refreshes to the SERP then should we also expect to see some fundamental changes to the Quality Score algorithm, the keyword Match Types, or do we simply need to increase the number of negative keywords in the account to several hundred thousand? Only time will tell.”

Whiteway says Google’s motives for doing this must also be questioned. It has been suggested that as users become more and more internet savvy, the number of keywords used for each search query is increasing, he adds. For example, users looking for low annual percentage rate (APR) credit cards historically may have simply searched for “credit cards” and then conducted the filtering process manually, whereas in recent years the “longtail” has become increasingly searched for and important, with search queries such as “credit cards with low APR” for example, growing in popularity, Whiteway explains.

So why would the “Google financiers” not like this “longtail” trend? Money, says Whiteway.

“The CPC that Google can charge for ‘longtail’ keywords is significantly lower than that on more generic (one or two keyword search queries). Therefore the more people search for ‘longtail’ search queries, the less money Google can charge the advertiser," Whiteway says. "With ‘streaming search’ therefore, Google is potentially ‘helping’ users find relevant results with less search term queries, thus increasing the number of clicks on generic terms and therefore increasing the CPC for the advertiser.”

Many would argue Google Instant is an example of Google flexing its technological processing power and helping users get results quicker, Greenlight notes. However there must also be some form of financial benefit for Google in making such a dramatic change to the way it finds and displays the results. Which explanation is true? Greenlight says we are unlikely to ever really know.

What do you think?

Removing the Model T mentality from SAP hosting

Posted by Mark Brousseau

At one time or another, most people have heard Henry Ford’s famous quote about his revolutionary Model T automobile: “Any customer can have a car painted in any color so long as it is black.” Today, we look upon his inflexible, non-customer service-oriented attitude as quaint, a mindset from a bygone era that would never fly today.

But the reality is that attitude is still very prevalent. Not in our vehicles, thankfully – you can get a car or truck painted in just about any crazy color, or combination of colors you want. Instead, it’s the common mindset for IT hosting in the SAP world.

Dan Wilhelms (dwilhelms@sym-corp.com), president and CEO of Symmetry Corporation (www.sym-corp.com), explains:

By now you’ve probably seen all the articles and heard the Webinars talking about IT infrastructure as a commodity rather than a strategic advantage. They tell you how, in this day and age, managing your own infrastructure makes about as much sense as manufacturing your own electricity on a day-to-day basis, and that you’d be better off moving to a hosted model. And they tell you how IT costs to manage SAP average three percent to five percent of revenue, whereas an integrated technical managed services solution incorporating hosting reduces this figure to only one percent of revenue. All of which is true.

Unfortunately, they tend to leave out one small detail. The act of moving your infrastructure to a 20th Century-style hosting provider can be very expensive and time-consuming, especially for a mid-market organization, before it ever becomes smooth and cost-efficient.

The reason is that Henry Ford mentality. The typical 20th-Century hosting provider has a giant server farm full of equipment onto which it will move your applications. Essentially, they tell you that you can run your applications on any hardware you want – as long as it’s the hardware they already have. If you’re running on the same hardware – say your current system is IBM and so is the provider’s – that part will probably transition fairly smoothly. But if your applications are set up to run on HP servers and they’re using IBM, it’s going to take a lot of work to make the changeover. And guess who has to make the change?

The other big problem with the 20th Century model is sharing resources. Back in Ford’s day, when running water was still a rarity, families often shared bathwater (or even baths) because filling a bathtub was a time-consuming, labor-intensive task. They didn’t want to waste the effort on providing clean water for each bath.

In the traditional hosting world, the resources you’re sharing are servers. In order to operate as efficiently (and profitably) as they can, hosting providers try to fill every micron of disk space on every server with data. That means they’ll often mix data from two or more organizations to increase utilization.

It makes sense from their standpoint. But it’s not so good from yours. If a problem with some other organization’s application takes down the server you’re sharing, you are just as out of luck as they are – even though your applications are running perfectly fine. In addition, if you’re working with a government agency and have to show compliance with laws requiring separation of data, it’s going to be pretty tough to prove when your supposedly secure data is running alongside that of an organization with different (or no) compliance requirements.

There is a solution, however. Rather than settling for a “Model T” type of hosting environment, look instead for a provider using a 21st Century hosting model.

With a 21st Century hosting provider, you don’t have to make your applications fit their hardware. Instead, they will host your applications on whatever hardware you want – whether that means purchasing all new hardware of your choice as part of an upgrade, or actually packing up and shipping your current hardware to their locations. If you’re buying new hardware, a good hosting provider will even give you a choice of procuring it yourself or taking that burden off your hands – whatever method works best for you.

Moving to a hosted system dedicated specifically to your organization instead of one that is carved out of a general storage area network also solves the concerns regarding data separation. Since your hardware operates as separately as if it were in your own facility, there is no chance someone else’s application problems will affect your business. It also makes proving separation of data a very simple task.

A 21st Century hosting provider will also tend to be more specialized. In the early days, hosting meant setting up equipment and running whatever applications its customers sent its way. There was little on-staff expertise to draw from if there was a problem with, say, SAP or another complex system. In the new world of hosting, providers specialize in particular technologies and have deep expertise on staff, which allow them to do what you really want them to do – manage and maintain the system completely, including overcoming any issues immediately rather than having to call an outside specialist.

While moving to a 21st Century hosting provider makes sense for virtually any organization, it is particularly well-suited to mid-market organizations that are increasingly finding more time being spent on IT maintenance and less on actually deriving more value out of their applications. It’s a lot like those early Model Ts. Back then, if you were going to own a car, you had to know how to fix it, too.

Today, most car owners don’t know what’s under the hood and don’t want to know. They just want to get in and drive. Rather than adding IT staff (and finding themselves in the IT business instead of whatever business they’re actually in), these mid-market organizations can stay focused on the reasons they installed their applications in the first place.

When it comes to hosting, why settle for a Model T mentality? Using a 21st Century hosting provider will give you complete control over your environment and keep your data separate, all while saving you as much as 30 percent over traditional hosting. Even Henry Ford would approve of that.

What do you think?

Compliance and Outsourcing

By Mark Brousseau

While new compliance, security and privacy regulations are likely to take a bigger bite out of operations budgets this year, most organizations believe they can meet the stricter rules without having to outsource their payments and document processing. Just 20 percent of respondents to a recent TAWPI Question of the Week said new compliance, security and privacy regulations would force their organization to consider outsourcing. Sixty-five percent of respondents said the tougher regulations wouldn't force them to consider, and 15 percent of respondents said they weren't sure.

The time and cost associated with meeting compliance, security and privacy regulations continues to rise -- giving pause to any company entrusted with sensitive data that must be stored and shared.

"Regulatory compliance is very expensive and extremely time-consuming," says R. Edwin Pearce (epearce@egisticsinc.com), executive vice president of sales and corporate development for eGistics, Inc. "Companies have two choices for meeting regulatory demands for privacy and security: assume the full expense of the resources and time associated with meeting each regulation, or work with an outsource provider that can spread the costs of meeting the regulations across its customer base."

Pearce also believes that organizations should ask themselves whether it makes sense to go through the cost and trouble of becoming compliant, when there are outsource providers that already are.

"Companies don't necessarily have to absorb the full capital burden of meeting various certification and compliancy tests," Pearce explains. "For example, organizations that store images and data for multiple years may have to meet PCI, SAS 70 and HIPAA regulations. Rather than engineer a data center environment that meets all of these requirements -- including policy and procedural standards -- it may make better sense for the organization to partner with a compliant outsource provider."

"The result is faster compliance, at a significantly lower cost," Pearce adds.

With new regulations on the horizon, this is a decision more organizations will have to make.

What do you think?

5 IT Spending Tips

Posted by Mark Brousseau

With the new (budget) year upon us, Siamak Farah, CEO of InfoStreet (www.infostreet.com), offers his top 5 tips for getting a jump on IT spending for 2010:

1. The OS Is Irrelevant!
As the battle of operating systems (OS) wages on between Apple and Microsoft, many businesses feel caught in the middle, unclear of which system to choose. Once a side has been chosen, there is still the ever-present (and recurring) dilemma over which version to choose – not to mention the potential nightmare of migration! (e.g., Should we migrate from XP to Windows 7; What pitfalls, if any, might we encounter?, etc...). Consider, instead, going OS neutral. With the growing popularity of Web-delivered software (also referred to as Software as a Service – or SaaS), companies can relieve themselves of a tremendous headache by relying on experts who deliver always-up-to-date applications via a simple Web browser. This path allows employers to avoid worries over software updates, PLUS, you have the added benefit of being able to “take your desktop with you” (as you can login to your desktop from any computer in the world with a browser and Web access).

2. Ditch the Servers
Perhaps the most significant line item of any IT budget is the costs of hardware (servers); And the hidden cost associated with this occurs when the IT department is pressured to estimate the right size. Assuming a large growth path, many servers must be ordered in advanced to be ready to support the growth. Should downsizing be in the cards, then one needs to plan on decommissioning servers which are hard to dispose of, as they often are worth a fraction of their purchase price. SaaS takes the guesswork out of your budget. In the same fashion that one does not think about the cell phone infrastructure and just orders or decommissions cell phones based on the number of employees, IT managers, can always have the right amount of server power and be poised for growth with SaaS providers.

3. Give Your Employees a (Virtual) Key to the Office
The average American now works longer hours than even our overseas counterparts. If your company makes use of next-generation SaaS tools, your employees can have ANYTIME/ANYWHERE access to their desktop, allowing them to work remotely and during off-hours if that is what is necessary to get the job done. We’ve found that by making remote access to ALL aspects of the work environment easy for our employees, they have become infinitely more efficient – many log-in to check for urgent issues before starting their morning commute and check-in again in the evening – from home. This type of employee dedication can help propel a company from being just a player in their industry to being THE PLAYER.


4. To Thy Own Client Be True
Okay, perhaps that isn’t how the saying actually goes however the sentiment is valid. In this day of aggressive competition, it’s important to use every tool and advantage you can afford to keep in touch with your clients (and have a reliable means for including personal details and generating automated follow-up reminders). CRM (customer relationship management) software is not new, however the leaders in this industry charge more than a pretty penny for their tools. Consider one of the “optimally-sized” versions (such as StreetSmart's Web-based CRM) that can be literally a fraction the cost and which offer the core functionality you need. Don’t be left without such a valuable tool just because you’ve heard CRM software can be too price prohibitive.

5. Automate Your Protection
Every industry has its own set of compliance rules and best business practices. However, many companies overlook one of the most basic – yet most crucial – practices: email archiving. This simple step can offer tremendous piece of mind and protection. Investigate automatic email archiving software which has the potential to serve as the most affordable business insurance you have ever had. Such software works invisibly in the background to back-up ALL employee email, protecting your company from accidental or intentional email deletion.

What do you think?

Debunking the "Myth" of SOA

Posted by Mark Brousseau

For every one of those people though, there will be another who has said ‘yes’ to a concept, swept along on an irresistible wave of technical wizardry and promises. Being able to see through some of the IT hype must be a constant challenge for senior decision-makers. One such area where the hype would appear to be winning may be Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) — as Jerry Iacouzzi of KPMG’s Advisory practice explains.

SOA in its current form has been with us for about four years and the hype surrounding it has turned SOA into one of the key buzzwords around the IT industry. Is the hype really merited? I would say it is not.

SOA is touted as the solution to the problems which arise within modern businesses which have evolved on the back of numerous different IT systems and applications. Its advocates claim that SOA is the way of wresting back control; of better aligning the business and its IT set-up and creating a more flexible IT infrastructure.I’m not so sure. I’m yet to see many businesses extracting any real value from an SOA installation. I don’t immediately perceive what potential benefits there are and what is quite telling is that there are very few people out there with deep experience in the concept of SOA.

Therefore, I cannot get away from the fact that SOA appears to exhibit almost all of the signs of a typically over-hyped IT concept. However, the way in which some senior people are excitedly talking about what SOA can achieve for their business makes me think that the hype may be working. I believe this is the IT equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes, with people falling over themselves to say how good it looks.Don’t get me wrong; the basic SOA premise is a good one. It takes all the technology currently in play in one business and aims to pull it together on one single enterprise-wide platform. It overcomes the issues arising from a heterogeneous IT approach (multiple applications spreads across multiple platforms) by creating a single, homogeneous IT platform. With many businesses currently struggling with so many segregated silos of IT architecture, hosting applications which perform vital tasks but which are completely divorced from each other, who wouldn’t be interested in consolidating all that into one single framework?

But is that what’s really on offer? I would suggest that it doesn’t really provide a single IT platform. Rather it links existing applications together in a way which neatly hides the interfaces from the end-user. For sure, it has proved handy in terms of streamlining applications and processes but passing it off as some sort of architectural panacea which can solve all a company’s application-related issues seems somewhat wide of the mark to me.

All of which brings me back to the age-old problem of cutting through the hype and debunking the popular IT myths. This is, in my opinion, a classic example of the ‘tech-speak’ gaining the upper hand over more measured, strategic, commercial reasoning. The SOA debate should be focused on the strategic vision for IT architecture, not about blinding people with technical wizardry, positioning SOA as some form of silver bullet solution to the complexity of modern day IT.

Looking at it dispassionately, SOA should have been hamstrung somewhat by the very vague manner in which it is inevitably discussed. Dig beneath the surface hype and it is actually quite hard to properly define what it does or what is needed to make it work properly. Despite this, businesses seem to be signing up in their droves.

The SOA technology is maturing and — in time — should become more effective and reach the point at which its value can be more easily identifiable. Until then, it is little more than window dressing for rather more mundane tasks which I.T. teams can already undertake perfectly competently.It is the man of the moment though. Many businesses realized that something needed to change before the issues arising from their IT architecture simply overwhelmed them. SOA conveniently filled that demand gap — but it left many people thinking that the problems were solved.

What should actually be happening is that they should be thinking more strategically about their IT architecture requirements or about the governance and control issues which arise from an SOA installation. To do that though, people will need to see through the SOA hype first.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

Cost Reduction Driving Solutions Sales

By Mark Brousseau

The current economy is creating additional impetus for expense reduction and service improvement, says Bob Lund (rlund@egisticsinc.com), chairman and CEO of Dallas-based eGistics, Inc., and vice chairman of the TAWPI Board of Directors.

“Every solution that you are going to install has to have a cost reduction element associated with it,” Lund told me. “Increasing functionality without improving productivity isn’t going to get you there.”

What do you think? Post your comment below.

The Economic Upside

By Mark Brousseau

The current economic downturn has created a renewed focus on cash, and prudent cash management. And like any other economic situation, this trend has a downside and an upside when it comes to solutions sales in the payments space, says Wally Vogel, president of Toronto-based Purepay Receivables Automation (wvogel@pure-pay.com).

“We have seen mixed results in our customer base as a result of the new reality,” Vogel told me.

“One the downside, uncertainty is delaying projects and purchases,” Vogel said. “These deals are not dead by any means, but they are not moving ahead either.” Vogel calls this ‘purchase paralysis.’ “The delays we are seeing now are moving out sales that we have spent months developing. It is frustrating to have them stall as they near the finish line.”

Not only does this stymie payments solutions providers like Purepay, it also frustrates the organizations that can’t do anything but maintain the status quo, Vogel noted.

But there is an upside to the current economic situation. Vogel says Purepay is seeing some of its clients take advantage of the current environment to improve their technology infrastructure and gain a competitive advantage over their more conservative peers. “These clients are reducing costs, expanding their service offerings, and winning business,” he said.

“With the primary goal of prudent cash management, automating and enhancing the payment processing technology platform, and expanding rather than contracting business, is an effective way to achieve positive results,” Vogel said. “Organizations that invest in their payments infrastructure now are on an upward vector and will grow and thrive, despite the economy.”

As for the rest of 2009, Vogel expects to see even more of a stratification of the winners and losers in the payments space, and an increased focus by users on offerings that deliver immediate benefits. “Any investment of capital will be, and should be scrutinized to ensure that there is a solid business case, clear costs savings, and that it creates a competitive advantage,” Vogel said.

What do you think? Post your comment below.

Service in the Sky

Posted by Mark Brousseau

Below is a link to an interesting article in the November 10 issue of Newsweek about cloud computing.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/166818

What is your organization's approach to cloud computing? Post your comments below.