My presentation is scheduled for 11am ET / 8am PT on March 23rd and is titled “Cloud forecasting: models, predictions, pitfalls and planning”. More details are available here. I’m also moderating a panel with some IBM folks at 4pm ET / 1pm PT on March 23rd, which should be fun (though it’ll be 9pm for me, so if I jabber it’s because I’ve had too much coffee ;-)

Last year’s event was a pretty big success by all accounts, so I’m really excited to be taking part. I hope to see you there!

In the meantime – if you’d like to see a preview of some of what I’ll be talking about (obviously I’ll be mixing it up a bit for CloudSlam) then you should check out our own virtual Cloud event, available on-demand here. It’s free – you only need Guest Pass access to our research library to access the content. I’d love to hear what you think about the research we’re doing in this area.

So what is a Service Integrator? Simply put, a Service Integrator relates to the SaaS/Cloud Computing world in the same way that a Systems Integrator relates to the on-premise computing world.

Right now we’re at a stage in Cloud computing development which is dominated by “early adopters”. Typically such companies are willing to go an extra mile to get the benefits of a new technology and technology model – things that many other companies would consider too complicated, risky or expensive.

Activities which fit into this category include integrating data and functionality (both between Cloud-based platforms and applications, and between Cloud-based and on-premise systems); encrypting sensitive data and securing communications; backing up and restoring data; replicating and managing resources to maximise reliability and availability; and so on and so on.

While today’s adopters of Cloud Computing may be quite happy to shoulder the technical burden of making remote resources “fit for purpose” within their enterprise, we should assume that most won’t. Particularly when you consider that a big part of the promise of Cloud Computing is that with this model, you’re delegating responsibility for managing technology. Why, if you’re so interested in a model of computing which is fundamentally tied to outsourcing – and particularly if you’re interested about using this model not just for one application but for a wide variety of purposes – would you choose to take responsibility for integration yourself?

If use of Cloud Computing is to move beyond tactical use in the early adopter community, there’s going to be a big opportunity out there for providers who can wrap multiple Cloud-based services and platforms up and deliver them as bundles of managed services.

So… duh… isn’t this the same thing as systems integration then? Well, maybe a little – but not completely. There are three distinct levels that a Service Integrator can work and add value at, which further blur the boundaries between “traditional” systems integration work and outsourcing/managed services provision work:

• Technical integration. This is primarily “traditional” systems integration project work – delivering code to create and stitch custom and off-the-shelf application services together.
• Management integration. This is managed services work that is focused on delivering seamless experiences to service consumers, to agreed levels of quality. Reliability, security, availability, break/fix, helpdesk services and disaster recovery all play here.
• Contract integration. This level of integration work is about providing “one throat to choke”. The Service Integrator takes responsibility for all back-end contracts with resource and application service providers, and becomes the single integrated billing and payment point for the end customer, also creating a single point of liability for quality of service delivered.

Now of course many established Systems Integrators already combine work of different kinds (for example development/integration and application management) to create overall offerings for clients – but here, we see increased industrialisation of some the services provided (particularly as infrastructure providers like Informatica, Pervasive, and Cast Iron get in on the SaaS act at the technical integration layer), and also more focus on the economic benefits of the Cloud Computing model (rather than on “all-in” pricing for multi-year contracts). We’re already seeing a number of service providers stepping into this space, as well as new players springing up. Examples include (though there are many more):

Capgemini – which has created a specialised Cloud Computing centre of excellence and is providing advisory and integration services for its clients.

Accenture – which has created a set of services to help clients examine potential around Cloud Computing and SaaS.

CSC – which has launched two specific new offerings: Cloud Orchestration (principally operating in our technical integration layer) and Trusted Cloud (operating in our management integration layer).

Saaspoint – a specialist Cloud Computing/SaaS consultancy centred on delivering services based around Salesforce.com application service implementation, citing over 700 clients.

Bluewolf – which focuses on integrate a variety of services (often centred around Salesforce.com’s applications) for customers interested in driving change in marketing, sales and services processes.

For me, one of the most interesting things here will be to what degree the flexible pricing and billing models that have become expected in the Cloud Computing space are offered on to customers when these intermediaries become better established in this market. Will service integrators find ways to make margin out of Cloud Computing providers’ pricing and billing arrangements (for example by pooling a set of back-end application service licenses across multiple clients, and “soaking up” some of the variable demand for capacity that way) but not passing these efficiencies onto clients, instead preferring to drive clients towards fixed-price multi-year contracts? Or will they start to adopt more granular pricing and billing practices? Indeed, will this become an area of differentiation between the established SIs and the upstarts?

I’d love to hear what you think… this is a topic we’ll be digging into more over the course of this year.

If you’d like to check out our Cloud Computing event, it’s available free and on-demand… just go here. You’ll need a free Guest Pass ID to access the content, but signing up only takes a few seconds and you also get access to an extensive library of written research.

Nevertheless our research (including a survey of 350+ IT architects in 9/09) shows that many organisations are dipping their toes in the Cloud (if that’s not a heinous non-sequitur) and they are seeing success. What’s also interesting is that some of the most eager proponents of Cloud Computing and Cloud-based application use aren’t in those industries which are typically at the leading edge of technology adoption (financial services, telecom); they’re in industries like media, retail, utilities, pharma which are more generally thought of as conservative investors in IT. This is because Cloud Computing is not a model of technology ownership – it’s a model of service delivery and consumption.

2010 will see every major IT vendor and service provider moving to offer or enable Cloud-based infrastructure and services. You need to be prepared to reap the potential benefits while managing the potential risks – and this means having a solid awareness of how Cloud Computing concepts fit into the rest of your existing IT investment portfolio. Only then can you chart a course that makes sense for you (and which won’t be driven by the proprietary interests of one or more IT suppliers).

Here’s some questions to think about that can help you frame a strategy:

• What are the ways that Cloud Computing can deliver value, and in what kinds of scenario? How does the value of a “private Cloud” relate to the value of a “public Cloud”?
• How is Cloud Computing really related to SaaS? What does this mean for me if I’m considering using the Cloud as a strategic source of IT services? Where does SaaS make most sense?
• What are the tradeoffs that I’ll experience on choosing a Cloud Computing platform, and what will be the downstream effects?
• What’s the real story with security in a Cloud Computing environment? Is the security issue a show-stopper?

With all this in mind, yesterday we launched a two-part online event designed to help enterprises frame a Cloud Computing strategy. It’s made up of two on-demand webinars which you can view at any time – and it’s completely free of charge (you just need to register for Guest Pass access to our site first – which also gives you access to a big chunk of our research library for free, too).

The event is sponsored by Google Enterprise – and we’re very grateful for their support. Nevertheless we designed and created the content without any input from Google – it’s a completely independent piece of work.

We’d love to hear what you think of this event. We’re currently exploring a number of options regarding holding future events like this, so your feedback is crucially important to us. Once you’ve viewed the content you can provide feedback right from the event home page – or alternatively leave us a comment below!

Put briefly, the thinking seems to be: if you set an IT organisation up to run as a business, you create a supplier-customer relationship with other parts of your wider organisation – and this relegates you to being a simple order taker. You’ll have to implement the requirements you’re given, and often these will be out of whack with what the organisation will really need and will raise IT costs over the long term, making an internal IT operation even less attractive and making you more likely to be outsourced.

In my experience this analysis is plain wrong, and comes from simplistic thinking about what the phrase “run X as a business” might mean. Being more business-focused has multiple facets to it, and blindly interpreting the idea leads you to daft, simplistic conclusions. Applying similar thinking to cooking would lead to the advice “don’t use sharp knives; if you do that it’ll only be a matter of time before you chop a hand off”.

To be clear: my experience and advice diverges with these other opinions not because I disagree about the risks of IT becoming a “simple order-taker”; but rather because I disagree that running IT as a business means you have to become a simple order-taker and everything else is excluded. There’s much more to it than that. The key is to see the relationship between IT and other areas of a business as having three key layers.

When I look at IT leaders who have really become strategic players at board level (and I’ve been talking to them ever since my work on The Technology Garden), it’s not the case that their organisations have stopped becoming service-focused and focus wholly on hanging out with senior business managers. If anything their organisations are more service-focused than the norm.

In the best-performing organisations, the “run IT as a business” idea is primarily about an inward-looking perspective. It’s about putting repeatable processes in place, creating a service culture, figuring out the actual costs of delivering IT services through IT processes, and looking for ways to increase IT process efficiency and effectiveness.

In high-performing IT organisations, when it comes to the outward-looking perspective (the relationship between the IT organisation and other parts of a business) the relationship has at least three layers:

1. As a foundation, IT teams have to deliver reliable operational services in line with clear promises and in the context of defined cost expectations and budgets.
2. When it comes to using IT to enable business in new ways the relationship works at a higher level, using different teams, reporting structures, skills and incentives within multidisciplinary joint IT-business teams.
3. The top layer acts to mitigate the risks of individual business units driving change that is counterproductive to the organisation as a whole, typically through some kind of IT governance structure that helps to ensure that significant IT investments are considered in their proper strategic context and that the costs and risks are properly understood by all.

That’s three layers: IT operation/service delivery; IT-business engagement; and governance/strategy. You can be focused on service provision and also on partnering. As long as you understand the bigger picture.

Although it’s an on-demand webinar, we’d be very happy to receive any questions you might have – we’ll do our best to respond to them all.

This is the first time we’ve done a research webinar ourselves using this technology, and we’re really pleased with how it’s turned out. We really hope you enjoy it! We’re likely to do more of these in 2010, so your feedback is very welcome if you have any…