Why You Need to Pay Attention to Cloud Computing

The adoption of cloud computing is revolutionizing today’s business. This trend has also elevated the importance of IT and business alignment because cloud enables new business models that have until now were not economically viable. A recent study confirmed this trend by showing that the vast majority of organizations of all sizes use both Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and hosted infrastructure services. In fact, both SaaS and IaaS are currently being used most by organizations with less than 100 employees. Some additional markers of this trend include:

• 45% of businesses say they already, or plan to, run their company from the cloud;
• SaaS adoption of companies participating in the survey grew from 13% in 2011 to 74% in 2014;
• 56% of businesses are using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technologies; and
• 41% of businesses are using Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technologies

Learning Tree is dedicated to supporting you, our customers, in your move to adopt cloud computing. A component of this effort will be a series of cloud computing related YouTube videos of which I am proud and honored to be a part. Please give me the opportunity to introduce myself virtually below.

I currently teach under the Learning Tree Cloud Computing Curriculum. A mandatory part of keeping my certification as a Learning Tree instructor is being active within my industry expertise. Within the cloud computing domain, my experience includes:

• NCOIC/NGA Geospatial Community Cloud – Project Manager for design, development and deployment of a solution that showed interoperability and movement of data in an open, cloud-based infrastructure.
• NATO IT Modernization Study – A study team supporting the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) in developing cost effective options for modernizing NATO’s information technology infrastructure towards a multi-national private cloud
• QUAD Common Operating Environment – Project manager for a prototype for the Intelligence Community – Information Technology Environment, a community cloud being deployed for the US Intelligence Community
• GovCloud Network – CEO and Founder of a consultancy focused on helping it clients enhance their business models in order to better leverage the global and parallel nature of cloud computing

Over the next few months, the video series will address topics like:

• What is Cloud Computing?
• What are the Business and Technical Values of Cloud?
• How do we secure our data in the cloud?
• How can my company address the challenges of cloud transition
• What are the lesson’s learned when it comes to IT governance in the cloud?
• What is Hybrid IT and how should we use Cloud Service Brokers?

Or download my White Paper – Cloud Computing Promises: Fact or Fiction.  It delves into 10 common promises & separates the reality from the hype!

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if there are any other topics you would like for us to address!

Kevin L. Jackson

Kevin_Jackson@LearningTree.me
http://twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
www.linkedin.com/in/kjackson/