Beyond the Arc

Creating a Perception of Relevance is Critical for Companies Vying for Cloud Computing Success

Every company wants to be known as having the answers. Every business wants to be heard. Every brand wants to be relevant.

But the truth is, relevance is a commodity that is rented, not owned.

Creating a perception of relevance is critical to business success.

And it is as simple, and as difficult, as defining a clear, concise message and constantly reinventing dramatic ways to convey this message to your markets.

At 3Point, we have done just this. From helping disruptive technologies find relevance, to helping major companies re-establish relevance to positioning acquisitions as relevant accelerators to acquirers.

As noted previously in the 3Point blog and in blogs all over the web and in tech news everyday of the week all over the globe, the future of enterprise IT is closely tied to cloud computing.

And nearly every enterprise IT company is shouting. Shouting so their flavor of cloud computing will be heard over the cloud computing hype and earn them, what else --relevance.

But to the dismay of customers, the conversation is confused.

At this week's Cloud Connect event in Silicon Valley, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that within a year the work of nearly all Microsoft employees will have something to do with the company's cloud computing mission, built around Microsoft's flavor of the cloud -- the Azure platform.

And Google is working feverishly to insert itself into as many clouds as it can. "If you don't use the cloud you will fail," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Oracle is in the middle of its own multi-continent cloud computing forum, telling organizations how they "can break through with cloud computing" using, of course, Oracle's cloud computing solutions.

Also, and as you might imagine, cloud computing expos and conferences are popping up everywhere so that customers can "better understand" how to put cloud computing to "work" for them.

But in many cases, so many choices are leaving customers more confused than ever.

There's Cloud Expo, Enterprise Cloud Summit, Cloud Computing Conference 2010, and IEEE Cloud 2010. To name just a few.

Here's a thought: perhaps from these conferences and global cloud computing tours an industry realist will emerge. A realist who is also a visionary leader and an advocate for the seamless world cloud computing can make possible.

But most importantly, a leader who's an advocate for the customer. Someone who is asking customers what they want and need for a safe transition to the cloud.

Leadership like that is hard to come by, but certainly not impossible.