Is Your Professional Value Diminishing?

If you are a PR professional stuck in traditional media relations, you probably know that your professional value is diminishing.  

The days of interruptive outbound PR are ebbing away. While you still may get kudos for a well-placed article in a publication, you might need a detailed analysis of what that article meant in terms of generating qualified leads or re-Tweets.  Marketers today need to be triple-threat athletes, equally talented in three key areas: content, technology and market research.  And PR professionals need to come inside the marketing tent to figure out how to redefine their skill sets to work more collaboratively with the rest of marketing.

You still need to research, develop and write great stories and messages based on business objectives, but you also need to be sure those stories are adapted for target market segments and packaged in ways that each segment understands and values.  You will need to know how to use that content to drive readers to take action -- preferably to a landing page or website.  And you need to know how long they stay there, what they look at and whether or not they buy.  Your job is no longer just about generating press coverage and dropping a stack of clips on someone's desk.  Your job is creating great content that generates coverage and qualified leads.  You, my friend, are now either a bona fide digital marketing expert or a side show to the main event.  

You think I'm kidding?  A recent McKinsey study found that marketing now oversees 74 percent of customer-facing Web 2.0 initiatives.  Marketing also is increasingly involved in Web 2.0 initiatives involving suppliers and partners.  In other words, marketing is moving into a position where it tried to go for many years -- driving business decisions based on understanding the people who buy the company's products and services.  The difference between then and now is that marketers today have a direct connection to customers via digital media, and they are armed with the ability to measure and analyze the results of those efforts quickly and accurately in ways that draw the attention of the rest of the C-suite.  

The door is wide open for traditional PR professionals to expand their awareness and their effectiveness, but it is closing fast as a new generation of professionals who have grown up with the world of digital PR moves to the forefront of meeting the digital marketing needs of internal and external clients.

The Dark Side of Cloud Computing

The old axiom in real estate is location, location, location. I just spent a full day at the CloudConnect Conference in Santa Clara, CA and the manta repeated by every one of the presenters on the future of cloud computing was security, security, security!

One presenter after another quoted data from Gartner Group, McKinsey & Company, or privately-funded research to show that 9 out of every 10 potential customers listed security issues as the number one barrier to implementing a cloud computing strategy at their company.

And the concern about cloud computing security is well founded.

One of the presenters asked conference participants if they knew what enterprise had the largest cloud computing presence in the world. Among the guesses were IBM, Microsoft, HP, Facebook, Amazon, and of course Google. The answer, however, was an outfit, if you can call it that, with which many in the audience were not even aware – Conficker .

A New York Times article from last year describes Conficker as program that “uses flaws in Windows software to co-opt machines and link them into a virtual computer that can be commanded remotely by its authors. With more than five million of these zombies now under its control – government, business and home computers in more than 200 countries – this shadowy computer has power that dwarfs that of the world’s largest data centers.”

Indeed, Conficker’s “cloud” is larger that the cloud computing efforts of Amazon, Google and IBM combined! And its sole purpose for existing is to disrupt normal business operations inside of companies, organizations and governments. With that monster looming in millions of “cloud computing resources” around the world it’s no wonder 9 out 10 customers considering implementing cloud computing strategies are nervous about security breeches.

But all is not doom and gloom. Despite the security issues that must be taken seriously, the benefits of moving resources to the cloud far outweigh the risk, and many organizations, including the US Government, are doing just that in a big way.

Much of the same research that showed security as the biggest impediment to cloud computing adoption also showed cloud computing revenue growing by more than 20 percent in the next three years. Of course with that much money in the balance, Conficker, and other ne’er-do-well’s won’t be far behind. That’s why security will remain front and center in any discussion about cloud computing.

In my follow up post next week, I’ll address Gartner Group’s “Seven Deadly Sins” of cloud computing security and what questions companies should ask of their cloud computing vendor before taking the plunge.

Cloud Chips

It seems as if every technology company in the industry has announced a cloud computing strategy. IBM and HP. Oracle and Microsoft. CA and Saleforce.com. Amazon.com and Google. All major software and computing companies are moving to market with cloud computing solutions. It’s no wonder that a report from McKinsey & Company claimed that there are 22 different definitions of cloud computing in the marketplace.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when I spoke to a friend of mine at Nvidia Inc. recently and he told me his company was “bullish” on cloud computing. For those of you unfamiliar with Nvidia, they are, in their own words, “the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor that generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices.”

In short, Nvidia makes really powerful semiconductors for graphic applications. But why would a chip company be so bullish about cloud computing?

Let’s start with one of those 22 definitions of cloud computing. At it’s simplest, it is a way of computing, via the Internet, which broadly shares computer resources instead of using software or storage on a local PC.

Now some of those “computer resources” that live in the cloud are graphically intensive, 3D-modeling software applications that are used for everything from designing jet aircraft to modeling photo-realistic images of a patient’s heart for a doctor to view before surgery.

If you’re an aeronautical engineer working for Boeing, for instance, you might use a cloud computing application to run some 3D models for wind resistance over one of the plane’s wings. That type of graphically intensive application isn’t going to run on just any old computer server in the cloud. No, complex 3D modeling requires a server that is run by powerful GPUs, the type made by Nvidia.

Make no mistake, Nvidia and other semiconductor companies aren’t going to start building server farms and begin hosting cloud-computing applications. But companies such as IBM, HP, and others do. And those companies either buy or build specialized servers to run these graphically intensive applications.

In turn, the firms providing cloud-computing resources need to offer a variety of applications to meet the widely diverse needs of their customers. As a result, the demand for servers that can handle the enormous processing load placed on them by complex 3D graphic software is going to increase.

This interconnected food chain of cloud computing is creating opportunities for technology companies across the spectrum – from enterprise software to semiconductors. That’s why Nvidia, and any other forward-looking chip company, is bullish on the cloud computing opportunity.