The End of Outsourcing

As Google and Amazon.com become preeminent sellers of tech services, companies from Accenture to Microsoft and Xerox must adapt to cloud computing 

In the next five years outsourcing as we know it will disappear. The legion of Indian service providers will be sidelined or absorbed. U.S. and European companies that pioneered this corner of the high tech industry will suffer similar fates if they don't wake up. Who will emerge as the new leaders? Google (GOOG) and Amazon.com (AMZN), brands that we associate with search and retail, will become better known for outsourcing.

Ludicrous? Not if you follow this industry. Desktop computers yielded to laptops. Web portals AOL (AOL), MSN (MSFT), and Yahoo! (YHOO) are giving way to social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Software once distributed by disk is now available as apps over the Web -- often for less than the cost of a slice of pizza. And so it goes. The same Darwinian process is creating a fresh ecosystem in outsourcing, one that will usher in an era of consolidation and a new way of working with clients.
Traditionally, outsourcing companies sell customers deals that can span a decade and easily run to tens of millions of dollars. The service provider takes on the expensive, time-consuming task of building and operating the digital tools that the customer requires to vanquish the competition, often involving development of custom software to get the job done. To do that, service providers need aisles of powerful computers, armies of programmers, and lots of applications, which are housed either at the client's site or located at a third-party data center that's usually owned and paid for by the client but managed and maintained by the outsourcer. Accenture (ACN) is a good example of the old model of outsourcing, which involves long-term contracts; customized software, legacy software, or both; and on-site systems integration work.
In the new model, outsourcers provide standard, off-the-shelf software on a "pay-per-drink" basis. For that, they will leverage so-called cloud technology, which lets users tap into computing power available via the Internet, rather than on a desktop or computer server housed locally. The appeal is scale, flexibility, and efficiency: Thousands of server computers can attack a task more quickly -- and cheaply -- or handle a patchwork quilt of different technologies that companies use to run their businesses. This approach will let businesses outsource entire tasks such as the tracking of inventory, paying only for the information accessed or used.
Why is this happening now? Let's start with the relentless pressure to cut costs. Outsourcing is about saving money. Sure the pitch usually revolves around improving business processes, but no client is going to pay more for the service than what it already costs to maintain their systems. Unfortunately, outsourcing vendors have maxed-out efficiencies, both from automation and from moving the work to lower cost-of-labor destinations, also known as "labor arbitrage." To get to the next level of savings, a ruthless search for greater economies of scale is necessary.
That's where the cloud comes in. It shifts the center of gravity in outsourcing from physical ownership of assets and process expertise. It focuses on the skills necessary to efficiently manage computing operations that can scale and at the same time are flexible enough to handle scores of different tasks.
These factors will set off a wave of global consolidation in tech services. There are too many companies in this space. Consolidation will be about protecting or building market share or adding technical skills, from connectivity and networking to deep expertise in the delivery of services-on-demand. This is why most Indian outsourcing companies are investing to get up to speed on the cloud. How quickly can they build sufficient scale?

It's not merely Indian companies wrestling with these changes. Let's handicap the winners and losers in the race to become players in the evolving outsourcing business.
The Losers: Mid-tier Indian outsourcers will be acquired by larger, more aggressive companies. Indian outsourcers are attractive because of their current client list, operations in low-cost countries, and process expertise. Most of them are too small to build enough scale and expertise in the backbone capabilities required in the cloud.
Leading Indian players like MphasiS () and eServe () have already fallen prey to Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and TCS, respectively. Some larger players such as Infosys (INFY) and Wipro (WIT) are at risk of losing their competitive advantage. Even the largest Indian companies are still several orders of magnitude smaller than their U.S. competitors -- HP, Xerox (XRX) Microsoft, and Google. These include companies such as Patni (PTI), L&T Infotech, and Satyam [recently acquired by Tech Mahindra. Therefore we expect Indian vendors to try to gain scale via acquisitions or alliances among themselves.
The Winners: Amazon and Google are the future leaders in outsourcing. They are already providing services to such enterprises as Eli Lilly (LLY) and Pfizer (PFE). They own data centers on an enormous scale and know how to operate them efficiently. They will gain capabilities they don't yet have -- such as industry-specific know-how and low-cost workforces -- by acquiring Indian or other global outsourcers. Meanwhile, Google announced a partnership with Computer Sciences (CSC) and Amazon announced a similar one with Capgemini. Indeed, Amazon has made so much headway in cloud technology that this area of their business will generate, according to an estimate recently published by UBS (UBS), something in the order of $750 million in 2011.
Then there's the generational issue to consider. Amazon and Google are household brands for the generation of managers and leaders that is now rising in U.S. management ranks. In their youth, these leaders entrusted personal e-mails, music files, pictures, and social interactions to these companies. We believe it will be a logical extension for this generation to hire these companies as trusted managers and hosts of their corporate services.
The Possible Winners: Software giants such as Microsoft, Oracle (ORCL), and SAP (SAP) have knowledge around enterprise platforms and applications that can unlock further efficiencies for clients. They also have robust and captive client portfolios. Their success will depend on the speed at which they build up capabilities they are currently missing in connectivity, infrastructure, and experience in the cloud itself. It will also depend on their appetite for risk. We are talking here about nothing less than reengineering their DNA. For example, even Microsoft has begun to forsake its license-based software to introduce new, cloud-based, office software. At the same time, Salesforce.com (CRM) has aggressively grown by shifting its CRM applications around this cloud-based model.
Those on the Fence: Xerox, HP, and Accenture have the technical and financial resources to expand their capabilities. Recent acquisitions -- HP/EDS, Dell/Perot Systems (DELL), and Xerox/Affiliated Computer Services -- show that they see the writing on the wall. Nevertheless, it's uncertain that these behemoths will shift seamlessly from large integration projects to cloud-based solutions. Unless companies such as HP, Xerox, and Dell continue to increase their momentum into the cloud, they may find their multibillion-dollar acquisitions go to waste.
The outsourcing market is on the verge of experiencing its most massive transformation since the concept arose more than 20 years ago. For outsourcers, cloud computing creates an unprecedented opportunity to reshape how services get delivered. For clients, it opens up a new era characterized by the arrival of new players that are eager to build relationships and showcase their capabilities. That means more choice and a new model that will sustain the price advantage that outsourcing has hitherto provided.

Copyright © 2010 Bloomberg L.P.All rights reserved.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38658189/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/

 

Clash of the clouds

Oct 15th 2009

From The Economist print edition

The launch of Windows 7 marks the end of an era in computing—and the beginning of an epic battle between Microsoft, Google, Apple and others

Illustration by Ian Whadcock

DO YOU have plans for next weekend? If not, don’t worry: perhaps a friend will be throwing a party to celebrate the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft’s new operating system, on October 22nd. You’ll get help installing the program and be shown how to use the new features. To maximise the fun, your friend will get tips from the “HostingYourParty” video on YouTube or go to the dedicated website, complete with downloadable party favours and a trivia quiz (sample question: “The Microsoft Pretzel Hunt is an annual pretzel hunt held at the Redmond campus. True or false?”).

This is not satire. It is a toe-curling attempt by Microsoft to create some buzz for its new software. Fortunately for the firm, it will hardly matter, because Microsoft dominates the market for operating systems. After the let-down that was its predecessor, Windows Vista, Windows 7 is certain to be a success. There is plenty of pent-up demand, because Vista’s aged predecessor, XP, is still widely used. Reviews of Windows 7 have been positive, some even glowing, although the software is sometimes hard to install.

Windows 7 is not just a sizeable step for Microsoft. It is also likely to mark the end of one era in information technology and the start of another. Much of computing will no longer be done on personal computers in homes and offices, but in the “cloud”: huge data centres housing vast storage systems and hundreds of thousands of servers, the powerful machines that dish up data over the internet. Web-based e-mail, social networking and online games are all examples of what are increasingly called cloud services, and are accessible through browsers, smart-phones or other “client” devices. Because so many services can be downloaded or are available online, Windows 7 is Microsoft’s first operating system to come with fewer features.

As one window closes…

The launch of Windows 7 coincides with the closing of the book, after more than a decade, on Microsoft’s antitrust woes. The company got into hot water in America and Europe mainly for abusing its dominance of PC operating systems to promote its web browser. On October 7th the European Commission said it had all but reached a settlement with Microsoft. The firm has agreed to give Windows users in Europe a “ballot screen” that allows them to choose a rival browser in place of its own Internet Explorer.

Windows is not going to disappear soon, but cloud computing means it is no longer so important. Other products, some being launched this autumn with less fanfare than Windows 7, represent Microsoft’s future. Last month the company opened two data centres that between them will contain more than half a million servers. This month it released a new version of Windows for smart-phones. And next month it will launch Azure, a platform for developers on which they can write and run cloud services.

The rise of cloud computing is not just shifting Microsoft’s centre of gravity. It is changing the nature of competition within the computer industry. Technological developments have hitherto pushed computing power away from central hubs: first from mainframes to minicomputers, and then to PCs. Now a combination of ever cheaper and more powerful processors, and ever faster and more ubiquitous networks, is pushing power back to the centre in some respects, and even further away in others. The cloud’s data centres are, in effect, outsize public mainframes. At the same time, the PC is being pushed aside by a host of smaller, often wireless devices, such as smart-phones, netbooks (small laptops) and, perhaps soon, tablets (touch-screen computers the size of books).

Although Windows still runs 90% of PCs, the fading importance of the PC means that Microsoft is no longer an all-powerful monopolist. Others are also building big clouds, including Google, a giant of the internet, and Apple, renowned as a maker of hardware, with a market capitalisation that now exceeds those of both Google and IBM, its original arch-rival (see chart above).

Granted, there are hundreds if not thousands of firms offering cloud services—web-based applications living in data centres, such as music sites or social networks. But Microsoft, Google and Apple play in a different league. Each has its own global network of data centres. They intend to offer not just one or two services, but whole suites of them, with services including e-mail, address books, storage, collaboration tools and business applications. They are also vying to dominate the periphery, either by developing software for smart-phones and other small devices or by making such devices themselves.

These three giants (for their vital statistics, see table) are already preparing for battle. In July Google mounted a direct attack on Windows by promising to launch a free PC operating system, Chrome OS. Rumour has it that a basic version may hit the market on the same day as Windows 7, or soon after. Microsoft’s new operating system for smart-phones represents its latest effort to catch up with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s operating system for handsets, called Android. On October 12th Apple and Google severed a tie when Arthur Levinson, a member of both boards, resigned from Google’s. In August Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, had quit Apple’s board because “Google is entering more of Apple’s core businesses,” in the words of Steve Jobs, the gadget-maker’s boss.

A taxonomy of giants

Despite the growing similarities among the three, each is a unique beast, says Michael Cusumano, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. They can be classified according to how they approach the cloud, how they make money and how openly they approach the development of intellectual property.

Google, you might say, has been a cloud company since its birth in 1998. It is best known for its search service, but now offers all sorts of other products and services, too. It has built a global network of three dozen data centres with 2m servers, say some estimates. Among other things, it offers a suite of web-based applications, such as word processing and spreadsheets. Lately it has branched out, releasing Android for phones, and its Chrome web-browser and operating system for PCs.

It took Google a while to come up with a way of making money, but it found one in advertising, its main source of revenue. It handles more than 75% of search-related ads in America. Worldwide its share is even higher. Google is also trying to make money from selling services to companies. On October 12th it said that Rentokil Initial, a pest-control-to-parcel-delivery group, would roll out Google’s online applications to its 35,000 employees, making it the biggest company to do so.

Google’s reliance on advertising explains its open approach to intellectual property. Giving Android and Chrome OS away as open-source software not only makes life difficult for rivals’ paid-for products but also increases demand for Google’s services and the reach of its ads. Its openness has limits: Google says little about the architecture of its data centres and search algorithms, because they give the company its competitive edge. The way it organises R&D internally is open and decentralised: self-organising teams come up with ideas for most new services.

If Google was born in the sky, Microsoft started on the ground. Office, its bestselling suite of PC programs, is almost as ubiquitous as Windows. But the company is less a stranger to cloud computing than it may seem. It has built a network of data centres, and is starting to gain traction after losing billions developing online services. Its Xbox games console has powerful online features. Bing, its new search engine, has gained a shade in market share (though it is still miles behind Google). It is even preparing a stripped-down web-based version of Office, and it now offers much of its business software as online services.

However, most of Microsoft’s revenue and all of its profit still come from conventional shrink-wrapped software. But the company cannot leave online advertising to Google, because consumers expect cloud services to be free, financed by ads. Hence Microsoft’s efforts to convince Yahoo!, another online giant, to merge its search and part of its advertising business with Microsoft’s. The deal, sealed in July, means that Microsoft will handle 10% of searches, against Google’s 83%, says Net Applications, a market-research firm.

Given Microsoft’s history, it is hardly surprising that its treatment of intellectual property differs from Google’s. It gives other software firms the technical information they need to write programs that run on, say, Windows. Otherwise, it guards the underlying recipes of its software jealously. That said, the firm now supports many open standards and has even started using bits of open-source software. Internally, its R&D is somewhat more centralised than Google, at least in its online division: teams are bigger, work with more co-ordination and get more guidance from above.

Apple, too, came from outside the cloud. Online services have always been a bit of an afterthought to what the company excels at: pricey but highly innovative bundles of hardware and software, of which the iPhone is only the latest example. Its online offerings—the iTunes store for music and video, the App Store for mobile applications, and MobileMe, a suite of online services—were all originally meant to drive demand for Apple’s hardware, but the firm’s interest in the cloud has grown. It is building a $1 billion data centre, possibly the world’s largest, in North Carolina.

Still, Apple’s financial health thus far has depended mainly on selling hardware. Gadgets generate most of the firm’s revenue and profit. The firm does not reveal its revenue from services separately, but it is not to be sneezed at. Apple accounts for 69% of online music sales in America and 35% of all sales, more than Wal-Mart, reckons NPD Group, a market-research firm. Apple has so far forgone advertising revenue: its services are ad-free, but most of them require payment. Apple’s services are aimed at consumers, not businesses.

Illustration by Ian Whadcock

Apple is also the odd one out when it comes to openness. The word does not appear in its vocabulary. It does not allow any other hardware-maker to build machines using its operating system. It blocks iPhone applications it does not approve of from appearing in the App Store. Apple is also secretive about the way it conducts its internal R&D. Mr Jobs clearly calls most of the shots. But insiders say that there is a system of teams that pitch projects to him.

How will this three-way contest play out? The last similar war was in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Apple, IBM and Microsoft fought for mastery of the PC. After much fire and smoke, Microsoft was victorious. Thanks to what economists call strong network effects, which allow winners to take almost all, Windows relegated its rival operating systems to mere sideshows, securing fat profits for its owner.

Such a lopsided result is unlikely this time. One reason is that the economics of the cloud may be different from those of the PC. Network effects are unlikely to be as strong. Much of the cloud is based on open standards, which should make it easier to switch providers. To underline this point and to counter arguments that it is trying to lock users in, Google has set up the Data Liberation Front, a team of engineers whose job is to devise ways of allowing people to transfer their data.

Unfortunately for Google, it is equally unclear whether the most open player will win, as Microsoft did last time. Many of Google’s new services have failed to take off. Having control over the software on the PC, smart-phones and other client devices, Microsoft can more easily create what it calls “seamless experiences”, for example by keeping a user’s address book and other personal information in step. Consumers may also prefer Apple’s tightly integrated, easy-to-use devices and services, despite the restrictions they impose. Lots of people buy iPods and download music from iTunes even though it is difficult to play the songs on other devices.

Second, all three giants have reliable sources of cash to sustain them. Windows may be under attack, not least because of the boom in cheap netbooks, which has forced Microsoft to reduce prices, says Matt Rosoff of Directions on Microsoft, a newsletter. Even so, the operating system will keep on giving for some time. Microsoft has other strong divisions too, including business and server software. Google may lose some market share in search (and some advertising) to the combination of Bing and Yahoo!, but it is unlikely to be dethroned. Apple is still able to command premium prices, although others make hardware just as slick.

Full war chests

This means that all three will have ample resources to spend in the main areas of the fight: data centres, cloud services and the periphery. In data centres, Google is ahead, but Microsoft is catching up in size and sophistication. Apple has most to learn, but this, too, seems only a question of time and money. Just as much of hardware has become a commodity, knowing how to build huge data centres may not be a big competitive advantage for long. And data centres can get only so big before scale ceases to be an advantage.

In services too, Google is ahead. But in Bing Microsoft may at last have created a worthy rival. The “decision engine”, to use the company’s term, does a good job of helping people choose a new camera or book a holiday. The big question is whether Apple can catch up. Its iTunes and App stores are successes, to be sure, but for now they are highly specialised. Its broader suite of cloud services, MobileMe, is nothing to write home about.

At the cloud’s periphery, however, Apple has a strong position, thanks to the success of the iPhone. More than 30m have been sold so far, 5.2m in the quarter ending in June. Its share of the American market is pushing 14%. The App Store now boasts 85,000 applications and a total of more than 2 billion downloads. But recently Google’s Android has gained momentum. Several handset-makers have released smart-phones based on it, or will do so in the next few months. In early October it received the backing of Verizon, America’s biggest mobile operator. At the end of 2012, predicts Gartner, a market-research firm, Android phones will have a bigger share of the market than iPhones.

Microsoft’s mobile strategy, though, is in disarray. This could prove to be a serious weakness, as people increasingly use mobile devices to reach online services. Plans to build smart-phones of its own seem to be going nowhere. Its music player, Zune, will remain just that, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s boss, said recently. Pink, a project to develop phones based on technology from Danger, a start-up acquired by Microsoft in 2008, is said to face death by cancellation—even more likely after Danger lost personal data belonging to tens of thousands of its customers earlier this month. And the latest version of Windows Mobile is no match for the iPhone and Android. Some handset-makers, including Motorola, have ditched the software.

However, as with Bing, Microsoft has only recently been getting serious. It has put Windows Mobile under new management. Another version is expected by the end of 2010. Some analysts fancy Microsoft’s chances. According to iSuppli, a market-research firm, “Reports of Windows Mobile’s death are greatly exaggerated.”

What could disrupt the three-sided struggle? The antitrust authorities, possibly. Now that Microsoft has made peace, the other two are likelier targets. Most observers imagine Google would be first, pointing to the hullabaloo caused by a settlement with book publishers that allows Google to create a vast digital library. But Apple may beat Google to the dock. The firm’s tight control over its technology is no problem in markets where its share is small (in PCs, it is a mere 7.2%). But in mobile applications and digital music distribution Apple is by far the market leader. America’s Federal Communications Commission is looking into its refusal to carry Google Voice, a telephony and messaging application for the iPhone. Its bar on rivals’ devices connecting to iTunes may cause trouble too. Tellingly, Apple recently hired a lawyer with antitrust experience: Bruce Sewell, the former general counsel of Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, which the European Commission wants to pay a fine of more than €1 billion ($1.5 billion) for abusing its dominance.

Then there are market forces. One of the three may come up with something “insanely great”, an expression used at Apple in times past to describe the original Macintosh computer. Apple itself may do so with a tablet computer, rumoured to be ready for release as early as January. Others have built such a dream device, but none has yet overcome the problem of input: typing on a screen is difficult and handwriting recognition has never really worked. If Apple has cracked it, it could upend the PC industry, as the iPhone did the handset market. If the tablet is also a good substitute for paper, the publishing and newspaper industries could be in for more upheaval. The blogosphere is abuzz with rumours that Apple is talking to publishers about offering their content on its device.

The final possibility is for another contender to emerge. The obvious candidates are Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, and Facebook, the leading social network. Amazon already has a cloud of sorts. It offers cloud computing services to other online firms and has developed the Kindle, an electronic reader, which is due to be available worldwide from October 19th. Facebook runs what is arguably the most successful cloud service, with more than 300m registered users. It provides a platform for people to communicate, share information and collaborate online—all things that businesses want to do, too.

Only one thing seems sure about the future of the digital skies: the company or companies that dominate it will be American. European or Asian firms have yet to make much of an appearance in cloud computing. Nokia, the world’s biggest handset-maker, is trying to form a cloud with its set of online services called Ovi, but its efforts are still in their infancy. Governments outside America may harbour ambitious plans for state-funded clouds. They would do better simply to let their citizens make the most of the competition among the American colossi.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14637206

Using The Cloud For Business

Why the cloud is much more than a technology phenomenon.

Jan Baan

Jan Baan, founder of Baan Corp., was present at the creation of enterprise resource planning. While leading the ERP software company from 1978–98, Baan observed what worked well and what failed as companies automated their business processes using a datacentric approach. For the past 10 years, Baan has spent his time and more than
250 million euros ($360 million) of his money on Cordys, a software company that creates what Baan calls a business operations platform. In this Q&A, Baan examines what the cloud means for business, what went wrong with ERP, and how a business operations platform delivers flexible automation of business processes that can be optimized through cloud computing.

Forbes: Why are companies getting the cloud wrong?

Baan: If you want to get the cloud right, put away the slide decks on virtualization and infrastructure and start thinking about who you should be working with and how to work with them, and then think about how you can support that better than ever before. Too many people look at the cloud as a technology phenomenon when they should look at it as a business opportunity and an accelerator for collaboration. The cloud is an environment for creating ways of doing business that are radically different from monolithic ERP-based processes. The age of command-and-control in business technology is over. You empower the knowledge worker through collaboration.

What does the cloud really mean for business?

Business processes should be the core element in the cloud, not Word documents or e-mail. Everything in the cloud should grow out of an inherently collaborative business process. You have to think beyond the business processes in your company to linking your customers' customers to your suppliers' suppliers, and draw them all together in a common end-to-end business process. You can create those relationships much faster now, but people aren't taking advantage of it. They are still very much in the ERP paradigm, which can be limiting. The cloud allows everyone to focus on their own processes, share them with others, and add some individual elements to their own processes and optimize them.

Some of these same promises about end-to-end business processes were made about ERP when it was new. What went wrong?

In the ERP world, everything is data-centric. Data is king, and business processes became embedded in data silos. Many big companies have created stovepipes that are isolated from each other, with business processes stored in the data. The vendor's best practices are then overlaid on the processes. Those stovepipes are still isolated, trapped on premise. That inhibits innovation.

What is your vision of making the cloud work for business?

I don't want to imply that everything has to be on the cloud. The optimal situation is a combination--a kind of composition between legacy systems and the optimized business process from the business and its partners, and it lives in the cloud.

I call it a business operations platform, a bridge between traditional service-oriented architecture and some of the heavy-duty infrastructure and standard components from ERP. Business components are decoupled from underlying technology. The concept of "programming," in which a businessperson conceives of an idea and technologists program something that achieves it, gives way to describing a business process, and the IT landscape responds in kind. There is much more of a "what you model is what you get" feeling to this new paradigm.

What is the role of ERP in this scenario?

Your ERP system, along with a product life-cycle management system, logistics systems and others, can be integrated and used as vanilla components, while being further enhanced by best practices or best processes, achieving a state of operational effectiveness. Take what you have learned through years of experience with ERP and apply it to the cloud.

What are the benefits of getting this right?

Dramatic improvements in business processes, reduction in IT costs, and a radical expansion of partners to help you run your business. Applications in the cloud cost less than 10% of an on-premises application. That means double-digit-percentage cost savings, and, more importantly, a boost to the value stream. Lead time for product creation can be reduced from 60 days to one or two hours. It's already happening. Instead of building a car in six weeks, we can do it in a day.

What stands in the way of this transformation?

First of all, the role of CIO sometimes seems afraid of its own shadow. The CIO should become more of a business leader. Maybe we should change the title Chief Information Officer to Chief Process Officer (CPO).

CIOs with guts are crucial to change. The CEO is too isolated and unaware of the development of these trends, but now the CIO, in the new role of a CPO, could be a tremendous asset to the CEO, providing leadership for changing the company and improving business processes. The value is in aligning IT and business, and the CPO is much more on the business side, not just on the IT side.

Too much attention is focused on technology innovation and not enough on business innovation. When that happens, we add functionality, but also complexity. The technology innovations with real impact are those that reduce complexity.

IT should be democratized in the same way Henry Ford democratized the car. Currently, fully functional IT is only for Fortune 1000 companies with a big budget. In the future, the benefits of IT will be available for everyone. Small and medium-size enterprises are, with the new technology wave of a business operations platform, able to connect their supply chain much faster than Fortune 1000 companies can. Agility is the mantra for today's smart companies.

Social media and cloud computing are exciting because they foreshadow this future.

Dan Woods is chief technology officer and editor of Evolved Technologist, a research firm focused on the needs of CTOs and CIOs. He consults for many of the other companies he writes about. For more information, go toevolvedtechnologist.com.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/29/cloud-computing-software-technology-cio-network-woods.html?feed=rss_home