Business

Watts S. Humphrey famously said, “every business is a software business.” Unfortunately, this statement has been misconstrued by well-meaning IT practitioners to demand primacy in the organization’s strategy, budgeting, and focus. But nothing could be more dysfunctional than letting technology lead your business. A business exists to serve customers, and nothing else matters. Customers don’t care about anything “behind the curtain,” only the elements of your business with which they interact. ...

Whether you operate IaaS, PaaS, or a SaaS service, watch out for these three pitfalls to the success of cloud offerings: Encouraging the wrong thing. Measuring the success of the offering by looking only at utilization metrics damages sales. One cloud service provider measured the success of its IaaS service - and compensated its sales force - based on virtual machine usage. Little surprise that, for all the years that this practice continued, the provider could not land strategically important accounts. Like in any mature sales operation, your prospective cloud service clients should be evaluated based on several criteria, including: ...