Cloud Trends: The Evolution of Vertically Targeted Public Clouds

Clouds today are not what clouds will be tomorrow. As the technology of clouds evolve, clouds will become more tailored  to the needs of specific consumer groups, specific professional groups and specific industries and markets.

Vertical marketing of cloud technology will bring about vertical branding of clouds. Google Home is one indicator of this trend. Google Home is a cloud platform that is geared for the home, the home consumer.  Saleforce.com , with the promotion of its Health Cloud, is another example of a vertical cloud marketing trend. Other cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft Azure, IBM, HP  and Rackspace will more than likely join in this trend, if they already have not.

Today though, companies, professionals, and consumers for the most part must still sort through an ocean of IT jargon to determine what cloud provider actually can fill their specific cloud computing, service and software needs.  Those who are knew to cloud technology, and are not IT professionals, are forced to learn the meaning of unfamiliar terms such as  Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and so on and so on.

These terms baffle many and are not conducive to making sales to companies that simply want to know what the cloud means to their professional lives and business organizations.  A vertical marketing approach that uses terms that are familiar to specific types of professionals and businesses, and avoids terms that are IT professional centric  may well be a better way to educate target markets about the cloud and generate market  interest.  IT centric words, still, have their place. After all its IT departments and CIOs that actually make cloud buying decisions. As well, it is the IT staff that evaluates a cloud provider based on network metrics such as computer time, hardware allocation capability, security and optimization capabilities.

Cloud vertical marketing will open the way to a more highly competitive market. For example, there is little doubt that  a biotechnology company would prefer to go to a cloud provider that focuses on biotechnology business and scientific needs than  just an everyday generic cloud provider  The ideal biotechnology cloud provider would specialize in high-powered genetic SaaS,  databases specific to the needs of biotechnology companies, hardware configurations that are optimized for intensive genome calculations and even have PaaS specifically made for the development of biotech software. All of which would help reduce not only operating costs of biotechnology companies but reduce the cost of market entry.

The list of vertical clouds is as endless as the number of different business markets. For example, automotive clouds, agricultural clouds, transportation clouds, logistics clouds, integrated circuit clouds to name just a few possibilities. . This means that there is  plenty of work for cloud providers to do. And it means that the ones that do this vertical work will end up with major market shares in specific and lucrative vertical cloud markets.

Cloud Computing for Home Users: Defining the Home Cloud

With all the different cloud definitions it is easy to get confused about what a cloud is. The truth of the matter is that a cloud is no more than just a giant computer. Different cloud providers, such as Google and Microsoft both have giant computers that they call their cloud. And they let you use their giant computers for a monthly subscription fee or in many cases, for free.

More precisely, Google and Microsoft as well as other cloud providers, have more than one giant computer for you. Google Home, for instance, is a giant computer (or cloud), that has special software that is designed for home users. Google Home lets you make phone calls and lets you search for information through voice command.  This software is all accessed when you give a voice command to your Google Home device. The Google Home Cloud can also be accessed through your cell phone, that is if you have downloaded the Google Home app to your cell phone. 

Different cloud providers, provide different types of clouds, which for the more tech savvy, may be called computer platforms or computer networks, or distributed processing platforms. These different clouds are designed for different types of people with different needs. The Google Home cloud has been designed for the home. It was designed to meet the computer needs of people when they are at home.  Another popular cloud, called the Creative Cloud (from Adobe Systems) has been designed for artists, graphic designers and all-things multimedia including video films. When you sign up for the Adobe Cloud, you gain access to all of Adobe's software as well as Adobe's giant computer.

There are also general-purpose clouds. These clouds are designed for the business needs of corporations. Corporations require advanced business software and in many cases, super giant sized computers. These super giant computers, which can also be called supercomputers, may be called onto to process millions of sales transactions every day or monitor business activity from every corner of the world, every minute of the day. 

As the cloud concept progresses, expect to see clouds for every type of profession and activity. For example, for emergency situations, emergency workers access Emergency Clouds. These Emergency Clouds store emergency data, and have emergency analysis software on them. Emergency workers access Emergency Clouds through their cell phones or through their lap tops.

Clouds often work together with other clouds. For example, a Home Cloud, at times, in an emergency, may need to access the data in an Emergency Cloud. Or, an Emergency Cloud, may want to send out information to Googles Home Cloud. Google's Home Cloud in turn could alert all its subscribers about emergency information they need to know. 

Reducing Cloud Costs with Cloud and Business Management Services

Costs have been one of the major reasons organizations have switched from private clouds to public clouds. Startups embrace the public cloud because it eliminates the need to build and manage a private cloud on-site. This saves on initial startup costs that include IT hardware, IT software and IT staff. For a high tech startup comes other public cloud benefits. One is that the company does not have to concern itself with IT issues and can focus on product development and product marketing issues.

Well, that is at least true in theory until the monthly cloud bills come floating through the door. Many companies will just pay the bill when they are in start-up frenzy mode. The more cloud savvy will start looking around for ways to find out how to reduce cloud costs. 

What the latter will find out is  that cloud ignorance is increasing cloud bills. The truth about the cloud is that many companies over allocate cloud resources, such as cloud instances (processors) which may result in cloud billings that are 2 or 3 times  than they need to be. 

Newer companies may not even have one IT expert on staff. They may depend solely on the support services of the cloud vendor. This means that the company is in the dark about how to reduce cloud costs. Not only do they not  know how to optimize cloud infrastructures, but they also don't how to  streamline automated processes so that cloud costs and company inefficiencies are mitigated. . 

Forgetting about IT altogether is one way to go. However, one should also remember that IT, business process flows, and business automation are skills that a company should have a handle on. If they don't, they are not only subjecting themselves to unnecessarily high cloud bills, but are missing out on the benefits the high processing power that the cloud offers.  True cloud power translates to lower business operating costs and more effective marketing and sales operations. All of which, make a more expensive cloud bill pay for itself. 

Ideally, any company that uses the cloud, should know how to use it such that the cloud hardware and software is optimized for the lowest cost and the best performance (cloud management services). And they should know how to use the cloud so that businesses processes can be continually improved (cloud business process management services). Without the two, a company never will realize higher revenue growth, lower time to market and continued reductions in operating costs. Something that their cloud-savvy competitors are only to pleased to hear.