IBF Media has been running a series of events called Capital Connection 2010 which is focused on serving the needs of entrepreneurs looking to connect with participants in the venture capital eco-system, technology executives, and to get access to capital and resources to help build their growing enterprises.

IBF Media PaaS Panel Discussion

The latest in the series was a panel discussion on ‘Cloud Platforms and Solutions: Business Models and Architectures for Value Creation in the Enterprise’. The emphasis was more on the value that Platform as a Service (PaaS) brings to an enterprise. The organizers managed to get the best PaaS providers in the business – Google, Microsoft and OrangeScape. While I represented Microsoft Corporation as the subject matter expert on Windows Azure, we had Rajdeep Dua from Google to provide the Google App Engine context. Suresh Sambandam, CEO of OrangeScape PaaS (which incidentally supports both GAE and Azure) was also one of the panelists. The session was moderated by Raghavan Subramanian from Infosys who did a great job of asking very relevant questions to the panel and driving a meaningful discussion.

The discussion was very lively and made it interesting and valuable for the attendees and panelists. I want to share the answers to the questions that were asked in the panel. This represents only the points that I shared and not the views of other panelists in the discussion.

Q) What does your company offer in terms of PaaS? What are the key differentiators?
A) Microsoft’s PaaS offering is called Windows Azure Platform.

There are three key services within this –

• Windows Azure – The Cloud OS from Microsoft
• SQL Azure – Relational Database for the Cloud
• Windows Azure AppFabric – Bridge between on-premise and Cloud Services

Key differentiators –

• Based on familiar .NET Platform
• Great integration with Visual Studio and 3rd party tools
• Reliable SLAs for the enterprise
• Integration with on-premise assets
• Choice of storage between relational (SQL Azure) and non-relational (Azure Storage)

IBF Media PaaS Panel Discussion

Q) What is the threat faced from the layers above (SaaS) and below (IaaS) PaaS?
A) I believe the line drawn between IaaS and PaaS is blurring slowly. Windows Azure is clearly a meta-platform and customers can run Java, PHP, Perl along with .NET applications. Worker role and Native Execution mode enables to port legacy applications to Azure. Since Microsoft also plays in the SaaS layer through the Microsoft Online services, it is an opportunity for us rather than threat. We encourage ISVs to build SaaS offerings on Azure.

Q) Who is the target audience? Is it ISVs or enterprise?
A) Our target audience is the following –

• ISV – Offer SaaS based solutions of their existing or new applications
• Enterprise – Move seasonal and on-demand Line of Business (LoB) applications to Azure
• Start-up – Go live quickly by avoiding up-front investment in infrastructure
• System Integrators – Offer migration and integration of Cloud Services

Q) What is the role of standards for lowering the entry barrier?
A) Standards are applicable at multiple levels. Here are a few

• Security Standards – Azure is SAS70 complaint
• Industry Standards – Supporting industry specific standards like HIPAA
• Open Standards – Azure storage, compute and management APIs are based on open standards like HTTP, XML and REST.

Q) Are there Cloud friendly languages? Do programming languages need new constructs to target cloud capabilities like multi-tenancy?
A) Developers interact with the Cloud in one of the two ways –

• Consume APIs and interact with the Cloud through the management API
• Develop applications that get deployed on the Cloud platform

For consuming the APIs, any language with support for HTTP libraries will work. More than languages the frameworks like .NET and Java need to evolved to support Cloud. For example .NET developers are able to leverage the LINQ constructs to interact with the Cloud storage efficiently.

IBF Media PaaS Panel Discussion

Q) How do you assure continuity of business? Are you a viable and reliable vendor for the enterprises to bet their business on your Cloud platform?
A) Microsoft has been in the data center business for 15 years. Hotmail was acquired in 1977, Outlook Web Access (OWA) was launched 11 years ago. Hosted Exchange processes more than 1 billion messages per month. More than 2000 institutions signed up for Live@Edu with millions of email accounts. Enterprise customers trust us as we have been a credible player for more than a decade. Windows Azure has the right level of SLAs defined which raises the confidence level of our customers.

Q) How about 3rd party components and licensing on the Cloud?
A) Most of the component vendors are aligning with the Cloud. Players like PayPal started to offer services for the SaaS developers by collaborating with PaaS providers. Companies like Twilio are bringing telephony to the Cloud. Most of the components will evolve to support the new paradigm.

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

Related Posts

• VMforce – What’s in it for us?
• A Case for Private PaaS
• Cloud Computing – What’s in it for you?
• Is it Azure vs. Rest of the World on the Cloud?
• Speaking at Capital Connection 2010

IBF Media is running a series of events covering various trends in Cloud Computing. This event presents and discusses one of the key challenges of cloud computing, which is defining successful business models and architectures for value creation in the enterprise. At this nascent stage both SMEs and large enterprises are just beginning to adopt cloud technologies, as CIOs and IT managers learn about how they can deploy the cloud in their organizations it will create business opportunities for startups and entrenched players to develop business models that are successful in serving their customers as well leading to the success of their own companies. The panel will be composed of successful venture investors from the Indian venture capital industry as well as founders of cloud startups and technology professionals from companies in India that are competing in this space to win customers.

The panelists include Suresh Sambandam – Founder & CEO, OrangeScape, Rajdeep Dua – Developer Advocate, Google India and Raghavan Subramanian – Associate Vice President, Infosys

I am glad to be one of the panelists in this discussion. Unlike conventional conferences, this is a panel discussion and not a presentation.

This conference is on July 8th at Hotel Royal Orchid, Bangalore. Visit the event website for more info – http://www.ibfmedia.com/ccjul2010.php

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

Related Posts

• IBF Media’s PaaS Panel Discussion
• K-MUG DevCon 2010
• CloudCamp Bangalore & Hadoop Summit
• A Case for Private PaaS
• Do We Need ODBC for the Cloud?

This post comes live from CloudCamp Bangalore & Hadoop Summit. After delivering CloudCamp across India, Dave Neilsen, Prem and the India team of CloudCamp reached Bangalore.

The event started with Yahoo! folks delivering the keynote on Hadoop and Cloud Computing. It was interesting to see the efforts of Yahoo! in this space.

After the keynote, there was an UnPanel. This was the first time that I have been a part of such an UnPanel. Dave called out for volunteer panelists from the audience. Whoever raises their hand gets to be a part of it! I managed to be a part of this panel sharing the dais with folks from Apache, Google, Samsung, VMWare, InMobi and Microsoft. The audience were asked to call out their concerns and questions around Cloud. The questions were typed in Notepad and put up on the screen as they were asked. After compiling 10 questions, the panelists were asked to pick a question and answer it in a minute. Every panelist got to answer at least one question. There were questions around security, standards, interop, data and SDLC. I answered questions on data and the hybrid cloud. Overall, I found this format to be very innovative and it has certainly added value to the attendees!

After the panel, Dave again invited the audience to propose a topic and also be the speaker. This is again in the true style of UnConference. 6 to 8 including me stepped up and wrote the topic name on a chart and handed it over to Dave. He then asked the audiences to vote for their favorite session by raising their hand in the support of session that he calls out. Quickly, there were about 6 sessions that got shortlisted and the agenda was again typed in Notepad that was projected on the screen. Amazing way of crowdsourcing the agenda and the topic!

Cloud Camp

After lunch, I went to one of the breakout rooms to deliver my session on Windows Azure. I had about 30 folks in my session. I got 40 min. to explain and demo Azure to the audience. The session was very interactive and I had a lot of questions on Google App Engine vs Azure. The feedback to Microsoft is that they should open up VM hours free to developers. Few also wanted to find how to send mail from Azure like the way they do it in Google App Engine.

After my session, I walked into the main auditorium to attend the Hadoop track. I am finding the sessions to be interesting but they are very research specific.

For those who attended my session today, you can watch the screencast of the demo that I have shown today. I also have an article on Microsoft Windows Azure that explains the basics of it.

You can download the slide deck from the talks section of my website.

I want to conclude this post by thanking Dave Nielsen, Prem Shankar and the team behind the CloudCamp. They truly inspired me!

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

Related Posts

• IBF Media’s PaaS Panel Discussion
• K-MUG DevCon 2010
• Speaking at Capital Connection 2010
• A Case for Private PaaS
• Do We Need ODBC for the Cloud?

A decade back only a handful of folks carried the title of an ‘Evangelist’ on their business cards. This role was predominantly found within software product and developer platform companies. It is Apple, Microsoft, Sun and Google that made this title sound very cool. Today it is common to find Evangelists in the corporate world. I have also seen a few companies giving the title of an Evangelist to the honorary roles and external profiles associated with them. It is not uncommon to encounter sales folks, marketers and consultants in the guise of an Evangelist. I sometimes found that when the HR team cannot find a suitable title, they park the newly defined profile under the Evangelist title.

I want to touch upon the sensitive aspect of what evangelism is and what it isn’t.

First, let me start by calling out what doesn’t qualify to be called as Evangelism:

1) Sales – Evangelism is never about closing a sale. Sales folks are shrewd business people with a single-minded focus on clinching the deal. They are less emotional and sentimental about the product that they are selling. They can pretty much sell anything to anyone. On the other hand, an Evangelist would go any length to convince the customer about the value proposition and focuses less on the transactional outcome. Organizations should never treat Evangelists as pre-sales resources. They always help the company acquire and retain loyal customers who will be the advocates of the brand in the longer term.

2) Marketing – Evangelism is perceived as a marketing technique by many. Marketing is all about accelerating the sales cycle. It involves running the right campaign involving the customers, partners and the company with a goal to create a ‘pull’ for the product. A typical marketing campaign has a defined life-time and the success metric is always the market share. Evangelism is a long term investment and goes much beyond the time lines of a fiscal year. The success metric of Evangelism is qualitative than quantitative. If the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is measured through the market share, the real impact that Evangelism brings is the positive mind share for the product. Marketing Managers cannot replace passionate Evangelists. Period.

3) Consulting – This is another common misconception. Few companies project the Evangelist as the best-in-town technical expert and will put him through the scariest fire-fighting exercise at a customer. Not a good idea! Evangelists are generally good at a breadth of technologies and great at articulating the value proposition. Evangelists are at their best when put in front of 100 audiences and they walk out leaving the hall thoroughly impressed and completely convinced. They need not have the technical depth of a consultant who focuses on one and only one technology. Evangelists are not billable resources. They need their own space and the freedom of speech to excel!

4) Training – No doubt! Evangelists are the best story-tellers in the town. They simplify complex terminologies and explain the concepts in a lucid and easy manner. But that doesn’t mean Evangelists are the best trainers. Evangelism is all about influencing and not hand-holding the customers. They hate spoon feeding and delivering ‘courses’ based on a fixed curriculum. They paint the big picture and are great at instigating the desire to use a product. They are too impatient to stand up and deliver a day-long lecture.

5) Program Management – Sure! Evangelists are disciplined enough to run their mission like an independent business. They love to strategize, plan and execute to achieve their goal. But that doesn’t turn Evangelists into Program Managers. The force that constantly keeps the Evangelists on the move is the passion for the product and not the milestones, strategy meetings and long conference calls. I have seen some Program Managers at Microsoft who are the best Evangelists for their product or feature. But it is an exception! Evangelists who are forced to be Program Managers will lose the sight of the long term mission and end up being glorified coordinators.

So, you are wondering how the existence of an Evangelist is justified! If they don’t belong to any of the mainstream functions that are essential for the survival of a company, why should they get paid in the first place? Having a team of Evangelists is a luxury and not every company can afford it. But companies who have a long term vision and strongly believe in making customers an integral part of their journey do invest in them.

I want to point you to what Jonathan Schwartz, President & CEO of Sun said about Evangelism. In his blog post, Understanding Sun in Three Easy Steps, Jonathan puts Developer Advocacy as the number one priority.

“1. Recruit every developer on earth to use our software or services.

This is a strategic activity, not a financial one, so don’t look for revenue here. I’ll devote an entire entry to understanding the motivations and mechanisms driving technology adoption, and to discussing the varied audiences we target. As the head of developer technologies from a very large customer said to me last week over dinner, “I haven’t visited Sun in five years, but all of a sudden you seem to matter to my developers.” I’ll help parse that statement in my next entry.”

The above statement has a lot of inner meaning. It tells us that even after owning the most successful and a mature platform called Java, Sun still puts developer evangelism in the forefront of their strategy. The other fact that it highlights is that when you engage with the right set of technical audience within a customer account, you will start influencing the most crucial management decision. Read the interesting and impacting post by Jonathan on technology adoption and how evangelism influences it. I completely connect with it as I had the opportunity to be the first Microsoft Academic Evangelist in India to run the academic evangelism initiative that had a positive impact on the academic ecosystem and Microsoft.

I also covered the 7 key traits of an Evangelist in one of my earlier posts.

Now, let us see what value Evangelism brings to the table:

1) Trust – Evangelists are the biggest catalysts in building the trust around the product that they believe in. They naturally become the trusted advisor for the customer because they know the intentions of an Evangelist and believe in his conviction. No other role is as strategic as an Evangelist to win over the customer trust!

2) Credibility – This emerges from the trust element that I discussed earlier. Through honest and passionate discussions, an Evangelist will demonstrate that he is genuinely interested in the customer realizing the value of the product and get the best of it. There are more chances that the customer will involve the Evangelist before finalizing the next big bet.

3) Influence – The best thing about Evangelism is that it is viral. A good Evangelist not only drives the adoption of the product, but also turns the customer into his Co-Evangelist. Together they soon create an army of influencers, advocates and brand ambassadors for the product. No other job function can do this so effectively.

4) Community – This is a logical climax to the above. A successful Evangelist will herd all the influencers together to form an active community. He takes charge of keeping them excited and motivated all the time. The organic growth of this community is a positive sign of successful evangelism and the popularity of the brand.

5) Advocacy – An Evangelist is the first and the best advocate of the product. He is the default spokesperson to stand up and responsibly talk to the press or the critiques. He wouldn’t loose his cool when attacked by the competition or the hostile audience. He would have an objective yet meaningful discussion and walks out unscathed.

Evangelists are uniquely positioned to deliver unmatched value to the company. Organizations and managers should learn the art and science of managing the evangelist teams to get the best out of them.

There is an interesting post on Evangelism Beyond Boundaries by my ex-colleague and a good friend Vinod Kumar.

I want to conclude this article by recalling what Guy Kawasaki told me when I asked him about differentiating the fanatics from evangelists. Fanatics forcefully push their agenda whereas an Evangelist always puts the customer first.

Do share your experiences of interacting with an Evangelist that you have come across.

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

Related Posts

• 7 Signs That You Are an Evangelist
• IBF Media’s PaaS Panel Discussion
• Speaking at Capital Connection 2010
• Personal Branding and Evangelism
• Jani & GTUG?

I had the opportunity to be a part of Microsoft Community TechDays at Hyderabad and Bangalore. What is special about CTD? This is run completely by the community and the User Groups with a very little support from Microsoft.

The Hyderabad CTD was held on 20th September at Microsoft campus. I had the privilege to deliver the keynote on Azure Services Platform.

Azure Code Camp at MS Community TechDays

Today I delivered the Windows Azure Code Camp session at the Bangalore CTD. Code Camp is a session where I use no slides. In fact, I start the session deleting the Powerpnt.exe from the Office12 folder. The scenario I chose covers the key aspects of Windows Azure – Web Role, Worker Role, Compute, Storage and Configuration. It is hard to cover all this in a matter of one hour. But I make sure that I set the right context as I go along. In my scenario, I build a Web App that mimics the functionality of Twitter. The nick name and the status are stored in the Azure Table Storage. The scenario also exposes a WCF Service along with the Web App, that pulls and pushes the status messages. The Worker Role has code that constantly polls the given Twitter account and writes selected messages to the same Table in Azure Storage. Excluding the Worker Role, I covered everything in 55 min.

I am glad that the session was well received and most of the attendees told me that they want to go back and write their first app on Azure.

I am planning to record and screencast the demo along with a step-by-step guide. I will have to find time to do that soon.

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

Related Posts

• IBF Media’s PaaS Panel Discussion
• Windows Azure Series at B.NET
• Azure Session at Bangalore Tech.Ed Mini Event
• A Case for Private PaaS
• Cloud Computing – What’s in it for you?