Recently, Forbes published an article on cloud computing, its popularity, and whether it is ready for prime time. While the cloud infrastructure and application markets are currently sized at $33B and $106B, respectively, and are continuing to grow, “[a] new report from HfS Research concludes that even the largest, most IT-savvy enterprises are still struggling to realize the value of As-a-Service platforms.”

Here are the biggest factors cited in the article, according to top executives:

• 56% state a lack of available “plug-and-play” services
• 47% blame their vendors, agreeing with the statement that “lack of willingness from our service provider(s) to cannibalize their existing revenue models”
• 44% state a lack of support from service provider(s) to share risks/gains

What is the impact of this? Seventy-one percent (71%) of large enterprises believe that realization of cloud services is at least five years out, possibly longer. Two percent (2%) believe they have reached a point where cloud is core to their business, ongoing strategy, and operations. I believe the numbers are at risk of being both over reported and under reported, depending upon the organization.

There is a potential for the number to be over reported by senior leaders due to multiple reasons. Lack of usage visibility and lack of understanding what cloud is, are the most prevalent. While hopefully rare, there may also be the perceived risk of irrelevance if the senior leadership and IT staff lack a cloud strategy. Thus, inflation of the numbers is a possibility.

It runs the chance of being under reported due to both IT and non-IT employees utilizing cloud providers. This often occurs outside of IT governance and oversight. In May 2014, Avanade, the joint Accenture and Microsoft consulting firm, conducted a survey of IT managers and found that 66% have seen the challenge of employee provisioned cloud services. Once again, this reflects the overall lack of visibility.

For these reasons and due to our core competencies, Contegix has always approached the market with a vision of responsibility. We need to build confidence in the cloud model. We strive to do this for our customers, partners, and even our industry peers.

First and foremost, we approach every customer by understanding their individual business needs and requirements. This is irrespective of their size, level of management required, and technical aptitude. Our conversations with prospects are focused on what will deliver value, move their organization forward, and provide a path forward for the business and its IT needs. As such, we view our role as both supplementing and complementing in order to allow corporate IT to focus on the strategic deliverables.

For many, this means delivering private and/or hybrid clouds designed to meet their current requirements. For others, it’s focused on delivering management of a specific application. Regardless, it means integrating with their current infrastructure and IT teams. This necessitates a mutual education between our customers and Contegix.

Finally, we help customers get visibility into their Contegix cloud environment by delivering industry leading metric collection and reporting. For a number of customers, this has led us to build even more capabilities that are specific to their needs.

It has been amazing to see customers’ IT staff (sys admins, engineers, and developers) move beyond infrastructure to focus on core business. That should be the full power of delivering the cloud. Yet, there is still work to do. The article sums it up best with the following statement – “the journey has only just begun and, frankly, there are some who have yet to realize that there is a journey to take.”

Contegix’s industry has gone through a series of name changes in the past 20 years. We have gone from being called “Internet Service Providers” to “Web Hosting Service Providers”. The “Web” was replaced with “Application” and later dropped as companies embraced the value of having all applications available via the internet, not just their website.

A decade ago, Contegix was one of the companies that helped pioneer a higher level of service for these applications. We believe that our customers are more innovative, more productive, and genuinely better run businesses when they are focused on their specific uniqueness rather than hardware and application infrastructure. Thus, the term “Managed Service Provider” was born. This is was specifically true for our managed services as we often push down into the application infrastructure.

In the past few years, the term “cloud” has become ubiquitious. This has led to Contegix being referred to as a “Cloud Service Provider”. Today, we use this term and often extend it to “Managed Cloud Service Provider” when describing what we do. We still passionately believe that managed services are what often help companies drive the benefit of IT.

The commonality used throughout this evolving name change has been the phrase “service provider”.

At our core, we provide our customers service as defined by “the action of helping or doing work for someone”. It’s represented in our core values. We believe in our mission to help lift the burden of technology. For many, this is through our private cloud solutions while others it may be colocation. For all, it includes our Go Beyond philosophy of service. As a “service provider” we can think of no greater privilege than the opportunity to deliver outstanding service and support to our customers on a consistent basis. We embrace the service provider label and regardless of what future descriptors are bestowed upon our industry, we will always remain true to our core and who we are.

Just upgraded this WordPress blog to 1.5.1 which is based upon the 2.5.1 WordPress codebase. While WordPress MU 2.6 has been released, the upgrade process appeared to succeed; however, it would not allow me to login as any user except ‘admin’ to access the per-user blogs.

C’est la vie. WordPress 1.5.1 will have to do for now.