1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Domain Knowledge

At 1Mby1M, we believe in learning from case studies of successful entrepreneurs. These case studies involve discussions on opportunities and challenges specific to the domain such as Generative AI, E-Commerce, Digital Health, Cyber Security, and FinTech. 

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dave Hart, CTO and EVP, Presidio (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

What is the contribution of cloud computing in today’s rapidly evolving enterprise data center – is it speed, efficiency, lower costs, or more? Cloud adoption is driven today as much by time to market as by the cost and efficiency considerations. Businesses demand a data center that is responsive to the IT needs of the organization. The next-generation data center is flexible; easy to manage; highly efficient in terms of performance with lower costs for deployment and operation; actively harness technologies such as virtualization; has mechanisms for improved power and cooling; and incorportates cloud computing and its new business models. >>>

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

How are IT organizations in large companies approaching clouds? We covered some bits of it in the post Large Enterprises: To Be or Not To Be In The Clouds. Private clouds came up as the preferred choice given the legacy, security, and continuity theme in a large enterprise. In the latest interview of our series Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing, Sramana talks to Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO of EMC. She uncovers additional aspects related to people and process evolution in large enterprises such as EMC, as they journey into the cloud. Sanjay shares his thoughts on how EMC is using their own core technologies to tier, consolidate, and virtualize to attain the business agility that the cloud promises.

Sanjay Mirchandani is senior vice president and chief information officer of EMC Corporation. He is responsible for extending EMC’s operational excellence and driving technological innovation, and he leads EMC’s network of global delivery centers in India, China, Russia, and Israel. Prior to joining EMC, Mirchandani was Microsoft’s regional vice president for enterprise services and Asia. Mirchandani earned a master’s in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s degree from Drew University.

EMC provides information infrastructure technology and solutions such as unified storage, content management, security, virtualization, backup and recovery, private clouds, virtual desktop infrastructure, efficiency, automation, and archiving. The company’s revenues for FY 2009 were $14 billion. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, MA, and has a global presence across the world with approximately 43,000 employees. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In the multibillion-dollar market of higher education in the United States, we see an interesting trend whereby a combination of IT people and college communities are playing the role of an active “lead user” and using the cloud computing paradigm to make campus life simpler and information accessible for students through handheld devices. In this interview, we have some insights for you on evolutionary application integrations happening at Westmont and in higher education, from dispensing efficient IT infrastructure for effective collaboration to simplifying campus processes and other real-world tasks. During the interview, Sramana and Dr. Reed Sheard, VP and CIO of Westmont University College, discuss how Sheard has deployed cloud computing technologies and solutions to help the Westmont IT user community move to a higher level of service and helped the college IT team evolve to the next level in terms of business alignment. It is interesting to note that there has been explosive growth in the number of Apple devices in the higher education world, with applications taking a lead in terms of the user base compared to pure browser-based or Internet applications and the absence of Amazon’s Kindle, which is positioned as the textbook of the future in higher education but still needs a volume of textbooks to be made available on it and still lacks the ease with which iPad users can make notes and collaborate. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Scott Martin, CIO Of Nonni’s Food Company (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In this interview, Scott Martin, CIO at Nonni’s Food Company, shares his insights on cloud computing. It is interesting to note how a mid-size company such as Nonni’s Foods is harnessing private clouds to drive operational efficiency not only in IT but also across sales and billing. This enables the company to not only focus more on core business activities but also to deploy solutions that they could not think of earlier, before cloud business models, due to the upfront costs involved. There are some interesting thoughts on deploying a document management system in a private cloud by a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company such as Nonni’s Foods. In the entrepreneurship section, Scott discusses some of his wish-list items from a thin client, iPad perspective and exploiting the full potential of mobile devices in an enterprise scenario. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Paul Stamas, VP of IT, Mohawk Fine Papers (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In this interview, Sramana and Paul Stamas, VP of IT at Mohawk Fine Papers, discuss how cloud computing has helped Mohawk compete with larger players without having to grow its data center and staffing. Paul believes that cloud computing is an essential element of IT for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing because survival for them is dependent on enterprise agility, adaptability, and developing highly differentiated products and services in a global value chain.

Paul Stamas is vice president of information technology at Mohawk Fine Papers, the largest premium paper manufacturer in North America.  Prior to Mohawk, he held executive IT management positions at Sprint PCS; Phillips Medical Systems; GM-Hughes, and the Department of Defense.  He received BA in applied statistics from the State University of New York (SUNY); a BS in industrial and systems engineering from (SUNY); an executive MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and he is currently pursuing a doctorate from the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool). >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rajan Nagarajan, CIO, Mahindra Satyam (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In one of the most thought-stirring interviews with Rajan Nagarajan CIO, Mahindra Satyam, Sramana discusses cloud computing adoption from the point of view of large systems integrators such as Mahindra Satyam. In addition to talking about how big consulting companies are leveraging clouds, Sramana and Rajan have a thought-provoking exchange about open opportunities in cloud computing for entrepreneurs, a discussion which has whetted my appetite for more and raised the bar for idea-churning discussions as part of this series, Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing (TLCC). >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In the following interview, Sramana and Steven discuss how supply chain services for Internet-based electronic data interchange (EDI) in the automotive and traditional whole goods markets are adopting cloud computing to their advantage. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: James Dunlap, President Of Cycle30 (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Today, the telecom industry charges its subscribers based on fixed price business models for data services. But to keep up with the rate at which bandwidth consumption is scaling, telecom vendors will almost certainly need to adopt a variable pricing model, such that they can charge based on consumption just as they charge for voice services. The utility industry charges based on how much energy or water is consumed, but the telecom industry assumes unlimited data usage for a fixed fee. >>>

Interview Series With Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing Announced

To help bring entrepreneurs closer to thought leaders and early adopters in cloud computing, Sramana Mitra has launched a new series of in-depth interviews – Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing. You can find the announcement and more details here.

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Donald Ferguson, CTO of CA Technologies (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Shaloo Shalini and Bhavana Sharma

As enterprises across industry verticals around the globe are drawn into the obvious benefits of adopting cloud computing to begin their own cloud journeys, IT management solution providers such as CA Technologies are a unique case study. They not only deploy cloud computing–based technologies and solutions within their organization and reap huge benefits in their business processes, they also deal with issues of supporting their offerings. Before the advent of the cloud, their offerings were mostly on-premise. Now such companies are moving these offerings to the new SaaS-based model, making them cloud ready, so to speak. In addition, large companies are always on the lookout for technology acquisitions which can augment their portfolios. This is where the startups part of the ecosystem and innovation become relevant, especially with reference to cloud computing. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Marcos Athanasoulis, Harvard Medical School (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Healthcare and life sciences is a vertical that can gain tremendously from technological paradigm shifts such as cloud computing. Despite obvious deterrents in the form of data security and privacy, HIPPA, and the sheer volume of unstructured data in terms of storage, management, analytics and research, there is no dearth of opportunity for innovators and entrepreneurs who are looking to overcome challenges and create solutions to benefit not only the medicos but also researchers dealing with complex life science scenarios. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dennis Hodges, CIO Of Inteva (Part 1)

By guest author Shaloo Shalini and Bhavana Sharma

Inteva is a pioneer in manufacturing industry when it comes to deploying cloud computing–based solutions, primarily SaaS, within its organization and cut costs to almost a third of what they were.

In this interview with Dennis Hodges, CIO of Inteva Products, Sramana uncovers several cloud computing trends. One of them is the case of early adopters pushing cloud vendors to address integration between on-premise and cloud services. Once there is significant adoption, this may not be a scalable proposition, and eventually we expect several new players and innovation by third parties and entrepreneurs to help the cloud providers and cloud adopters work out integration. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark White, CTO Of Deloitte (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Saurabh Mallik

This interview is part of our series on Thought leaders in Cloud Computing. I am talking to Mark White of Deloitte. Mark is the chief technology officer of Deloitte Consulting LLP’s technology practice and the lead IT principal on the Department of Homeland Security account. In his six years at Deloitte, Mark has served clients in the federal government, financial services, real estate, high tech, energy, transportation, and other industries. Guest author Narayanan Raman interviewed him last year as part of the CIO Priorities series.

SM: As a thought leader for your company, where is your sense of cloud computing adoption today?

MW: It actually has progressed well. We spoke nine months ago; part of the discussion was about what we see CIOs doing based on the economic downturn and the potential back up. I think at that time one of the topics we discussed was how the economic downturn accelerated the evolution of cloud by at least two or three years, because in many cases it forced experimentation and adoption earlier than we would have otherwise seen. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Michael Aginsky, CTO Of Gibbons P.C. (Part 1)

By guest author Shaloo Shalini and Bhavana Sharma

In this interview, Sramana and Michael Aginsky discuss cloud computing adoption from the legal industry perspective. The legal industry has evolved slowly but significantly and reaped benefits from tremendous changes in information technology over the past decade. Law firms are actively gearing up to beat competition and get out of the old “relationship” mode of doing business. They are actively adopting newer technologies, including cloud computing and social networking [survey data here], for almost all aspects of what they do – consulting with clients, colleagues, or experts; increasing compliance and regulation demands; wading through a constantly expanding sea of legislation and case law; managing outsourcing partners; keeping abreast with latest developments; or managing a mountain of matter files. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Ric Telford, Vice President Of Cloud Services, IBM (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra, Pablo Chacin and Saurabh Mallik

SM: Ric, to start can you tell us about what you have done thus far in cloud computing and talk about how it has evolved at IBM?

RT: I started working on cloud computing – what it was all about, what was going on in the marketplace, and what we should do about it at IBM – in 2008. In that year, we formulated our cloud strategy, which we have been executing ever since. 2009 was a year of consolidation of views – everybody was using the term “cloud” for so many things, most of them inaccurate. The value proposition, cost model, and delivery model all took hold in 2009. We had a lot of work going on: pilots, customer engagements for some of our first cloud services such as LotusLive, and information protection services, which are backup and recovery in the cloud. >>>