Locked in again? Customers must face their responsibility and take action

How should customers respond to Oracle’s plans to discontinue support for software running on Intel’s Itanium platform? With moral outrage and financial sanctions, that’s how.

Enterprise information systems are not business relationships of finite duration for their customers. The relationship is more like a marriage. Enterprise systems are lifetime commitments for the businesses, governments and institutions involved.

And it’s not a traditional marriage, it’s a plural marriage. Corporate data and business process software are co-creations of independent software vendors, system integrators, in-house software developer and end users.

When it comes to the Global 5,000 businesses, the likes of IBM, HP, Oracle Microsoft, Unisys and CA are all in the same accounts with WiPro and Tata. And Google, Apple, Amazon and countless companies you’ve never heard of. Governments and institutions are in the same situation.

And now we have bad behavior and major marital discord on our hands. Again!

Some things never change

Even after three decades of progress on open standards, a few things remain true.

1. Open systems are lot like broccoli. It’s good for you, but not everybody likes it and some people find it difficult to digest.
2. It is in the financial interest of vendors to lock customers in.
3. New technology comes in all the time, and choices continue to explode.

The result: as with supermarkets, so with enterprise vendors; choices abound. For every bunch of raw broccoli customers can take home and cook up, there is a bag of crispy chips and a box of yummy brownies they can snack on right away. Shoppers’ brains tell them they should consider antioxidants and fibre, but their stomachs tell them they’re in a hurry and need to eat now.

It has been very difficult for CIOs to keep their options open. Because of the complexity of enterprise systems, the prospect of one throat to choke is an overwhelming temptation.

Even though CIOs know that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, businesses, governments and institutions have not been vigilant about maintaining the option of a second source in critical areas of the enterprise infrastructure.

Thus, switching costs remain huge. The database area is where CIOs have allowed themselves to become most vulnerable.

And the database vendor grown most fat and happy has chosen now to act really dumb.

Oracle has unilaterally decided to stop all development on Intel’s 64-bit Itanium chip. Responsible vendors evolve processor architectures with plenty of notice, up to 10 years, to enable CIOs to make and execute their own plans when it is convenient for their businesses. This time, Oracle has chosen deliberately to trigger an earthquake under the feet of HP-UX and VMS customers using Oracle’s database and development environment.

And lest we forget, Oracle is not just a database vendor.

Oracle has also discontinued development for PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and every other product in the Oracle portfolio that runs on Itanium. So this is not just a man-made earthquake for the customers. It is a man-made tsunami as well. Thanks!

Déjà vu all over again

Back in the late 1980s, I was in my office at the Yankee Group peacefully working on a forecast for the industrial automation market. The phone rang. It was a conference call. The CIOs of three of the major auto makers were hatching a plan to escape from IBM’s clutches. Was I available as a hostage negotiator? That’s how I became the Open Systems Advisor.

We rounded up our friends at 50 multinational enterprises, flew to Brussels, and met with the X/Open vendors to get specific about a multi-vendor version of SAA.

After all their attempts to reason with IBM failed, customers had to take action and switch vendors.

In 1992, at the height of its fat-dumb-and-happy period, IBM management was astounded by a $5 billion loss, the largest in the history of business.

Lou Gerstner got the unenviable job of reforming IBM’s misguided ways.

Today, IBM has proven that leopards can change their spots. The New Blue has proven to itself that fair play actually works better than lock in.

Fool me once, shame on you

Jerking customers around on mission-critical software components is a serious issue with material consequences for businesses, institutions and governments. IMHO, to do so is to demonstrate an arrogant irresponsibility that has lost touch with reality.

Arbitrarily informing customers that you’re suddenly discontinuing development for Itanium systems is a cheap trick that erodes Oracle’s moral authority to lead.

Maybe Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd will learn a lesson from history. Maybe they will not have to personally experience the consequences of railroading their Itanium customers into a stockyard pen.

Perhaps they will come to their senses, man up to their kuleana and extend a little consideration.

Or perhaps they are just having us on. Joking around, like in the old days.
Perhaps @Oracle will tweet “April Fool! Gotcha!”

Fool me twice, shame on me

CIOs, you have a great opportunity. Reconfigurable IT infrastructure available by the shipping container is completely changing the economics of the data center operation.

CIOs, new technology, at new price points, are creating new possibilities. You have important new options in the IT-ownership model as cloud services become mission-critical.

Oracle’s behavior should be a warning to you. You must control your own destiny. You must:

• Maintain vendor discipline by maintaining viable second sources
• Guard your business DNA, and not allow it to become the chattel property of any one supplier

Open systems are your insurance policy. Open systems promote competition. Competition among your suppliers gives you business choices. Choices give you fair prices and reasonable business policies. Choices prevent anti-competitive vendor behavior like Oracle’s.

Now is the time to reconsider the meaning of portability and interoperability in the new world of IT sourcing options.

Alternatively, if you prefer the simplicity of a single-vendor solution, and consciously choose to be locked in, you would do well to consider the character of the vendor who holds the keys to your kingdom.

Meanwhile, CIOs, if you have to get tough with Larry and Mark, it is your kuleana to do what needs to be done.

There is no "second chance" for lost integrity.

“Expertise” vs. “Authority”: A Modern Marketing Distinction

“Expertise IRL doesn’t necessarily add up to authority in social media,” I told a client recently. Sigh! This is always a tough sell for the Enterprise 2.0 crowd.

A tweet about a show on NPR show debating the future of network TV reminded me of how long it’s been since I watched the stuff. I tuned in for a look, and and immediately saw a “Capital E” Expert, a Dr SoAndSo, one of the competitors to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta.

“It’s not too late for a flu shot, sneeze into your sleeve if there are no Kleenexes handy and keep washing those hands!”

“Not much new news here,” I thought, tuning out. “But for sure a story I can use.”

Doctor friends aside, I don’t see many doctors professionally. They never seem to have anything to say about the simple, everyday, down-to-earth things that trouble me. I’m still searching for a way to short-cut colds and flu. Aren’t we all! Doctors and Experts are still not delivering much news we can connect to everyday life.

Years ago, I was surprised by the seemingly overnight success of the now widely advertised Airborne, a natural supplement “created by a school teacher.” A second-grade teacher, no less.

I like Airborne and can actually notice a difference that is perhaps unrelated to the extra liquid consumption. But in retrospect, I’m amazed that I ever bought Airborne in the first place.

Apparently, I failed to ask myself:

• Why would a second grade teacher need a frequent flyer medication?
• Why would anyone promote a cure for the common cold as “invented by a schoolteacher.”

Hmmm…. If anyone who’s approachable and warm can really be an expert on any subject of their choosing, Thiokol should have said this to NASA,

“But the Shuttle’s O-Rings were tested by General Mills and endorsed by Cheery O’Leary, the Cheerios friendly bee!“

No, this would never have happened.

How do warm and approachable people become confused with experts?

Going back to the question of “How do warm and approachable people become confused with experts?” It’s important to remember that good advice can indeed come from any source. Here’s the insight. The only thing you really need to know before taking non-expert advice is whether the source is authoritative, or widely seen as trustworthy. For example:

• Mentors as they are to the next generation of our world citizenry, schoolteachers are some of our society’s most trusted authorities, though not necessarily themselves doctors.
• Well-respected book reviewers on Amazon.com are considered authoritative as critical thinkers, though not necessarily themselves experts on the topics of the books they review.

The converse is not necessarily true. People who are great experts are not necessarily prepared to qualify themselves as the greatest authorities. They can go spectacularly awry by missing or over-reacting to opportunities to showcase their expertise.

For example, back in 2003, Kraft laid off around 6,000 people and took a charge of $1.2 Billion. Why? Consumers had been cutting back on cookies and crackers in favor of high-protein snacks. Believe it or not, one of the world’s leading experts on cheese, a company qualified to be an unquestioned authority on low-carb eating, the very people who spell cheese “K-R-A-F-T” are the very same people who missed the low-carb craze. Go figure.

Thankfully for dieters, there were enterprising entrepreneurs back in 2003 who glommed onto the low-carb craze and became instant authorities on what they called The Low-Carb Lifestyle. The were not doctors, they were not dietitians. They were not even experts on cheese. They were mom-and-pop businesses, promoting themselves as authorities via what were known at the time as e-Zines. And they began selling products like Tibetan Yak Cheese and Zero-Carb Cheese Straws on Amazon e-Shops.

At the time, did I or any other dieter stop to ask:

“Why am I buying Yak-cheese snacks on the advice of a retired police officer through Earth’s largest bookstore?”

No. We did not.

Expansion beyond books into new categories such as cheese helped Amazon to profitability for the first time in 2003. Instant authorities identified a solution to every problem jumped in wherever they saw a need.

And the online authority phenomenon marches on. Belly fat trimming approaches pop up everywhere on the web. Nowadays, you don’t even have to know anybody or Google anything to get diet advice from people who have singlehandedly outsmarted the doctors, the scientific experts and the entire medical establishment and can sell you a solution to all your bad eating and exercise habits with a nutritional supplement that costs $39.

But have the deep-study experts kept up with the online authorities?

Some of the experts are catching up. For example, about a year ago I wrote a post about The Economist’s and CNN’s lame coverage of cloud computing services. These expert journalists had fallen right into the insta-authority trap, and wrote the whole article about Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Back then I speculated: Are IBM and other vendors behind or inside the cloud unlucky, invisible, or simply under-sold? Now I realize that IBM and other experts may have been hobbleded by their own expertise.

Enterprise 2.0 vendors, for example, are comfortable with the assumption that they know everything about technology. Some, even the companies who run the clouds, are surprised that they’re not more successful at going viral with their messages. The smug-mugs are amazed that the amateurs and Johnnie-Come-Latelys get more attention! What the Enterprise 2.0 crowd doesn’t realize is this:

Social networking is not about expertise with technology, it is about affability with social connections.

And this explains why Microsoft, Google and Apple get more coverage than the experts from Enterprise 2.0 Land. Apple, Microsoft and Google have one key thing in common with The Economist and CNN. All day every day they’re engaging ordinary consumers online. Reporters rightly recognize a certain authority in Google, Apple and Microsoft.

But the mainstream journalists are still failing to balance their stories by looking for expertise in addition to authority. IBM and companies of that ilk have forgotten more about running clouds for businesses than these companies know. Yes, even the water-walking Google. The precise fact that Google is a such an expert in innovating makes it hard for the company to understand organizations of mere mortals who need to follow a leader one step at a time.

What’s changed now is that the likes of IBM are looking for ways of becoming an authority trusted by John Q. Public as well as an expert advisor to IT. For example, just last night I RSVP’d for a Mass Innovation Night hosted at IBM’s Waltham office. Of course there was a “Tweet This” button to put a penny in IBM’s cup of main-street relatability. Efforts like this are going to build awareness IBM’s reputation as an authority.

Bottom line: Most of the Enterprise 2.0 egg-heads should stay in the ivory towers honing their expertise at keeping the clouds aloft. Let them debate lofty arcana with their expert peers in esoteric cyber spaces. Maybe someday they’ll get a call from The Economist, the one business magazine that still believes in long-form content. But they shouldn’t confuse this with gaining business traction through social media.

Until Enterprise 2.0 realizes that expertise doesn’t deliver authority in today’s world, they won’t realize that a whole different skill set is required to tweet to Main Street.

HP Board picks the Enterprise 2.0 wave, signs Leo Apotheker as CEO

Big waves are scary

When Leo Apotheker was hired to succeed Mark Hurd as CEO of HP, the newspaper headlines struck me as odd:

• “HP hires new CEO,” was the statement I read.
• Why not, “HP Hires Léo Apotheker as CEO”?

After HP named Apotheker CEO, its stock was down 4% in after-hours trading. When you do the math, that’s $4.45 billion in lost shareholder value! Hardly a vote of confidence

I suppose nobody but we old-timers know “Léo who?” Or “Why Léo?” Or “Why hire this skill set now? Let me try to explain.

At a surface level, the dynamics appear obvious. Léo Apotheker spent 22 years at Oracle’s arch-rival, SAP. It’s as if the HP Board is growling to Larry Ellison, “We’re not going to take this lying down!” To rub it in further, Ray Lane, COO of Oracle in a former life is the new non-executive chairman of HP.

Of course Larry Ellison came right back with a counter-attack. He’s accused HP of hiring someone who had a hand on the helm when SAP was accused of stealing Oracle’s intellectual property. This is a high-horse position for Ellison. He’s just hired Mark Hurd, who surely knows a thing or two about HP intellectual property, as Oracle co-President. Maybe he’s running scared…

That said, I don’t think “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ” was the motivation for bringing Apotheker on board at HP.

It may signal a shift in HP’s strategy with respect to software. Léo Apotheker is a software guy. Software is an arena that HP never really grokked. It’s an area that HP’s major competitors in the enterprise know intimately. It’s an area where the storm-clouds of change augur significant opportunity. And it is an opportunity for HP to improve both growth and margins.

But why hire a man with Apotheker’s skill set at this moment in time?

• Some have criticized the hire saying, correctly, Apotheker’s kind of software is yesterday’s news.
• Others carp that his leadership is unproven: He was, after all, forced out after a very brief tenure as CEO of SAP.

So what could possibly make Léo Apotheker relevant now?

In the last post, I wrote that the singularity is at hand in the enterprise. Businesses, governments and institutions are seriously considering a massive IT refresh. Don’t believe me? In its 20 Questions section, The Financial Times recently interviewed LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman. When asked, what’s the next big thing, he replied, “Enterprise 2.0″

What happens inside an enterprise data center or a cloud-computing bunker is known only to a select few. It may be opaque. But, let me assure you, it is anything but boring.

Changing out enterprise systems is like changing a jet engine while the plane is in flight. Changing the workings of a cloud is like replacing the Air Traffic Control System while planes are moving through the airspace. It’s expensive, risky and emotionally grueling for the customer’s Board, senior leadership team and CIO. For the vendor, it’s like leading a camel through the eye of a needle.

Who knows how to lead this kind of a sale? Léo Apotheker.

Apotheker had experience in the last big wave of change in business-critical systems. SAP, like Oracle, inspired customers to jump onto a new wave in front of the Year 2000 deadline. Back in the 1990s, many customers chose to migrate to commercial software rather than spend good money repairing outdated systems. Twenty years later, it’s time to do it all again! Apotheker is a man who knows how to move customers past paralysis by analysis. He knows how to help Boards overcome fear of the unknown and ride a new infrastructure wave.

I’m not worried that the choice of Apotheker is focused on the enterprise at the expense of other areas of HP. Each business has competent leaders in place. I am looking forward to see what Mr. Apotheker can make of the singularity at hand as businesses, governments and institutions move to Enterprise 2.0.

Having watched “Clash of the Upstarts” back in the 1990s, I am all set for “Clash of the Titans.” Somebody pass the popcorn!

IMHO, enterprise vendor consolidation reflects a changing form factor, not a shrinking market

HP has announced plans to acquire 3 Com for $2.7 billion.

A review the coverage shows that business media have got a few things straight:

• There’s a horse-race among the big enterprise tech firms to deliver one-stop shopping experiences, making HP’s move a logical retaliation against an earlier move by Cisco; and
• China is a big market, making 3Com’s presence and partnerships there worth a premium.

Some even caught the connection to the trend toward private cloud formation, which The Financial Times refers to as “consolidation into remote data centers”:

“Companies’ increasing tendency to consolidate data storage and IT systems in large remote data centres is blurring the lines between different markets and turning former partners into competitors. Hence Cisco’s move, as well as software-maker Oracle’s intended purchase of Sun Microsystems.”

Marek Fuchs, TheStreet’s media critic, noted in his “They Just Don’t Get It” video that just one business publication fully gets it. The Financial Times @TheLexColumn suggested that executives of the big techs see limits to expansion, from which Fuchs infers that they believe organic growth is running its course in their sectors.

Hold on! Let’s look at this more closely.

As data center consolidation and virtualization has taken hold, customers are buying data center equipment in larger and larger increments. Now, as public and private clouds become more common, the pre-configured shipping container is becoming the entry-level component. At a certain scale, it costs less to buy IT by the container, with servers, storage and networking preconfigured and pre-installed. A CIO revamping a large data center would no sooner buy piecemeal IT components than a soccer-mom would buy a DIY minivan. Both CIOs and soccer moms want a vehicle that’s ready to run.

Thus, when I look at the consolidation trend among enterprise IT vendors, I see a response to changing form factors, not shrinking markets.

Google data center, St. Ghislain, Belgium: Inside each containerized module = servers + storage + network

Mark Hurd and Sam Palmisano don’t like the word “cloud”? Get over it!

I just saw 10 tweets about this, right in a row.

This is a good data point to illustrate how much social media has changed the world of marketing.

Why do Hurd and Palmisano object to the word, “cloud?” Why is it “confusing to CEOs?”

Is the word cloud confusing because the human mind cannot grasp the concept of a category with sub-categories? Nope. In the world of weather, there are many different types of clouds, and still we muddle on.

Endpaper from the Cloud Collector's Handbook, published by the Cloud Appreciation Society

Similarly, the general public can deal with many different kinds of wine and beer. Many kinds of music. And so on. No, the word cloud is not “too confusing” because of some limitation of the human brain.

Perhaps Palmisano and Hurd dislike the word cloud because the general business press — for example The Economist and CNN — have covered cloud computing without paying fealty to IBM’s and HP’s positions as old hands at what goes on inside a cloud to make it actually work.

Or perhaps Hurd and Palmisano dislike the word cloud because it doesn’t line up with what HP and IBM have chosen to call their product lineup. HP, for example, has just made an announcement about its “converged infrastructure.” IBM prefers the term, “highly virtualized infrastructure.”

Personally, I believe that Hurd’s and Palmisano’s opinions on what people should be calling things are not as definitive as they might have been 10 years ago. If China cannot control what people say online, then neither can Palmisano or Hurd.

Cloud computing has caught on with the general public. It has been widely written about in the business and general press, and is now one of the most frequently discussed technology topics in social media. It would be much easier for IBM and HP marketers to get on the same page with the general public than vice versa.

In the world of open conversations that is social media, an enlightened marketer should regard a question about “the cloud” as an invitation to an exploratory dialogue

Ironically, IBM and HP are two of the companies best equipped to discuss the different kinds of clouds and help them pick out what’s going to work for their business.  Perhaps they can see their way to doing just that.

I hope this semantic storm blows over! Why don’t we all go outside this weekend and clear our heads with the Cloud Appreciation Society’s Cloud Collector’s Handbook? While enjoying Mother Nature, we can be brushing up on how to explain a complex category.

Cloud Computing linked to green, sustainable issues in the business press and social media. Will the data center infrastructure vendors join the conversation?

Last week, it seemed like the data center vendors were being overlooked in the cloud computing discussion.

This week, the general public has figured out that the cloud isn’t magic. They want to know “where does my stuff actually go? What is a data center? How does it work? How do I know the cloud is safe?

CNN has gotten into the act not only with the segment above, but with an edutainment cartoon that tries to explain the cloud.

Reporter John D. Sutter has written an article that chronicles the perils of an intrepid investigator trying to figure it out. Take the time to click on the link, watch the cartoon and read the article. You will convince yourself that the public’s need to know what’s inside the cloud is greater than the industry’s ability to respond effectively.

Part of the problem is indeed, the black-cat issue discussed here last post. As is clear from the the video above, Sutter began the assignment with no idea of how the cloud worked, or who or what was involved inside the cloud.

But it’s also equally apparent that the cloud infrastructure vendors aren’t ready, willing and able to explain to the public what’s inside the cloud. For example, in response to John Sutter’s questions:

• Amazon took the position of a magician, claiming that a look behind the scenes would ruin the fun.
• Good old IBM took the initiative to offer John a tour of a data center with a real live tour guide, but was unable to break the language barrier with a layman.
• Amazingly, a Google spokesperson responded without googling first. Instead of refusing a tour, why didn’t Google point poor John to a the plethora of information already available about Google data centers? For example, check out this post on YouTube after the Efficient Data Centers Summit briefing on April 1, 2009.

The result, a frustrated and confused CNN reporter. The one thing he did nail is that data centers are major power users and CO2 emitters.

Bloggers have jumped in to try to help poor John and his general public readership, for example this post from Data Center Knowledge.

I’ve been wondering, where are the data center infrastructure vendors in all this social media conversation about the cloud? Take HP, for example. The company is is one of the most knowledgeable vendors in the world about data center design and operation:

• HP has gut-rehabbed its own IT infrastructure. Five years ago, the company had been spending 6% of revenue on IT, and 82% of that went just for maintaining the status quo. Only 18% of the IT budget was spent on innovation. Now, overall spending is down by 40% while spending on innovation has doubled. Keeping the status quo has gotten less expensive because HP has streamlined from 7,000 partially overlapping applications to 2,000.
• It has made two significant acquisitions adding to its considerable expertise in data center infrastructure:
  • EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a consulting company specializing in strategic technology planning, design and operations support for large-scale data centers; and
  • EDS, one of the companies who founded the cloud-precursor IT outsourcing business 45 years ago.

HP is out there talking about the cloud, but HP is primarily speaking only to its immediate customers in IT and official IT analysts. For example, here’s HP’s charismatic CEO Mark Hurd, known for his razor wit and ability to reduce the most convoluted subject to utter simplicity with a flip chart and a felt pen. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium, Hurd was among the technology cognoscenti — analysts and customers who know why it’s exciting that a blade can virtualize network ports. These people already “get” the cloud and know that the word has many meanings.

.

If any of the journalists questioning clouds on behalf of their readers knew to look to HP for answers, they might be interested in Hurd’s comments 26:04 in this video. But how would it help the general public watching CNN or reading The Economist to distinguish between intra-firewall clouds (ready for prime time) and inter-firewall clouds (not secure).

Something like this, from 2008, might be more helpful.

The narration doesn’t say so, but this video about failover addresses the issue that CNN reporter John Sutter was tackling: what would happen to your photos up in the cloud if a data center were destroyed?

I believe that HP, IBM, Cisco and other data center stalwarts have an opportunity to shed some light on the confusing cloud landscape by engaging directly with the public discussion of cloud computing.

Data center services provider Logicalis is giving its peer group a hint. The company has commissioned an IT Social Media Analysis, a report demonstrating how Twitter and other forms of social media are changing the way CIOs, CTOs and other information technology executives are using social media.

“Social media has become the world’s fastest, largest and most accurate focus group,” says Lisa Dreher, Vice President of Marketing for Logicalis, who conducted the analysis in conjunction with Webbed Marketing, a social media communications agency based in Columbus, Ohio.

“We used a proprietary tool and process to analyze hundreds of social media posts from technology professionals around the world to understand what their top technology challenges are and to understand how social media has changed the way they communicate with their peers, coworkers, partners and vendors,” Dreher added.

According to Dreher, Logicalis will be using the data to understand the top concerns of technology professionals, stay ahead of the latest trends in technology and continue to innovate with the products and services the market most demands.

For the week of October 26, 2009, Dreher reported that cloud computing was the topic with the most active discussion. “In the last 60 days we’ve tracked more than 13,000 social media conversations about cloud computing,”

IBM’s Sam Palmisano shares Mark Hurd’s belief that “Cloud” is the wrong word. Tough! The cloud concept has caught on with the public, and it’s too late to kvetch over semantics. Why keep your light under a bushel? Time for the experts to join @Logicalis on Twitter. Let’s start shedding some light.

What cloud-computing marketers can learn from black cats?

The Economist recently portrayed the Clash of the Clouds as as a three-way battle for supremacy in cloud computing between Microsoft, Google and Apple. Huh! Come again!?!

Though the author mentions in passing that cloud computing is kinda-sorta like mainframe timesharing, the back-end vendors in this space got no mindspace as players in the cloud computing market.

The Economist is no slouch as a publication. So what’s wrong here? Are IBM, HP and other vendors behind or inside the cloud unlucky, invisible, or simply under-sold?

Their situation is a little bit like the plight of the black cats in the animal shelter.

Black cats are considerably less lucky than other felines. Even wearing a large red tag in the shape of a heart, a black cat in a shelter has only half the chance of being adopted as a cat of any other color.

Black cats, you see, are a victim of outdated stereotyping.

What do mainframes have in common with black cats? Both are subject to old-fashioned stereotypes!

The “Witch’s Familiar” image of the black cat is not dead. It lives on courtesy of publications like Martha Stewart Living.

Marketers at animal shelters struggle with black cats as a product category. Black cats are right up there with proven enterprise computer systems (“legacy systems” by another name) in the ick factor. Black cats, like mainframes, are perceived to be difficult and scary.

What do data centers have in common with black cats? (A) Most people have never actually touched one. (B) they DO look a bit scary.

Nope, black cats are not the cats in the shop windows. And mainframes, even the low-cost, modern ones that run Unix and Linux, are not the computers the news. Both have an uncanny ability to fade right into the background.

What does the "plumbing" of cloud computing have in common with black cats? Both tend to fade into the background.

In fact, if cats shelters with black cats were enterprise systems vendors trying to sell cloud computing, they wouldn’t be in the picture at all.

You think I am kidding? Think again!

Here is an illustration from the Clash of the Clouds article in the October 17th issue of The Economist:

The new cats on the block are those who sell something touchable, something consumers can click on directly or hold in their hands.

The cool cats portrayed in this picture are Microsoft, Google and Apple. The not-so-cool cats of cloud computing, such as IBM and HP, are missing from the picture. (Kinda makes you feel old, doesn’t it, to see Microsoft satirized as a wind-up toy dinosaur.)

Seriously, this article is a good illustration of the black cat problem with marketing cloud computing. One computing stalwart behind the cloud is barely mentioned and others are left out entirely.

I was surprised to see this kind of reporting from The Economist. Their stuff is always well researched and thought out. Whoever wrote this understands the three companies profiled from a hands-on perspective. For example, the author has skewered Microsoft for knocking off Obama’s House Parties in an attempt to turn a difficult installation of Windows 7 into an occasion to celebrate with friends.

But it’s equally clear that The Economist doesn’t get IBM.

The author starts off strong, with the statement, “The cloud’s data centres are, in effect, outsize public mainframes.” True enough. But somehow he or she doesn’t twig to the fact that the company who invented mainframes and time-sharing might have a few clues about the cloud.

No, IBM is rolled into the story on the strength of its balance sheet.

If balance sheets are all that matter to cloud computing, would be worth noting that, as the largest technology vendor on the planet, Hewlett-Packard has a big balance sheet, too.  But apparently HP has zero awareness as a cloud computing vendor. At least in The Economist’s eyes.

IBM rates a second mention in The Economist’s Clash of the Clouds article, this time in reference to the PC battle:

“How will this three-way contest play out? The last similar war was in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Apple, IBM and Microsoft fought for mastery of the PC.

Yikes. Triple yikes!

1. Cloud computing is a battle on multiple fronts, not a three-way contest for consumers’ attention.
2. The war relevant to cloud computing was not the desktop battle in the 1980s.
3. IBM ‘s role in cloud computing is not as a PC has-been.
   (I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d be defending IBM, but apparently it has arrived.)

A rich online conversation included a lot of educational back-filling, such as this comment from Vzach, who brings out the role of the development community it the battle for supremacy in cloud computing:

“It’s kind of surprising that The Economist sees the battle of the clouds only in directly customer facing applications (such as Google Mail, MobileMe or the Facebook website) and as a three-way battle between Google, Microsoft and Apple (no Amazon or Salesforce).

This is really a very restricted way to look at cloud computing; it misses the use of the cloud as a platform that is leveraged by other parties to create customer facing applications. The Economist then also fails to understand the breath of Microsoft’s vision: Azure is the next operating systems and Microsoft imagines third party software vendors (that used to create Windows applications) to create Azure applications that are then executed in the Azure cloud. Microsoft will then directly profit from the sale and use of these third party applications (much more directly than they used to in the days of Windows).

Because of this restricted view on cloud computing The Economist then also misses the real battlefield in the battle of the clouds – i.e. the question which cloud will be the platform that third party developers will use to create their applications. Its telling that they fail to mention either Salesforce or Google’s AppEngine, core contenders in this battle of the clouds.

Look through all the comments, and I think you will agree that none of the cloud computing vendors reading The Economist get the power of social media marketing. There are no well-written comments that make interesting, on-point links to helpful information from any vendor’s thought leadership campaign.

Why wouldn’t technology vendors do what pet shelters around the country are doing and join their customers’ conversations?

Cat shelters take every opportunity to educate their customers through conversation. If you’re standing in a shelter looking at cats, a shelter volunteer will turn up to answer your questions. In the course of that conversation, volunteer will plant a seed in your mind to make sure that the black ones aren’t overlooked just because they’re less visible.

Technology vendors don’t have to wait till a customer turns up at a particular place to begin the dialogue. When a prospective buyer, recommender or user of cloud computing is reading and learning online, his or her mind is open and in the exploratory mode. This is an ideal opportunity for vendors providing information to be perceived as helpful, not intrusive. Online forums, especially around business publications, are ideal venues to reach approvers and users who are difficult or impossible to reach through classic technology marketing methods aimed at IT people.

In today’s world of information search and online forums, there’s no need to restrict marketing to the old-fashioned methods of interrupting prospects while they are trying to do something else.

The cutest fluff-cloud may not be the right one for you. Shelter volunteer will make sure you take a look backstage at the black cats. Cloud computing vendors should do the same.