Enterprise 2.0 Roll-up: Cloud Computing is Everything

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Dec 9, 2010

Here's the part where I imagine Marc Benioff stepping in and saying, "I told you so." Salesforce continued down the software-less path with this week's reveal of Database.com— a storage solution that's being touted as the next evolution of cloud computing. Meanwhile, researchers are doing what they can to prepare the world of business for a generation that's never not been connected, and companies like Skype are rolling with the punches by way of new Web-based solutions.

Salesforce Challenges Oracle, Changes Future of the Cloud

Salesforce's (news, site) Database.com provides a hardware and software-free database alternative for storing the next wave of enterprise apps. It's searchable, automatically scalable, totally open, and sky high.

As an answer to Exalogic, a.k.a. Oracle's US$ 1 million Dollar "cloud-in-a-box" hardware, Database.com operates under three core principals:

Any Platform: Accessible to developers on all platforms – cloud or on-premise – through standards-based API’s and protocols.
Any Language: Being open to any language is critical to supporting the innovation of the developer community.
Any Device: This one gives a hat tip to the growing popularity of mobile devices. Databases must be open to use from any and all of these clients in a clean, consistent and secure manner.

Check out our original coverage for some other nifty details.

10-Year-Old Kids on Cloud Computing & Social Business

Evidently children can teach you a lot about cloud computing. Much like the old show Kids Say the Darndest Things, the video below illustrates the benefits of simplistic thinking by asking 10-year-olds to explain a concept that many adults find hard to grasp:

It's viral marketing, sure. But it's also a great eye-opener when it comes to simplification, and what you might want to think about not only when considering cloud computing, but the future of social business as well. After all, younger generations aren't far from entering the workforce, and these are going to be young adults who've never experienced a world without the Internet, without social networking, and without connectivity. That's bound to cause some big ripples across the business space, don't you think?

Jacob Morgan, principal at a social business consultancy called Chess Media Group, touches more on these future experts and how to adapt here.

The Cloud Could Bring Europe 763bn Euros over Five Years

Rarely do we discuss such large figures on this site, but the statistics are in and they are huge: A recently released report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR ) states that Europe alone can gain 763 billion Euros in five years, if it rides the cloud.