Newsletter

March, 2013

Greetings!

 

Welcome to the March Cirrostratus Group Newsletter.

 

The Boston Product Management Association panel that I moderated entitled Next Generation Product Management: Adapting to the Future was a lot of fun to organize and we had great panelists. You can read about the highlights here. I will be continuing to help the BPMA with the programs and ideas are always welcome.

 

Check out below what Amazon Web Services and the CIA are working on together.

 

I have also been doing some reading on "Big Data" and some of the application areas where it is starting to have an impact. Energy, research and healthcare are all big areas. Interestingly mobile is both a source and a delivery mechanism for "big Data". I've shared some of the articles below.

 

Please contact me if I can be of assistance to you or your organization. I would be very interested in hearing about your plans for the Cloud.


Paul Ressler
The Cirrostratus Group

 

 

Next Generation Product Management:
Adapting To The Future 
 
          
 

I had the privilege of moderating the panel, Next Generation Product Management: Adapting To The Future, last week at a Boston Product Management Association event. We had four great panelists; Karl Wirth, the CEO of Apptegic, Andy Singleton the CEO of Assembla, Andrew Hally VP of Marketing at Bullhorn, and Matt Kaplan, VP of Products at LogMeIn. All of the panelists are executives at SaaS software companies or provide solutions to software product development teams.

 

The skills and expertise required by product managers is changing and there were four themes that really came out in the discussion.

 

You can read the full blog post here.

Amazon and the CIA 
 
            
 
Yes, it seems like strange partners, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) did sign a contract with the CIA to provide private cloud technology for $600M over 10 years. This is very much a different direction for them. Will they do more private clouds? Is this a trend for AWS or is it just one large transaction? What does this say about the CIA's cloud strategy? Several industry analysts have made comments about this since it is potentially a directions change. Of course the number of official comments from the CIA and AWS are pretty non-existent.
 
The Federal Computer Week article describes the transaction. Network World had an informative article, David Linthicum had comments in Infoworld, and Information Week has a good article on the topic.
 
I think that this is less of a strategic move by AWS to get into private clouds and more about a $600M opportunity and the opportunity to drive the federal government cloud strategy and future acquisitions. Obviously the more cloud infrastructure that Amazon has in place the closer they get to being a de facto standard. No wonder that VMware is nervous about the public cloud.
Updates on "Big Data"
    
"Big Data", one of the industries newer and highly used buzzwords, is in fact impacting how applications are delivered, opening up new application areas and changing existing ones. Big Data is having an impact in the pharmaceutical business, along with green energy and healthcare. In fact there is a Big Data and Healthcare conference coming up soon in Boston.
 
SaaS is evolving to incorporate big data and it is impacting mobile in a couple of ways.

 

Contact Paul Ressler at the The Cirrostratus Group

In This Issue
BPMA Panel
Amazon and the CIA
Big Data
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