Many of the conversations you’ll see around SaaS/cloud computing present very few hard facts upon which you can make a decision. Simply pointing to how fast it is growing won’t convince anyone other than a lemming that moving to SaaS is a great idea. Neither will the endless stream of advertising driven, self congratulatory, vendor sponsored cloud ‘events.’ (Hint: I’ve heard about five this week alone.)
Today is different. I’ve pimped this before in anticipation but yesterday I got a chance to hear Toby Wright from Telegraph Media Group talk about the company’s cloud strategy, where they’re up to and what they’re doing about implementing financials. There’s a webinar later today where Toby takes centre stage. I’m moderating and wrangling the Q&A. Toby has some stunning facts to share. I’ll give you a taste: TMG is transforming its business using cloud/SaaS. It has an aggressive timeframe to turn an IT department that spends 95% keeping the lights on to 70% adding business value. That is serious money and should pique the interest of anyone managing any IT however large or small. This is one of many facts and well thought out reasons why TMG is going this route.
It is the best presentation I’ve seen on this topic by a country mile. It gets to the heart of understanding benefit while addressing risk. Some might think: ‘You would say that, you want people turning up.’ Sure. But think about it a moment. This is a 150 year old business going through a fundamental and strategic change. And – as I’ve impressed on every vendor I’ve met the last 20 years, without exception, no-one speaks louder to a value proposition than customers. Talking heads from vendors will do their pitch. Peeps like me who study the industry will opine. But you cannot beat hearing a customer speak of their hands on experience.
There’s always a catch. If you really want to know what’s happening then you have to find a way of getting the customer to say what’s on their mind and away from their crafted presentation. Rather than ambush Toby, I suggested he might want to think about four question areas so again – here’s a taste: ‘To what extent is the 70% goal realistic in the timeframe you outline and why?’ I don’t know what Toby’s answer will be. We’ve all to turn up and hear what he has to say. It goes to the issue of assessing how well the company has thought through its strategy aside from prepared remarks.
I believe the event is being recorded for replay. In any event, I’ll snatch a few slides to show on this site. I might not be able to tweet the action but then I want to concentrate on what’s said.
