pan-mass challenge
Clarity of Vision
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BuzzBy John McEleney
This weekend I participated my ninth Pan-Mass Challenge, a 192-mile benefit ride for the Jimmy Fund and The Dana Farber Cancer Institute (5,000 riders who will jointly raise $31M). With approximately 12-plus hours of saddle time, I had plenty of time to think. What struck me, beyond the amazing logistics and incredible spirit of the riders and volunteers, was that this all started with s simple vision of one man—Billy Starr.
His Idea
He had lost his mom to cancer and decided to do an annual bike ride across Massachusetts as a fund raiser for cancer research.
His Vision
Each year we will grow the amount that we give for cancer research. His communication strategy was equally clear: cancer affects everyone, therefore, everyone should want to be involved.
Since he started this journey, he has raised over a quarter of a billion (that’s a “B” as in billion) for cancer research. Today the PMC funds 50% of the research budget at Dana Farber. So what does this have to do with cloud computing and CloudSwitch? Nothing and everything. From a technical stand point, absolutely nothing. From a business standpoint, it has everything to do with cloud computing. Let me explain.
It is easy to be confused about how the future will evolve with cloud computing. Every day we hear and read the postulations from the optimists that everything will move to the cloud. We are equally confronted with the contrasting views of the fear mongers that nothing will move to the cloud. To get some perspective and a simple view of the cloud world, I think you need to step back and take a broader view of the transformation that is happening.
Every day, people are getting more and more comfortable with the idea that data is located somewhere else (other than on the physical device they can see). Email and facebook are two proof points. Organizations are also getting more comfortable with not having all of their data and/or applications physically in their data center. Just look at the growth of SaleForce and use of raw Amazon compute resources. We recently had a discussion with a senior IT person who pointed out that the finance team wanted to know why the IT people were buying so many books (they weren’t buying books, they were submitting their AWS charges on expense reports!).
We believe the future is clear: the public cloud WILL be part of the IT organization in the future. There may be many obstacles and objections during the adoption process, but the economics and business agility that public clouds provide are so compelling, that organizations will have to adopt them or risk losing competitive advantage. Our mission at CloudSwitch is to help organizations extend their data centers to the cloud.
If you want to make an impact, you have to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish. Billy was clear with the PMC and he aggressively pursued that goal. At CloudSwitch we are passionate about helping companies embrace the cloud. Our vision is clear—we think that the cloud will help businesses become more agile and we think we have a role to play in making this happen. Try CloudSwitch today.
