Tech Visionary Polese: Cloud Spells Big Opportunity For The Channel
That was the clarion call from Technology Visionary Kim Polese, the CEO of SpikeSource, who gave the opening keynote Monday at the 2009 XChange Tech Innovators Conference at the JW Marriott Resort & Spa in Las Vegas.
"The future could not be brighter for the channel at the dawn of the age of ubiquitous computing," said Polese, speaking to about 100 solution providers. "It is actually a wonderful time to be in the business you are in."
Polese, one of the driving forces behind the Java programming language that forever changed web application development, said the pace of technological change has never been faster in the industry. What's more she said the economic pressures are pushing companies to adopt cloud and mobile innovations at a rapid pace.
But that blistering pace of change is opening new doors for the channel to make more money, said Polese. "The opportunities for the channel have never been greater," she said. "We are dealing with disparate technologies and businesses are rushing to leverage the power of ubiquitous computing. And the channel is in the driver's seat."
First off, Polese said solution providers are needed to integrate the disparate technologies as businesses move from on site premise computing to the cloud and are grappling with a wide array of mobile devices where there is not one dominant industry leader.
The App Store Model that Apple pioneered with its App Store Marketplace and is now being adopted by a number of industry players is also opening the door for solution providers to make money selling their apps online.
Polese said one company that has taken that model to drive astronomical sales growth is CloudTrigger, which is selling its Cloud2Mail application that enables users to send hard copy mail via the US Postal Service with the click of a button via the Salesforce.com platform.
The solution providers that will thrive in the new eraare those that are "visionary and agile and like yourself are on forefront" of the cloud and mobile computing revolutions reshaping the IT landscape,said Polese.