Clearing the Clouds – George Hu

George Hu is Guest Blogging for the Forum. He is Executive Vice President for salesforce.com. You can follow him on twitter @GeorgeHuSF
 
 
While much of the discussion at Davos centers on complex problems without clear solutions, an equally  engrossing part of the conference focuses on the reverse – exploring exciting technologies where it is unclear how the solutions will evolve and what problems they can be used to solve. At salesforce.com, we’re excited to be leading the way in one of the key topics that fall in the latter category, cloud computing. And even as we’re clarifying and understanding the full potential of the cloud as we know it now, another tidal wave of innovation is being unleashed that will change the equation once again.
 
For me, the realization that the term “cloud computing” already had hit the mainstream didn’t come when I saw the sessions devoted to it on the agenda. Instead, it really hit me as I sat in a small out-of-the-way session dedicated to scaling innovation in NGOs. In it, many of the participants, even those not technical by background, were freely bandying about the idea of “cloud-based solutions.” And as I talk to many of the conference attendees about the cloud and what it can accomplish, it’s the rare exception that I need to explain what the cloud is.
 

There seems to be consensus growing around the table stakes issues for any cloud provider: security, transparency, trust, and data portability as examples. Our CEO Marc Benioff was a key player in some great discussions around those areas this morning. And we have articulated these ideas in a post on cloud principles. But while I understand the reasons why it’s important to address the fears that lie behind these questions, I personally believe we need to start moving the conversation more towards identifying, clarifying, and realizing the immense potential benefits of the cloud.
 
For example, while there’s a general understanding that the cloud can deliver services at lower cost, far fewer people understand what in our experience is the true power of today’s cloud– making organizations radically more successful by enabling them to have systems that finally keep pace with the needs and changes in their environment. This is in contrast to the status quo, which usually means waiting months or years for the next upgrade or customization. 
 
And because the cloud is a shared service, it democratizes access to these technologies so any company of any size can take advantage of them. Imagine if every NGO could have a highly optimized, automated system for working with all their stakeholders and tracking outcomes all in a few days or weeks. We now have over 10,000 NGOs that we support for free that have just that, and there’s no reason it couldn’t be every single one. Or imagine that we reduce over 97% of emissions of the entire enterprise software industry by moving all of it to a highly efficient multi-tenant cloud.
 
These are amazing times. It is easy to imagine a future in which more consumers access the cloud through mobile devices than they do PCs. Imagine how the access to information and data from any device changes our habits. Imagine if new applications are developed for the cloud and how that might impact a large global network not of connected computers but of connected people. Imagine if those people can collaborate.
 
The cloud is the enabler of these ideas and these are exciting conversations to be having.
 
This is what has gotten me most excited here at Davos. It is seeing how the next generation of the cloud, a cloud that is social, mobile, and connected, will have the potential to unlock solutions to even more profound issues like health, climate change, and job creation. In a world in which every device is on the network and in the cloud, what once was a “hardware” problem about designing more energy efficient devices will be transformed to an information problem around how to optimize utilization and minimize waste. With the cloud a much broader community of entrepreneurs and individuals can create killer applications to solve issues. And where good behavior can be willingly shared on social networks to create a feedback loop. In real-time.
 
In a world where more information than ever is in the cloud, accessible anywhere on mobile devices, and can be collaborated on socially in a way that preserves trust and transparency, nearly every facet of life can be reinvented.
 
We know the technology industry is changing faster than ever before. A year ago there was no iPad; now at the conference there are so many that an outsider would probably think they were standard issue in the conference bags. As we think ahead to next year, I expect to see that the cloud also surprises us in the benefits and impact that are now possible in a new mobile, social, and connected world.