Eileen is a rarity – a female, techie CEO. Like most women who experience success in traditionally male-dominated careers, she is not defined because of her gender. She reached this pinnacle by being the best at what she does. Eileen started out as a developer at Burroughs Corporation, and has spent her entire career in software development and managing software development projects and teams. After Burroughs, she went to Mentor Graphics based in Portland, which is where she is today. Following Mentor Graphics and a stint with a smaller firm, Eileen landed with CorSource. She’s been with CorSource for thirteen years and has risen up the ladder and now sits in “The Chair”, serving as their CEO.

CloudNOW: What advice would you give a senior executive looking to step into the role of CEO?

Ms. Boerger: It’s different. Really try to understand what the CEO role entails. The CEO role requires stepping away from the day to day, and into a strategic and visionary role. Start stepping into that role. Don’t assume someone is just going to give it to you. If you’re not already taking on the responsibilities, step into it, lean in.

CloudNOW: What are some challenges, as well as proud achievements, you have faced as CEO so far?

Ms. Boerger:The challenges, there are always challenges, but the constant challenge is alignment. Alignment on goals, strategy, objectives and expectations. If you can get excellent alignment, which is difficult to achieve, then everyone will be humming and moving and your company can perform well. It’s a challenge to keep all of that in line.

CloudNOW: We are seeing more women stepping into the CEO role today, particularly in the technology space. Do you believe this is a trend? What do you attribute to this growing trend?

Ms. Boerger: Twenty-one Fortune 500 Companies have women CEOs. That is a record, but it’s still only 2.5%. That’s really small!! Although there has been some progress,it’s still really small. Since I’ve been in this business, if you look at the number of women in management roles and in technology, the percentages haven’t changed all that much. The numbers have increased, but the percentages have stayed mostly flat. Yet, I know a number of women who are able to step into these roles. Part of this is just time. We’ve grown up and are ready to step into these roles. I still think there’s more that needs to be done to close the gender gap. But societal changes need to take place as well. More women from top schools in the country, compared to women from lower-tiered universities, are choosing to stay home rather than join or stay in the workforce. I don’t know how to understand that dynamic. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong, people need to do what’s right for them, but it’s an interesting dynamic.

CloudNOW: Google and Facebook have certainly lead the way in helping to create environments that help facilitate women remaining in the workforce throughout their career. Are there things in particular you believe need to be done? And is CorSource doing anything to help encourage that?

Ms. Boerger: CorSource actually has a large number of women employees Since most of our employees are working at client sites, we are very open and accommodating. When I started my career at Burroughs, I was one of the first six female engineers at Burroughs, and while I was there I was also the first female manager to have a baby. After that, I started a job-sharing program and part-time programs for women, and when I worked at Mentor Graphics, they had a child development center. While these programs were designed to help women, they help men, too. The programs lend themselves to a more rounded and diverse population and educates the whole workforce that gender balance is important. I think a lot of that is happening at the larger companies and it’s really excellent. I feel I was a pioneer in pushing a lot of this through as one of the first female managers.

CloudNOW: How do we get young girls involved in and keep them involved in STEM?

Ms. Boerger: I’ve been involved with this for a long time. I have a daughter who is a petroleum engineer. But beyond “having daughters and keep them in technology”, there are great programs, like AWESOME and ETEC. So there are programs focused around STEM, and specifically girls in STEM. But really there are two issues here holding it back. One issue is that I don’t think teachers are not well informed about STEM, and so getting them informed is key. And the other issue is parents. Parents might not realize that both boys and girls need to keep up their education in STEM. It’s so important to the well-being and economic growth in this country. So many other countries have mandatory twelve years of science and math education and we don’t have that. The U.S. ranks in 23rd place in the world for science and mathematics. We need to get everyone involved and to understand the significance, and to make sure the programs are equally available to not only girls, but to all the under-represented portions of the population as well. It’s heartening to see that people are getting involved, but it’s also disheartening to see that over the years, the numbers have not changed significantly.

CloudNOW: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

Ms. Boerger: One of the things I learned a long time ago – self-awareness or understanding my impact on people. It amazes me what people read into what I do or say. By being self-aware, I understand how my actions and statements and my mood, when I walk down the hall, has an impact. I learned that I wasn’t as self-aware of myself, or of other people. I had to learn these behaviours and it made a big difference in turning me into a leader. It was a big transformation. Also, I’m naturally a very private person, and a leader can’t be a private person, I had to learn what it took to be that leader.

CloudNOW: What is the most important lesson learned from a mistake made in your past?

Ms. Boerger: So many times I want to kick myself for a decision made – so much centers around the communication of and setting of expectations. Not only do expectations need to be clearly set, they need to be understood as well, such as making sure that the full understanding of mental models are correct. There are certainly techniques to keep misunderstanding from occurring, and if you don’t do it, mistakes will continue to happen over and over again.

CloudNOW: How do you or your company promote and share information? For instance, does social media play a big role?

Ms. Boerger: We’ve been doing a number of things over the past 2 or 3 years. Getting out and being thought leaders, sponsoring events and speaking opportunities. I do a lot of speaking at SIIA, SashU, Cloud Channel Summit. We do a number of those speaking opportunities to get people to know who we are and disseminate our knowledge. In terms of social media, we have a something called “The Source” that we’re sending out to people, we’re trying to become the source of information about analytics, cloud and mobile. We want to be the place to come for that information. We work with in number of different areas, and as part of the community we offer services, expertise and staff committees.

CloudNOW: In a similar regard, what are your thoughts on mobile technology? Is the dissemination of news and information greater?

Ms. Boerger: The use of mobile is a game changer, people use it all the time. Mobile devices keep us connected all of the time. It is the way we all get most of our information. The other thing is, it should be affecting the way businesses work. It’s becoming the fabric of people’s companies, but not everyone is addressing what that means. There are technologies out there that allow everyone to collaborate and share data, information, but these tools, eg. Dropbox, don’t provide you with any change control – who is editing, it, who is changing it? You don’t have any idea. If a company isn’t understanding the implications of mobile, and how open it is, they could be leaving themselves open to security issues. Intel put out a paper a year ago saying 17,000 employees were using personal smart phones for business. Fifty-seven minutes a day of productivity were gained for each of those 17,000 people, which amount to 800 “man” years! We help people understand the implications of mobile, help understand the security issues, and we can build applications.

CloudNOW: It is a challenge for developers to keep up with the latest programming languages/frameworks to compete for work, what advice do you have for tech workers to keep their skills sharp?

Ms. Boerger: I think the solution is to not let yourself get pigeon-holed. Don’t just be a PHP programmer – branch out and look for opportunities, both within and without, that broaden your skills. I believe that for tech people who have a good basic skill set, learning a new one isn’t that difficult. Don’t be afraid to branch out into a different language or technology. Look for the opportunity and jump into them, or cause them to happen, and force yourself to do more things. The more you know, the more valuable you become. Make yourself do it.

Eileen Boerger has been a trailblazer for many of us in the technology world. CloudNOW congratulates her on her accomplishments, and will enjoy watching her blaze more trails as she continues to mentor and advise the next generation of women in tech.

Emerging technologies are always disruptive of the way in which companies manage their technology practice, Cloud however takes it a step farther and expands that disruption impacting traditional enterprise sales and delivery models. Cloud’s disruption cuts across business and operational lines, making it difficult for organizations to find the right talent. Demand is far outstripping supply and as cloud computing continues to mature that demand is unlikely to decrease. How then can companies attract and retain the talent necessary to take advantage of cloud computing across these diverse concerns?

Rita Scroggin, Practice Director for the Triad Group, agrees that attracting and retaining top talent in the cloud will continue to be one of the key challenges for enterprise organizations and startups in 2013. Based on the cloud organizations that she’s built over the past few months, that shifts from a technology vision to a focus on monetization is translating into increased demand for talent who can disrupt and redefine a variety of roles that reach far beyond IT. Scroggin notes Business Development, Demand Generation, Product Marketing, Product Management and other functions within enterprise and startup organizations will be impacted by these shifts caused by cloud computing.

Scroggin offers additional insight on trends and advice on recruiting for the cloud in 2013 that may help find and attract the talent necessary to weather the changes required to succeed in an increasingly cloudy market:

JDG: What are the major organizational trends you are seeing as companies build out their cloud capabilities and strategy for 2013?

RS: Major trends emerging for 2013 are the maturing of cloud technologies, the shift from the technology vision to the business implications and monetization, and the disruption of the traditional enterprise sales model.

JDG: What advice would you share with a client who is competing for a top talent candidate?

RS: My number one advice to companies, who are competing for top talent, is to commit to hiring and set goals and milestones just like one would do for product releases or other projects. Many times I see key positions go unfilled for various reasons, which can seriously impact the company’s ability to execute.

JDG: For start-ups, how would you characterize the perfect mix of personality types?

RS: I believe that the success of a startup depends to a large degree on the composition of the team in terms of the personality characteristics. I think the most successful teams show a high degree of diversity from different cultural backgrounds, gender and personality characteristics.

There are certain personality traits which will complement each other in an ideal world. I think that successful teams have a visionary key executive who will create the vision and paint the picture of the now and the future. This person will generate the excitement and commitment of others to follow. The other key component of a successful team is the driver. This is the person who will make sure that the team executes against specifics and will drive towards results. In some companies the visionary and driver may be the same person, but often it may be two different people (i.e. CEO, CTO). And then there is the Evaluator, Critic or Big Picture person, who will recognize when things go wrong internally as well as recognize threats from the outside before others do. No company operates in a vacuum and the ability to view the company business strategy in the bigger picture context may be the difference between success and failure.

Recruiting executive talent for your cloud organization in 2013? Rita is available to CloudNOW members for consultation, and is offering a discount to anyone in the CloudNOW network from now until January 15, 2013. Contact Rita at rita.scroggin@triadgroup.com

The event I was in town for was called CLOUD SCALE 2012 and is billed as the industry’s premier cloud event featuring aspiring start-ups, top-tier VCs, investors and industry luminaries as well as the first annual Cloud startup competition. The startup competition was a cross between American Idol meets dancing with the stars, or possibly dancing with geeks. Where 10 cloud startups are given 3 minutes to pitch a group of VC and industry experts. My job as usual was to provoke the startups.

Read the full article on Forbes.com

The predictions were authored by CloudNOW members and advisors Lori MacVittie, Jocelyn DeGance Graham, Bernard Golden, and Margaret Dawson. The 2013 predictions include a particular focus on cloud federation, an accelerated adoption of cloud stacks, and greater control over cloud resources through what they describe as enterprise-class features.

According to report’s authors “a core focus of cloud in 2013 will be around such topics as big data and integration of cloud computing infrastructure and applications to realize federation of clouds.”

Read the full article on Forbes.com

Jan Uhrich serves as Vice President of the Services & Solutions Group for Dell Services.  She is responsible for defining, engineering and launching service offerings and solutions that enable customer success. 

Prior to Dell, Jan held management and engineering positions in research and development and application consulting at Hewlett-Packard, Apollo Computer, Digital Equipment and Bell Labs. Jan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Penn State University and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

1. What do you think the top 3-5 trends are in cloud technologies that execs should have on their radar? 

The top trends in cloud technologies focus on providing customers with greater agility and connectivity through their IT and providing a virtual environment so they can run applications, access their data and collaborate anywhere in the world. Customers are looking for solutions that fit into their existing architecture; they want open, capable, scalable and affordable solutions. They want hybrid solutions in order to get the full benefit of cloud by leveraging the different cloud types where needed.

As a result, cloud service management will become a requirement as customers seek flexibility in adopting new models. Organizations will be looking for Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service or some combination of the three. Providers need awareness of customer needs to provide the right cloud solutions at the right time.

Big data analytics covering both structured and unstructured data will also become a major issue and opportunity for customers and their cloud providers. Issues include security, data management and the huge volume of data from different sources. It’s not enough for providers to simply store data—that would be like a library that doesn’t organize and categorize its books. Providers need to make sense of data through analytics, organize data for ready accessibility and manage scalability to handle data volume growth.

2. What do you think the top trends in cloud are in the short term; let’s say from now until the next 12 months? …. And beyond that? Cloud adoption is still in its early stages. In the short term, customers will need to learn more about cloud solutions. IT providers need to articulate the benefits in a language understood by non-IT pros. Therefore, communicating the benefits of cloud capabilities will be key in the next 12 months.

In terms of adoption, in the short term I expect most customers will continue to investigate the use of private clouds, both within and outside their physical locations. There will also be an increase in the use of hybrid access to public clouds for certain cases or if the need for additional flexibility arises.

Part of the reason behind the trend towards private clouds, rather than public, is security. Both consumers and businesses are becoming more comfortable with the idea of the cloud, but one of the biggest concerns remains confidence in the security of their data. This is why Dell’s SecureWorks business is a critical component of Dell’s end-to-end IT solutions capabilities. SecureWorks provides strategic consulting, tactical planning, risk assessments, assurance testing of cloud deployments, compliance assessments, incident response and forensics and cloud security architecture and design.

3. Do you have any insights into areas of convergences (e.g. social, mobile, cloud) for the technologies you listed above? 

Dell is at the forefront of media convergences through our Social Media Listening Command Centers. These Centers provide customers with up-to-the-minute information trends. Dell adopted these technologies to better connect with customers, who expect service through these mediums. Social media command centers also find use during emergencies. Dell partnered with the Red Cross to create a social media command center for use in the event of a disaster—keeping track of the needs of the victims, communicating updates and connecting separated families.

4. Do you think we can expect a similar path to migration for these technologies as we saw in 2.0, with consumer applications gaining acceptance then driving business migration?

Absolutely, our business customers are also personal consumers and they want the same technology to work across their business and personal devices. Companies are turning to tablet devices, mobile applications, and cloud technologies for anytime, anywhere access to their data. They also want real time disaster recovery and instant access to information across multi access points – these are solutions Dell offers today. Rather than seeking specific solutions from multiple vendors, Dell offers a one-stop end-to-end suite of solutions.

5. Of the trends we have discussed, which do you think are the most realistic and have the largest commercial benefit?  Which will be the largest money makers?

Cloud solutions will be a major focus for Dell and we will help our customers along their journey to this next generation IT model. This journey will include modernizing customer’s IT environments and applications, providing application migration services for cloud integration, and offering cloud solutions that meet their business needs.

Our Dell Secure Enterprise-Class Hybrid Cloud Solutions focus on delivering business outcomes for our customers.  We start by understanding our customers’ business needs and required outcomes. Then we map solutions, including hardware, software and services, to help them succeed.

6. Are there any wildcards that have the risk of being “flops”, but could be also be potential game changers?

I think any time you are committed to innovation, you have to be open to the risk of a product or service having a low adoption rate. However, Dell was founded on the idea of listening to our customers’ needs and we have a confidence level in our solutions development. We are addressing our customers’ current needs and anticipating potential future needs to stay ahead of the curve.

7. Are there any major differences across markets or regions with regards to these trends?

Across our verticals, we notice different priorities. All customers want secure, capable and affordable solutions, but some customers, such as those in education, focus on our virtual desktop infrastructure capabilities while our financial customers focus on our data centers, disaster recovery and secure cloud technology. Our healthcare customers are focused on Mobile Clinical Computing which grants access to patient information from multiple devices across a hospital, a campus or a nation-wide network. Dell takes a consultative approach with our customers and we strive to fully understand their business to then offer the best solutions to address their challenges.

8. The speed of innovation in cloud continues to accelerate at such a rapid pace – how will companies deal with the challenges of more interdependencies and complexities (often security related)?  How can they prepare for these challenges in advance?

Dell has helped our customers meet the challenge of interdependency and complexity by expanding our services through strategic acquisitions that give us security, cloud integration, storage solutions and software capabilities. Offering true end-to-end IT solutions – being the one partner companies can turn to for their comprehensive needs – is what sets Dell apart. Dell expanded its security portfolio with the acquisition of SonicWALL. SonicWALL expands Dell’s rapidly growing security software and services portfolio, which includes security services, cloud security solutions, data encryption solutions and vulnerability and patch management. Dell remains focused on improving security to keep pace with the growth of cloud technology.

In order to keep up with the complexities of the tech world and the needs of business, service providers need to seek ideas and solutions outside of their organizations. Dell does so through a mergers and acquisition strategy, where smaller firms with specialized products become integrated into the larger organization, creating synergies that benefit customers with expanded service offerings and cutting edge technology.

9. Following along the lines of the speed of innovation – what do you think is driving this?  Do you feel that the customer needs are leading or that the technology is charting the direction?

Both customer needs and technology are helping with the speed of innovation.

Customers are dealing with challenges and opportunities that are impacting their business, customers and employees. I think innovation is critical in areas such as volume, security and complexity of data and the desire for anytime, anywhere access and communication. Technological changes drive this complexity, while simultaneously providing solutions.

10. Without discussing anything confidential of course, what is your company focusing on over the next 12 months?

Speaking on behalf of the Services & Solutions Group at Dell, we are focusing on delivering new Cloud solutions with differentiated technology, delivering application and management services critical to our customers, and developing new enterprise solutions in important areas such as mobility, storage and networking. We are also building a global Dell Solution Center network to partner with customers in the communities where they live and work.

11. How did you get started in tech?

I have been in the Computer industry for more than thirty years. My interest in our field began in college, at a time when not many women were choosing Computer Science as a major. I loved math, but didn’t know exactly what I would do with a math degree. My father had read about computers and told me I could have a good and financially secure career if I majored in Computer Science. I didn’t even know what a computer was at the time, but I respected my father and it sounded like a good idea. I completed both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively.

After seventeen years in engineering with companies including Bell Labs, Apollo Computer and Hewlett-Packard, I started at Dell leading Enterprise Services. Over the past 15 years, I have led Global Support Services, Public Services for Education, Healthcare and Government, and Dell’s Solutions Strategy and Transformation efforts. I am now leading the Services and Solutions Group which includes Dell’s Cloud strategy and implementation.

12. What was the best piece of advice you received in your career?

I received two pieces of advice that have always stayed with me:

1. Know your priorities—never veer, never apologize, and never feel guilty for them.  My #1 priority has always been my family, and I believe my greatest accomplishment has been climbing the corporate ladder while raising to wonderful sons (now 22 and 27).

2. Be accountable to commitments and drive results.  If you commit to something, you must meet those commitments.  Trust is built through actions and the confidence others have that you will deliver—no matter how hard and no matter how many obstacles. That trust and confidence is a critical success factor.

13. Who was your role model?

Without a doubt it was my father.  He was a brilliant business man and a wonderful father. He guided with logic, was non-judgmental, always available, an excellent listener, well read in both his industry and world events, and cared about coworkers.  I would not be where I am today without his coaching.  He died at 81, just a few years ago, and I miss him every day.

A recent TechCrunch article authored by VC Aileen Lee (@AileenLee) from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers makes a compelling case as to why your next board member should be a woman. While Ms. Lee focused on the financial benefits associated with a more gender-diverse board, the same studies cited a correlation between diversity of gender on boards with a variety of less quantifiable measures such as innovation, reputation, and a healthier mix of women at all levels of corporate leadership.

Higher success rates. More innovation. Higher profits. Better reputations. What’s not to like?

For cloud-focused companies, what’s not to like is the dearth of skilled professionals at all levels necessary to maintain the evolutionary rate at which it is moving. A January 2012 CRN article noted, “The cloud computing market is evolving at such a pace that while the number of job postings is skyrocketing, the talent isn’t there to fill the positions.”

So if it’s difficult to attract talent because of overwhelming demand, how might one attract the admittedly fewer women in technology to your organization?

Poornima Vijayashanker, the first female engineer at Mint and now CEO of BizeeBee, stated it plainly in a New York Times article last year, “If we want more women to be in tech, then we have to have a set of role models.”  That sentiment is echoed by entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Cindy Padnos, who suggests more companies, “demonstrate, by bringing women into senior roles, that they have an opportunity to succeed here.”

And if such a strategy is applicable to start-ups, it’s likely applicable within the cloud computing industry as well.

The problem then becomes finding the right person – one who is a woman in technology may be difficult enough, but one who is also a leader in cloud computing? That’s a more daunting task. So we’d like to follow Ms. Lee’s lead in offering up a list of top female talent for consideration in the board room with a list focusing on top female talent specifically in cloud computing, each of whom was recently recognized by CloudNOW as one of the Top Women in Cloud:

• Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco
• Lauren States, CTO of Cloud Computing, IBM
• Vanessa Alvarez, Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Forrester Research
• Jamie Dos Santos, President of Terremark, a Verizon company
• Jill T. Singer, CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
• Becky Swain, Founder of the Cloud Security Alliance
• Lori MacVittie, Senior Technical Analyst, F5 Networks
• Ellen Rubin, Founder of CloudSwitch, Terremark, a Verizon company
• Dawn Leaf, Senior Executive for Cloud Computing, NIST
• Jamie Erbes, Cloud Labs Director, HP Fellow, HP

CloudNOW chose to honor these specific women, but this is just a sample of the great female talent available to the industry. Whom else would you recommend?

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 14, 2012 — CloudNOW, a nonprofit executive consortium of the leading women in cloud computing, announced during Cloud Connect Santa Clara today, the first annual CloudNOW Awards presented to 10 outstanding women in cloud computing for their contributions, accomplishments and thought leadership.

“It was amazing and gratifying to have the caliber of candidates participate in our first annual awards,” said Jocelyn DeGance Graham, founder of CloudNOW.  “As we continue to fulfill on our mission, we plan to expand the awards next year to recognize the outstanding contributions of more women in the cloud and further the reach of women in technology.”

Cloud Connect was chosen as the venue to announce the awards because it is the premier cloud event of the year.  The event is an ideal platform to recognize the contributions of women, bringing together all constituents of the cloud computing industry, with a program rich in all aspects of cloud computing and committed to enriching the cloud conversation.

“Cloud computing is going through an exciting and vibrant evolution and many of the leading participants are women,” said Bernard Golden, CloudNOW Advisory Board.  “Fostering conversations and collaboration on cloud computing is critical and an organization that provides an opportunity for that discussion is an excellent addition to the ecosystem.”

The following women in cloud computing were honored with CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards:

• Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco
• Lauren States, CTO of Cloud Computing, IBM
• Vanessa Alvarez, Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Forrester Research
• Jamie Dos Santos, President of Terremark, a Verizon company
• Jill T. Singer, CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
• Becky Swain, Founder of the Cloud Security Alliance
• Lori MacVittie, Senior Technical Analyst, F5 Networks
• Ellen Rubin, Founder of CloudSwitch, Terremark, a Verizon company
• Dawn Leaf, Senior Executive for Cloud Computing, NIST
• Jamie Erbes, Cloud Labs Director, HP Fellow, HP

“We are excited about the alliance between Cloud Connect and CloudNOW.  CloudNOW represents the future of women in tech organizations and is a voice that we are proud to have uniquely represented at our Conference,” said Steve Wylie, general manager of Cloud Connect.

CloudNOW is the only nonprofit women in tech initiative focused on cloud as the main IT conversation promoting women in tech without isolating them from the industry at large.

About the CloudNOW
CloudNOW (cloudnetworkofwomen.com) is a non-profit consortium of the leading women in cloud computing, focused on using technology for the overall professional development of women from around the world by providing a forum for networking, knowledge sharing, mentoring, and economic growth.

CloudNOW offers members the opportunity to creatively approach the technological challenges of cloud today, working in partnership with the tech industry, cloud visionaries, and global media.  Our membership comes from cloud service providers such as IBM, Terremark, Cisco, HP, Intel, and Salesforce, as well as successful startups, the tech media, and noted analysts.

Membership is free; all that is required is a passion for cloud, and a belief in using technology as a tool for positive change, economic equality, and social justice.  Opportunities are available for corporations and special interest group liaisons covering such topics as security, sustainability, and deep technical forums.

About Cloud Connect
Cloud Connect, produced by UBM TechWeb, is the defining event of the cloud computing industry. As both a conference and an exhibition, Cloud Connect’s goal is to chart the course of cloud computing’s development by bringing together enterprise IT professionals, developers, infrastructure and service providers and cloud computing innovators. UBM TechWeb has produced cloud events that define and frame cloud computing discussions since June 2008, and recently expanded the Cloud Connect event brand to Chicago and Bangalore, India, in addition to the flagship Santa Clara event. Cloud Connect is a one-of-a-kind event that encompasses the entire cloud computing ecosystem featuring a Launch Pad program, IT & Developer workshops and a full conference program. For more information visit: www.cloudconnectevent.com.

The belief that any group can be segregated from the whole based on specific physical characteristics and yet remain equal to other groups is one that has been firmly rejected for many years.

Yet while we laud the significance of movements and court cases throughout recent history that have successfully argued that such isolationist doctrine is ipso facto unequal in many industries, we continue to create just such “separate but equal” organizations.

Then we wonder why they are not successful in creating leaders and generating opportunity for their members.

One of the little-known court cases that led to desegregation in the United States in the mid 20th century was a 1950’s case, Sweatt v. Painter.

In that case, Heman Marion Sweatt, a black American, argued in his suit for admission to the University of Texas Law School on the grounds that segregated law schools were unequal not only in physical facilities and curriculum, but in reputation and opportunity for stimulating professional contact. His arguments were accepted, and the court ruled in his favor.

The field of technology seems an unlikely one in which to argue we are repeating history to the same effect. Yet most of the organizations for women in technology formed in the past thirty years follow a “separate but equal” doctrine and fail to recognize –- as Sweatt correctly pointed out in his suit more than half a century ago -– that they do not create equal opportunity for professional contact.

This ultimately results in a failure to execute on the organizations’ stated mission: to generate opportunities and showcase contributions of said group to the industry in question. Any commercial venture that achieved so little would have been forced out of business, but we’ve chosen to accept this broken model for women in tech because no one wants to touch this issue and appear unsupportive of women.

We can’t advance technology and showcase the contributions of women if we don’t interact and collaborate with the industry. That means necessarily collaborating with men, who dominate the industry at a ratio that most studies put at 4 to 1.

The focus of most women’s groups in technology has been on women, not technology. While gender and equality are important facets, the goal should be to demonstrate the contributions of women, not necessarily to focus on the fact that we are women. It’s a sometimes subtle difference that is the secret, it seems, to ensuring that women’s voices are not drowned out.

The beautiful thing about technology is that its practitioners respect technological expertise and ideas without regard for gender or race or any other personal factor. It is the dearth of women in technology that leads to the reality that women are often easily overlooked amongst the greater numbers of men. Its sheer volume that tends to keep our contributions to technology in the weeds.

The isolationism inherent in a “separate but equal” doctrine tends to lead to a focus on the group’s common characteristics rather than the purpose for which they came together. Technology-focused groups succeed by focusing on technology and ideas, not gender or race or geographic locale.

The problem is bringing those ideas to the fore for women, in finding a platform upon which they can stand so their contributions and ideas are seen and heard, not creating an echo chamber full of women that will eventually degrade into discussions of work-life balance that, while important, do little to forward the technological contributions of the group.

Our own organization is attempting to correct some of these issues. As a case study, it might be useful to consider some of the changes we’ve made.

CloudNOW is a non-profit consortium of the leading women in cloud computing, focused on using technology for the overall professional development of women from around the world by by providing a forum for networking, knowledge sharing, mentoring, and economic growth. Its design is fundamentally constructed to promote equality, not separatism.

Like many women-in-technology organizations, actions speak louder than founding charters, however. So far, we have tried to remain true to our approach.

For example, the first advisor we selected to serve on the board was notable cloud computing expert (and a man), Bernard Golden. Together with industry-leading women like Lauren States, CTO for Cloud Computing on the IBM Corporate Strategy team, the board gives us advice on how best to collaborate across the industry to achieve its goal of becoming a platform upon which the contributions of women in cloud computing can be more widely promoted. One of the results of such gender-collaborative advice has been the participation of CloudNOW members at every major cloud computing conference since its launch in August 2011, including the first all-female panel at any major tech conference with our debut at CloudExpo.

Another example is our Top Women in Technology award, which we’re presenting not at an isolated women-centric event or venue, but at the forthcoming Cloud Connect Event in Santa Clara. We hope doing this will enrich the cloud conversation by ensuring diverse points of view rather than pulling attention away from the cloud conversation to focus solely on gender.

By promoting women’s contributions and ideas in mainstream venues, we hope to encourage more interaction, more integration, and more opportunity for women and men to focus on the contributions of women to cloud computing and technology rather than on gender.

Certainly there are challenges with being a woman in a male-dominated field, and while separate, gender-focused, conversations around those challenges are fine, the organization must consistently contribute to the fabric of the overall community.

Isolation tends to insulate members from the community rather than encourage participation. Isolation eliminates the ability to network and the opportunities to contribute to the community that arise from engagement.

But our organization and others like it should ensure that everyone, regardless of gender, can take part. All that is required is passion for technology and a belief in using technology as a tool for positive change, economic equality, and social justice.

In short, we simply want to promote women in technology without isolating them from the industry at large, making sure the “separate but equal” doctrine continues to be regarded as much of a fallacy now as it was during the height of the Civil Rights movement.

As follow up to our cloud primer, Cloud Computing: Fact versus Fog, Grail Research interviewed 20 cloud computing experts in order to offer cloud providers, investors and prospective customers a more detailed and consolidated understanding of who cloud customers are and what is driving them to move to cloud today. Experts interviewed for this study span a cross-section of the most progressive cloud thinkers, including industry analysts, senior executives at major cloud vendors, and founders of technology firms. This report summarizes the key themes about customers and adoption drivers that emerged from the research.

Read full report

Even with all the hype surrounding Cloud Computing, a recent Forrester study shows that only 6% of enterprises have a successful private Cloud deployment. CloudNOW sat down with Vanessa Alvarez, named by Femmeonomics as one of the 50 women to watch in Tech, a well-respected industry analyst for data storage and cloud computing and a member of the CloudNOW advisory board, to talk about the trends and challenges in the cloud computing space and what is really holding enterprises back.

CloudNOW: What do you think the top 3-5 trends/challenges are in cloud  that execs should have on their radar? 

Ms. Alvarez: When we survey executives today, a large percentage of organizations are in the planning stage or already starting to deploy Cloud in their environments. And there are a number of different trends that are pushing them to move forward in their cloud journey. First, the easy access to IT resources from the likes of Amazon Web Services etc.  I continue to see many business users leveraging outside resources without IT approval.  A CIO and his IT organization should be a part of this process.  The on-demand and flexible nature of Cloud environments help enterprises accelerate their time to market and so it’s not a matter of stopping business users from leveraging, but of IT going to their business customers and ensuring they are obtaining the most cost efficient internal/external resources for the task at hand.  Thus CXOs and executives need to evaluate cloud computing in terms of the agility and flexibility that it brings to their operations.

Another trend that executives should have on their radar is the evolving role of IT.  When cloud emerged, there was much hype around IT jobs going away. In fact there is so much more demand for jobs for those skill sets that are required for managing a Cloud environment. IT organizations today should move to focusing what is core to their overall business rather than building, maintaining and managing IT infrastructure. That means IT will become a services manager or services broker organization and will help the company determine whether it should be leveraging its own IT resources or it should be leveraging external IT resources.

Finally I think that a hybrid cloud-computing environment will prevail rather than a completely public cloud environment. Enabling a hybrid environment will maximize the efficiencies of resources, after all, not every workload and/or application is made to be in a public cloud.  The cost and other challenges of rearchitecting legacy applications for example may not be worth it.

CloudNOW: What do you think the top trends/challenges in cloud are in the short term; let’s say from now until the next 12 months? …. And beyond that?

Ms. Alvarez: When we look at Cloud today, only 6% of enterprises have a successful private Cloud deployment. That’s really not a large number despite the hype around cloud computing. Thus, I think it’s going to be a while before we really start to see the hybrid model coming to fruition. The short-term trend is the evolution of IT organization from maintaining and managing infrastructure to becoming a business that understands where IT resources should be leveraged from. Over the next 12 to 18 months, we are going to see the evolution of that role.  The trend is the role of server, network and storage roles evolving; the challenge is acquiring the right skill sets to manage a hybrid environment, where it’s not only about infrastructure anymore; but about how your IT environment enables the business.  New functions and responsibilities emerge from cloud, and the difficult part will be finding the right talent to have not only the technical skills, but the business acumen as well.  It’s not about speeds and feeds anymore; it’s about “how does my IT environment contribute to my bottom line?” We already see this happening; however, the roles of data base administrators and information architects are also changing, as they begin to depend a great deal on infrastructure technologies in order to make some of their processes run faster or perform better.  We see this in the area of unstructured data, and the need for enterprises to analyze and leverage this data in the most efficient manner possible.

CloudNOW: Do you have any insights into areas of convergences (eg social, mobile, cloud)?

Ms. Alvarez: The convergence I see happening now is the one of consumer and enterprise.  Cloud has really allowed consumers to become much more technology savvy and has enabled the convergence between consumer and enterprise services. What we have seen in the storage space is that employees leverage consumer services like Dropbox and Box.net to collaborate with their colleagues or store corporate data. While IT has no idea if employees are using these services for personal or work data, they don’t want really to be a bottleneck and are now enforcing policies around the usage of these service and putting SLAs in place with the service providers. And at the same time cloud consumer services understand that they have a place in business and are beginning to offer enterprise level solutions with added security, management etc.The convergence I see further out, is the one of cloud and mobility.  How does mobile infrastructure enable/complement cloud?  How can enterprises leverage it in disaster recovery cases for example.

CloudNOW: Which areas do you think are the most realistic and have the largest commercial benefit?  Which will be the largest moneymakers?

Ms. Alvarez: If enterprises can leverage infrastructure services such that that they will accelerate the time to market for a product or a service offering, that in itself is value from Cloud. The agility that cloud computing offers is priceless. Service providers hold the key to cloud because they enable enterprises to focus on their core capabilities and value proposition and not worry about managing and maintaining infrastructure. A lot of service providers today are making the necessary acquisitions to be able to offer the right services to enterprises. If they are able to demonstrate and capitalize on the value that cloud brings to enterprises, then it will be a win/win for both.

CloudNOW: Are there any major differences across markets or regions that you see with respect to any Cloud trend?

Ms. Alvarez: I see a slight difference between the U.S. and Europe markets in terms of the mentality and how forward thinking they are. The U.S. doesn’t face as much regulation and compliance (for better or for worse) than Europe does.  From a vertical perspective, I see a similar trend.  Some verticals are much more heavily regulated than others. The heavily regulated industries may start to hit a wall because they can’t leverage Cloud due to compliance issues such as data location restrictions etc.

But progress depends on the different kinds of data, workloads, and regulations & compliances issues that organizations must deal with, for e.g. for some enterprises, it is important to control where mission critical data and workloads are housed, what kind of latency they can tolerate and what performance is acceptable. Some workloads and data require more, some less.  These issues must be dealt with before certain organizations can make progress. Others may have fewer restrictions and are more tolerant to certain standards, so it doesn’t matter.  These organizations can progress faster on the cloud journey.

CloudNOW: The speed of innovation in cloud continues to accelerate at such a rapid pace – how will companies deal with the challenges of more interdependencies and complexities (often security related)?  How can they prepare for these challenges in advance?

Ms. Alvarez: Most organizations today are going into Cloud not as well prepared, as they should be. There are a number of reasons for that, including the lack of standardization (pricing, SLAs etc) . There is still a great deal of ambiguity and gray area that needs to be cleared up. However, being able to understand why you are looking to leverage an external public Cloud, or why you are looking to change your own IT environment from a traditional IT environment to a private Cloud model is really key. A lot of private cloud initiatives are started by C-level management without really understanding WHY they need to change.  What are the business initiatives/challenges/requirements that are pushing you to enable a private cloud environment, or leverage public cloud services?  We also see a lack of communication between CXOs, IT and business staff. This leads to roadblocks along the cloud journey because not everyone was on board and all of a sudden you have challenges that emerge. Thus organizations should really be prepared from a people, process and technology perspective and understand why they are looking to leverage Cloud, whether a private cloud or public cloud.

If organizations are looking to leverage public cloud services, it is necessary to establish their requirements and criteria ahead of time, then sit down with service providers and establish what’s possible.  Often times, this is not done, and when there is an outage, or disruption, then miscommunication of expectations emerge.  In order to avoid this, it’s best to have an upfront discussion on requirements.

CloudNOW: Going along the lines of the speed of innovation, why do you think that we’re having this rapid pace of innovation in Cloud? And do you feel that customers’ needs are leading or that technology is actually charting the direction?

Ms. Alvarez: The evolution of technology today is amazing. Every day we start to see different features and functionality. While technology moves at a much faster pace than enterprises do, enterprises are really starting to understand what role technology plays in helping their business evolve. However changing technology is not the challenge because at the end of the day you just deploy it. Changing people and process is a bigger challenge and what needs to happen in sync with technology changes in order to have a successful cloud environment.

CloudNOW: Has there been an increase or any change in the number of women professionals in the Cloud Computing arena right now?

Ms. Alvarez: Unfortunately I think that IT in general has fewer women and I don’t know if Cloud is really changing that. What I think we should start seeing is, because cloud computing really entails bringing business and IT together, a lot more women from the business side try to bridge that gap between the business and IT and start to help IT understand what the business value of technology is to the company. But today we haven’t really seen an increase, which is very disappointing. I do hope that once we do start to see much more of a tie-in of business and IT, we will see more women professionals in the area of Cloud Computing and IT in general.

CloudNOW: How did you get started in technology?

Ms. Alvarez: I came from the manufacturing, consumer goods industry with a supply-chain management background. When I moved to Boston there were no real opportunities in the consumer goods space. So I joined Yankee Group’s Research Associate program, where I sat in the Enterprise Infrastructure team.   7-1/2 years later, I still love being an analyst in technology.  There’s always a need for infrastructure, commodity or not, and today, as the infrastructure space evolves, my analyst perspective on infrastructure evolves as well.

CloudNOW: What is the best piece of advice you have received in your career?

Ms. Alvarez: The best piece of advice I have received in my career is to always make the call. It could be right or wrong but as long as you can make an informed argument and back up your opinion, that’s all that matters.

Thus I pass on the same advice:  Make the call and  never back down. When you have the right idea and the right argument based on informed research, then there’s no reason why you should back down. I’m also a firm believer in Vision, Plan and Focus. You must have a vision, and focus on making it a reality with a plan.  When all three happen, successful execution is inevitable.