{"id":2082,"date":"2011-05-04T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2082"},"modified":"2011-05-04T07:00:17","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T15:00:17","slug":"cloud-computing-traditional-vendors-struggle-to-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/cloud-computing-traditional-vendors-struggle-to-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Computing: Traditional Vendors Struggle to Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Change. \u00a0It’s usually for the better, but there are often steep hurdles to overcome to adopt it. \u00a0In the business world, we see time and again successful business stumble and fall when they are not able to adopt to changes in the business climate. \u00a0Business examples are numerous ranging from the auto industry to technology. \u00a0 The inability to change is the reason why big companies like Microsoft and SAP plateau and struggle.<\/p>\n

While creating a successful business is not easy, and business failure far outnumber business successes, keeping successful business momentum year after year isn’t possible without continually correctly refining and executing on changes to the business plan. \u00a0We hear more and more frequently about new technologies and how they have the potential to be \u00a0‘disruptive’. \u00a0Technologies like cloud computing are in that category, and traditional software companies that are ignoring the cloud are beginning to feel the power of disruption.<\/p>\n

But changing the way that business is done can be difficult. \u00a0One example in the news lately is Iron Mountain, a leader in the area of traditional paper-based Records Management. \u00a0Iron Mountain<\/a> is used by 97 percent of Fortune 500 companies and had annual revenues of $3 billion in 2009. \u00a0Iron Mountain had the foresight to recognize a future where documents and records will be stored in the cloud. \u00a0They made an early push to the cloud by establishing Iron Mountain Digital.<\/p>\n

But somewhere along the line, Iron Mountain’s execution seems to have slipped. \u00a0In April, Iron Mountain announced <\/a>that they would be shutting down their on-line operations. \u00a0 Their digital operations lost $58 million in 2010, following a good year in 2009 where they achieved $220 million in profits. \u00a0Both the Iron Mountain Virtual File Store and the Iron Mountain Archive Service Platform are being shut down. \u00a0Third-party service providers that had used the Iron Mountain API to build applications and services around the Iron Mountain digital vault will be affected.<\/p>\n

Iron Mountain wanted to emphasize that the announcement didn’t signal a complete exit from the cloud. \u00a0They are facing tough competition on the low end of the market space from vendors like Amazon and Google. \u00a0They still say that they plan to create higher margin cloud applications.<\/p>\n

Brian Babineau, storage analyst and vice president of research for Enterprise Strategy Group said that\u00a0“It is also time for them to focus a bit more. They will be in the ‘application’ business delivered via the cloud, such as archiving and eDiscovery. \u00a0I would much rather be in those than in the commodity capacity business, especially when the competition is Amazon, Google, et cetera.”<\/p>\n

Another point of view was made by Yankee Group storage analyst Zeus Kerravala who said that\u00a0“It’s a decision that Iron Mountain will regret for a long time. It’s like Xerox giving up on Windows.”<\/div>\n
The comments by both analysts, while seemingly contradictory, have an element of truth. \u00a0Cloud-based storage is certain to become central to any future Records Management strategy. \u00a0While Iron Mountain might see no margin or profits by delivering a stripped-down Amazon-like cloud-based storage application, Iron Mountain failed to differentiate themselves as offering a platform that both offered entry-level storage, backup and archival capabilities, but one that could also easily include premium features like records management and discovery.<\/div>\n
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Change. \u00a0It’s usually for the better, but there are often steep hurdles to overcome to adopt it. \u00a0In the business world, we see time and again successful business stumble and fall when they are not able to adopt to changes…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud-computing","category-content-management","category-records-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}