Dr. Werner Vogels: "The cloud is more secure and affordable than firms realise"

[This is a repost of the interview by Dr. Werner Vogels given to http://www.siliconrepublic.com/strategy/item/17491-the-cloud-is-more-secure/. Dr. Werner Vogels was a speaker at SIME 09, named the CTO of the year by Information Week and one of the most important people in the cloud computing arena]

As a revolution in technology, how would you rate the take-up of cloud computing?

Companies in virtually every industry are taking advantage of the on-demand, scalable and pay-as-you-go benefits. We believe that these services are rapidly changing what tech vendors are offering to customers and how those customers are purchasing IT.

Fast-growing start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike are leveraging the on-demand technology resources from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to innovate, rapidly scale and cut costs.

These services are available on demand so a customer doesn’t need to think about controlling them, maintaining them or where they’re located. Customers access the services when they need them and pay for only what they use.

Have businesses been reluctant to embrace cloud computing because of security fears or having their data mingle with other data for compliance reasons?

I realise that CIOs feel very responsible for the performance and security of the company’s technology infrastructure. There is an element of control in being able to walk down the hall for the throat to choke. There’s also a comfort in knowing you can take some action if there’s a problem. And relinquishing that control is understandably difficult.

Once customers understand how we handle security, many say that we provide equal to or even better security than they can achieve on their own.

Examining Amazon’s cloud, you’ll see that the same security isolations are employed as would be found in a traditional data centre. It provides the same familiar approaches to security that companies have been using for decades.

How big an aspect is the cloud for Amazon’s business into the future?

AWS was developed from a skill we already have and that is building technology infrastructure at massive scale. The web-scale computing services that AWS offers are based on Amazon’s own back-end technology infrastructure, which we’ve spent over a decade building.

In the fullness of time – not sure if this will be five, 10 or 20 years – we believe few companies will have their own data centres and those that do will have much smaller footprints. For that reason, we believe that one day AWS could be as big as or bigger than our retail business, the reason is that cloud computing is where technology is going.

What does the future hold for cloud computing?

The old world meant lots of capex, underutilised infrastructure and wasted time and focus on undifferentiated IT. The new world is no capex, pay for what you use and the ability to focus on what differentiates your business. CEOs, CFOs and CIOs owe it to their shareholders to take a hard look at their technology infrastructure and make sure it’s really differentiated and adding value … as it’s likely costing them a lot of money.

Dr Werner Vogels will be speaking at the Cloud Computing Summit at Croke Park Stadium on 9 September. To learn more go to www.siliconrepublic.com/special-events/the-2010-cloud-computing-summit

Sara Öhrvall talks about whether iPad is the savior the media industry has been waiting for

If the App Store has got the operators by the neck, the iPad and iBooks embraces the publishing industry. It is a new distribution channel that publishers can track engage emot and connect with their audience. People love the experience on an Apple device like an iPad and automatically the layout and framework makes them like the content they see from different publishers too.

Sara Öhrvall, Senior Vice President, Research & Development, the Bonnier Group and a featured SIME speaker from 2009 (her take on the 5 trends to watch out for) was at DLD Women in Munich, a partner conference to SIME featuring women in the June 10-11 edition. Sara is responsible for the Bonnier Mag+ project, bringing print magazines to digital on the iPad – and future devices. Here she talks about the iPad and similar devices and how Bonnier Media Group is using such channels to connect with their audience better.

Read her blog post on SIME here

Reliving SIME Barcelona 09 – Flickr Stream

[Do you have better photos to share from SIME Barcelona 09?]

SIME Talks Episode 6, Season 2: Story Telling is the product of great real time conversations (feat. Steven Overman)

Steven Overman believes in the process of story telling – tell a story, talk about your brand : the usual marketing jargon, but comes with a real time twist. He wants real time conversations about your brand to be the storyline of your brand, not your ego centric unidirectional message. An attitudinal change is needed to play the game today.

And the reason is two-fold.

i. Values and behaviors have changed – people want to be / are empowered, conscientious, transparent, anxious and impatient.

ii. Technology and Media have changed – new channels give way to new ways to express and communicate. Social, Intelligent, Context-Aware – the technology is breathing its own life of expression.

This he calls a Real Time Conversation. The passion of his is manifested in his Real Time Project that he co-founded.

Visit The Real Time Project Web here

A big SIME star, Steve was one of the most loved speakers in both SIME Helsinki and SIME Stockholm in 2009, giving riveting talks about story telling and love for real time. Below is an interview captured by our video production friends, Radon.

SIME 09 -STEVEN OVERMAN from SIME on Vimeo.

Steven Overman is a great personality. He is a co-founder The Realtime Project, communications pioneer including Lowe Worldwide Global Strategy Director for IPG Team Nokia and as one of the enthusiast behind Wired Magazine as well as in many other innovative teams. Steven was in the room -94 when the first banner was created…

Read more about Steve’s profile at Brandism
Steve’s Twitter, LinkedIN

SIME thanks Berghs School of Communication for producing the SIME Movie Posters and billboards

If you had been to SIME this year and found movie like posters outside the Rigoletto cinema depicting the SIME speakers as movie stars, I bet you stood by for a minute at least, snapped a picture and went in thinking that was cool. Actually, passers by thought they were movie posters until they paused for a minute and read the text again. Well, we thought we should do a featured post about the folks who came up with the idea.

Meet the students from Berghs school of communication

Berghs School of Communication, Sweden, is a school in Stockholm that offers strategic and creative educational programs within market communications at several levels and formats. Interactive Communication at Berghs is a one-year education that gives students a broad and intensive year in marketing strategies and how they relate to digital communication. Students learn how the contemporary techniques of interactivity work regardless of language, geography or culture and how to integrate interactive communication with other channels and best communicate with a range of target audiences. Working with digital technologies such as the internet, intranet, e-business, viral marketing, mobile telephony and digital TV divides education into a series of courses in: interactive branding, interactive campaigns, computer technologies, technical development, design management, web management, content management and information design. In short these folks are “interactive integrated communicators”.

The task with SIME was to highlight the speakers and celebrate them, make them the rock stars, the heros of digital knowledge. The solution? Use the movie billboards outside of the cinema. On these bilboards we put up prints where the speakers were highlighted in fictive newspaper billboards of some of Swedens biggest and most influential papers, like IDG, Internetworld and Aftonbladet. These papers were also partners of the SIME conference. A neat idea that the folks at Berghs School of Communication came up with and implemented it to perfection together with our in house logistic team.

A gazillion thanks to the manager of the program Peder Rotkirch and his students Clara Grelsson, Fredrik Arrelid, Markus Andersson, Axel Tagg, Jonas Åhlén, the creative heads from Berghs School. You guys are fine integrated communicators!

SIME 09: Highlights

Relive the SIME Magic, the SIME Inspiration through some recorded footage and pictures

SIME 09 was all about the 4 dimensions of digital opportunities: business, knowledge, inspiration and fun, the 4 pillars or the corner stones for this year’s SIME. And we took every step to make sure during the 2 days you got your best business opportunities, learnt as much from the sessions, workshops, drew inspiration from the speakers and the participants and, most importantly had riveting fun before, during and after the conference.

Looking back, we did quite much shake the SIME cover. From coming up with a new format, an agenda that boasts of covering most verticals within the digital landscape, and a revised Awards format, we did have quite an uphill task to package them the best and add the SIME touch at the end. At the end, if you had as much fun at SIME as we had arranging it, we think it’s a job well done

The Highlights section is here

Some very good footage from the whole show is here

Interviews with SIME speakers and Participants here and here (thanks folks from 23business, Germany).

Pictures from Tom Solo (SIME’s “legend behind the lens”)

SIME Pool at Flickr (user uploaded)

And stay tuned for the year ahead. SIME is going even more international, so get ready to welcome SIME to your city!

We have 3 words for you!

You are great.

Yes, you know it, we know it, you are great. So here is a note from the SIME Team to say a quick thank you for helping us put together the best SIME of all time. It was great looking at opportunities being executed and businesses being created, and that truly is the pulse of SIME, bringing the best of people under one roof to inspire digital opportunities. We hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we loved paving it for you.

We have some great video footage, thanks to a Dutch Journalist 2.0 named Ayman Van Bregt who runs the marketingfacts.nl initiative. Big thanks Ayman.

Watch some of the footage

Flickr Pictures [the legend behind the lens and SIME's official photographer, Tom Solo will come up with his mind blowing SIME shots soon]

Oh yes, #sime09 was the second most tweeted word in Scandinavia yesterday, beat by #googlewave, but going a notch above #youtube

And the show begins.

Ola is on stage with his cherubic smile, and that during this time of the year could just mean 1 thing – the SIME party has begun.  And this time, SIME will also be on screens at Stockholm city, a first for SIME.

[I am trying to live blog apart from running around doing a lot of things for the workshops and match-making. So I will try my best to summarize and of course will read them again end of the day to go through erroneous links]

09.00 We’ve got news for you!

News from the SIME stable, updates over the last year with the introduction of SIME Academy, SIME Networking Bazaar and Workshops. Some things change, some things just don’t! And the core of SIME is always the same, and so will be the face of SIME on stage, Ola Ahlvarsson!

09.10 The age of the unthinkable

We live in turbulent times

But that’s so boring, we have been hearing this story over and over again. But the online landscape is doing good, the platform is getting stronger though the market is shit. Branding might be dead, but originality has never been so important in history. Media companies are changing and the traditional model is not working. They are buying verticals front, right and center, adding their marketing firepower and making it into a business that works and adds value. Advertising has become the fuel, it’s not the engine anymore. Content is.

With that introduction, we move on to the first keynote!

09.30 The transformers – companies going from offline to online with a smile

Some traditional companies embrace digital opportunities and make digital part of their DNA while most fail miserably and see new entrants disrupt the old playing field.

Keynote by: Jesper Kärrbrink, CEO of Eniro, one of Europe’s most progressive classifieds companies, former CEO of Svenska Spel and author of criminal novels.

Key Takeaways:

• Transforming is painful. 5.5B SEK of Eniro is being transferred in tune with the new environment.
• And during transforming we always start from within the box instead of starting from outside
• The consumption has got bigger, just that the medium of consumption has changed.

Panel: Sara Öhrvall, Head of Bonnier R&D (Sweden), Jesper Kärrbrink, CEO Eniro (Sweden) and Claudia Gonzalez, United Nations expert on social marketing and the former marketing director of the World Economic forum (US).

The panel focused on amongst many things, the way to handle change within an organization, how to tap grass root level innovations, pursuing your change strategy against all the mentally blind folks who are waiting for a chance to bring you down and stop you from your path on change. Sara Ohrvall has a great piece on the SIME Blog about 5 key media trends, personalization, the quantified self, augmented reality amongst others. You can read the piece here

And we go for break.

10.30 Coffee tea you and me

11.00 May I have your attention please?

A thought provoking journey into your attention span and how new technologies create new (a)social behavior.

Keynote by: Linda Stone, author and thought leader with a background as VP at Microsoft and long time executive with Apple who coined the term “continuous partial attention”.

The panel was interesting although most of the speakers agreed on most of the points, yet, the discussions was well steered to a point where you realize that advertising has such a long developmental spiral to go. It is at its infancy, and there is much to be discovered.

On that note, we break for lunch. We should get back in an hour with more updates.

Check our flickr stream in the meanwhile - http://www.flickr.com/groups/1123671@N23/

13.00 A hacker’s view on innovation and the future

Keynote: Paul “Pablos” Holman. Pablos is a futurist, IT security expert, and a notorious hacker with a unique view into both breaking and building new technologies. His projects at the Intellectual Ventures Lab are among the most futuristic in the world. He will show how the mindset of hackers is optimized for invention and share some of the projects from his lab.

No words can capture the presentation. From live hacking to turning it into a good cause, it was simply fascinating. I am going to try to get the recorded version of the talk.

13.45 New! Mobile opportunities

Interesting:

At any moment, there are 9M phone calls between Nokia Phones. Everything is not mobile. Things that have backward mobility can become mobile . The smartest thing to do is to build the ecosystem around the mobile phone, and build more intelligence around it. Nokia is all about people and places. And that explains the reasons for the recent acquisitions by Nokia – Dopplr, Plazes amongst others. And they are gunning for the people network too, think that’s a smart positioning move.

The keynote is now followed by the panel on the mobile innovations.

14.00 The Masters of Mobile

With Billions of phones carrying Billions of apps the era of the mobile has gone from vision to in your ear- and face user experiences offering a plethora of opportunities never seen before.

Panel: Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President Concepting & Innovation, Nokia (Finland), Dan Olschwang, President and CEO of Jumtap one of the world’s leading mobile marketing and technology companies (US) and surprise guest.

Key take aways

• 3 is looking at interesting concepts and verticals that they want to launch and make use of the billing relationship better.
• Nokia is positioning itself as a service / entertainment company than a pure hardware company.
• Mobile Marketing is interesting and companies and agencies have slowly started allocating budgets for mobile marketing. The barrier level has never been so low for companies to enter mobile marketing.
• Touch is interesting, but that’s not the next wow. The next ‘wow’ is not touch, but being intelligent and relevant without having to touch – Pekka.

The discussion start end here and continue at the workshops Everything Mobile at 1615 Rigoletto 4, “Meet the 6 mobile innovators” tomorrow. The workshop schedule is at http://sime.nu/09/stockholm/agenda

[Rushing to workshops and match making desks. WIll come back for the post-coverage again]

Lights Camera Action! SIME is set to take off.

At Rigoletto, and the stage is perfect. The ambience music is in, people are slowly trickling in with their “FIKA” and “Kannelbulle”, the speakers are all gung-ho, the workshops and match-making desks are screaming to your senses, the lovely ladies with interesting “SMS Me” T-Shirts are everywhere taking interaction with them (and quite good number of followers, yes all men, some even thinking it’s their number), it’s time of that year where it’s a whole new world with SIME. The journey is about to begin in minutes.

Some relevant links before we begin:

Agenda: http://sime.nu/09/stockholm/agenda

Speaker Profiles: http://sime.nu/09/stockholm/speakers

SIME Live!: http://sime.nu/live

And it’s rare 2 days where the Scandinavians are forced to rig off the shyness, and talk to the camera, it’s not an option, it’s an order. So be ready to be filmed, flashed till your eyes bleed with photos, and make sure you suck the juice out of SIME by meeting people.

SIME is set to take off. Tighten your seat belts, it’s going to be  journey of inspiration, knowledge, business and fun.

Lights, Camera, Action! SIME is set to take off.

At Rigoletto, and the stage is perfect. The ambience music is in, people are slowly trickling in with their “FIKA” and “Kannelbulle”, the speakers are all gung-ho, the workshops and match-making desks are screaming to your senses, the lovely ladies with interesting “SMS Me” T-Shirts are everywhere taking interaction with them (and quite good number of followers, yes all men, some even thinking it’s their number), it’s time of that year where it’s a whole new world with SIME. The journey is about to begin in minutes.

Some relevant links before we begin:

Agenda: http://sime.nu/09/stockholm/agenda

Speaker Profiles: http://sime.nu/09/stockholm/speakers

SIME Live!: http://sime.nu/live

And it’s rare 2 days where the Scandinavians are forced to rig off the shyness, and talk to the camera, it’s not an option, it’s an order. So be ready to be filmed, flashed till your eyes bleed with photos, and make sure you suck the juice out of SIME by meeting people.

SIME is set to take off. Tighten your seat belts, it’s going to be  journey of inspiration, knowledge, business and fun.