The challenge of finding new customers or demonstrating the benefits of moving up the services value chain to existing customers is paramount for any sales rep.
By offering Quest’s FREE Assessments , you identify and sell to customers’ pain points rather than focusing on technology – you’re positioned to meet customers’ immediate needs, therefore creating up selling opportunities.
Sleek new devices like the mini iPad and Windows Surface promise to add even more momentum to the already headlong rush into business mobility and BYOD that will, according to market researcher IDC , have more U.S. Internet users accessing the Internet through mobile devices by 2015 than through PCs or other wireline devices.
And it’s all made possible by Cloud computing infrastructure, without which business mobility would remain a hassled tangle of siloed applications, data, and communications services.
A recent issue of InformationWeek pooled data from an assortment of that publication’s own surveys to offer some insight into the current state of Cloud use by IT shops. We also get a few hints about both the degree and direction of Cloud momentum and its power as a disruptive technology :
11% of IT departments have a major Cloud implementation in place [Global CIO Survey, February 2012].
20% have a formal company policy to evaluate Cloud options for any new services or systems; 27% prefer to use the Cloud [Cloud ROI Survey, November 2011].
As 2012 begins to wind down, we at Quest are finding that interest in Cloud computing continues to wind up. Our experience is borne out by recent research , which indicates that the business drivers for Cloud computing haven’t shifted much. Here’s a chart from North Bridge Venture Partners’ 2012 report :
As anyone who does business with smaller enterprises knows, most have begun to use some sort of cloud service. One survey conducted last summer for EMC shows 62% using cloud — up from 28% a year earlier.
Note that most of these companies are using public cloud services, and plenty of that use is what’s called ‘shadow IT’ — which is to say, end-users are doing unauthorized end runs around their IT departments to access these public cloud services for the sake of convenience and ease of use.
A recent report by Forrester Consulting suggests your web applications may be far more vulnerable than you think. According to Forrester, 51% of the 240 North American and European companies surveyed experienced at least one application security incident since the beginning of 2011. And 18% of those suffered losses of at least $500,000. For 8% of those surveyed, losses topped $1 million.
