Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Silicon Valley Computer History Museum /
Mountain View, CA

Moderator: Bruce M. Richardson, Chief Research Officer, AMR Research

Speakers:

• Jeffrey Koser, Author, Selling to Zebras
• Bryan P. McGrath, Equity Research Analyst, Technology Group, Credit Suisse
• Robin Vasan, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund

Jeff Koser joined Bryan and Robin in the Selling the Cloud to Wall Street and Main Street session. They participated in an engaging exchange of thoughts, concerns and general questions on defining doing business “in the cloud”.

Oliver Marks, an independent consultant and blogger for zdnet.com and olivermarks.com, posted the following “quote of the day” from Jeff upon attending the ‘Selling the Cloud to Wall Street and Main Street’ session, “The number one reason executives don’t buy software solutions is because they don’t believe their staff will be able to operate it” This along with recession induced fear and apathy appear to be the biggest competitors to adoption in an environment hungry for cost effective solutions.

Focusing on people and their processes is a far more effective way of selling software as a solution to tactical problems than offering a software package as a cure-all panacea.

The inaugural Cloud Summit Executive was a huge success! Over 300 registered attendees from all over the Silicon Valley attended the one day event. We heard from executives and entrepreneurs in the industry, and delved into how the cloud is changing the computing landscape. One message was clear throughout the conference – this emerging $95 billion market (over the course of 5 years) is not going away.