I was amazed – but not surprised – to read that more than 7 million new iOS and Androids were registered during the two days of Christmas. Registration occurs when someone turns on a new Smartphone or tablet PC for the first time. The average per day is 1.5 million – still a large number. What this tells us is that more and more people are going mobile, downloading apps and browsing the latest information just by touching a screen. To consumers – meaning everybody – mobility is no longer a gift; we take it for granted. It shapes the way we communicate, do business, consume IT, and collaborate with customers, partners and even competitors. “Social” is the big trend which will influence all these parts.

And “Social” and “Mobility” are closely related to cloud. Most people get used to having access to their friends, the wealth of information on the Internet and the convenience of ever-present cloud services very quickly. After a short while, they don’t want to do without it. If you don’t believe me, watch a kid when he gets his first smart mobile device. Within a few short days, the device becomes a natural means of keeping in touch with all the other kids. The same is true for us grown-ups, albeit at our own pace.
However, when the holidays are over and we return to our workplaces, we often feel like we are being stopped in mid stride. Want to set up a new process or application? Your company will tell you that it has to order new hardware, software licenses, install it and then – let’s say in four weeks – you can move on. That is so old-fashioned, isn’t it? Regulations, bureaucracy and a traditional approach to IT hinder us from applying the tools and software we use so naturally in our private lives. We often resolve the dilemma by disobeying the rules (let’s be honest) and by using our private toys and tools at work or just subscribing to a public cloud service. Have you asked your CIO? He would surely have a lot of arguments against it. However, if you asked the CEO of your company, he would probably say we need these people; we need exactly this kind of culture, speed, result oriented, collaborative – that is the way the business works these days.
I hope you are satisfied with your Christmas gifts. If you have a problem with one of them though, chances are that you will have to deal with traditional support hotlines and disintegrated processes that usually spoil your customer experience. Why not, for example, integrate all the processes in cloud fashion via an interactive Web page with a fully customer-oriented experience? It should include social networking features to interact with the company of your choice. Why? Because according to ComScore, roughly 20 percent of the time we spend online involves social networking. In 2007, it was only 6 percent. (They don’t say how much of that takes place at the workplace but I’ll bet that percentage is rising as well.) Three out of every four minutes spent on social networking sites are spent on Facebook. Digital natives – the future customers and leaders of our companies – have reduced their e-mail communication by 22 percent and their instant message communication by 42 percent within one year while communication via social media has increased by 34 percent.
It would thus be fatal to ignore the disruptive force of ubiquitous cloud services and social networking. Many of you might claim that nobody really ignores them but, at the same time, we‘ve got to admit that most of us are still not fully utilizing the potential of social networking for our customers and our companies. In my view, it is not because of market conditions, technological or legal restrictions, etc. Instead, it is because organizations are not ready for a disruptive change, not ready for a change to their mindsets, not ready to accept that business as usual will no longer work. The change, however, is inevitable.
Quite often, I hear questions like “When will the cloud finally break through?” In my view, this is not the right question. Instead, you should be asking yourself when you can benefit from the huge opportunities that come with the cloud. Mobility and Social are only two of them; I will talk about some others in my next posts.
If you ask me, I think 2012 will be a good year for the cloud; it will be an even better year for you if you start asking the right questions now.

Yours,
Andre Kiehne

Our LIFEBOOKs convince with their mobility, quality, security and touch features.

What about you?

Flexible, competent and connected – can you keep up with our LIFEBOOKs?

Make the profile pitch!

Is your Linkedin profile stronger than those of your colleagues and contacts? Form a team and challenge opponents. The better each team performs the more points it earns! The best team from every week can win great prizes.

 -Daniel

Today I’m happy to welcome our  guest blogger Linda Weber, Head of Business from StarkStrom Augsburg:

„StarkStrom Augsburg“ is an incorporated association of the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg consisting of approximately 70 students from different faculties, mainly Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Business Studies.

(C)FSG - Harald Almonat

Together we build an electrically driven racing car in order to participate in the International Design Competition “Formula Student Germany” organised by the Society of Automotive
Engineers (SAE) VDI-FVT, which will take place on the race track in Hockenheim the first week of August 2012. Each year around 100 international racing teams take part in either the Formula Students Combustion contest or the Formula Student Electric contest depending on the drive configuration. Each team spends one year of hard work designing, building and testing their cars – and in Hockenheim they will present their results to the judges and show off their technical solutions on the race track. Formula Student   Germany stands for the unique atmosphere of innovation, commitment, fun and race ambiance of over 2000 motivated and talented students from all over the world.

Already since 2010, when StarkStrom Augsburg was still in the earliest stages of development, Fujitsu has been supporting our team as one of the main sponsors and accompanies us on the exciting path to design and to build an electrically driven racing car by ourselves.
Anyone, who has ever had the opportunity, to take a closer look on a Formula Student racing car, could see that this is not about soapboxes. Every single component runs through an optimization cycle and will be designed, calculated and redesigned again. These optimisation steps are especially for a new team like ours vital and indispensable. This is where Fujitsu supports us.

As our own notebooks are not suitable for constructing, individual FEM-calculations would take several hours. But the Fujitsu CELSIUS Workstations enable us to work much more efficient and we can already discuss the results after few minutes.

Even with other CAE-programs the professional computer has no problems with the huge amount of data. This helped us immensely, particularly observing the entire car.

Therefore, we are very grateful for the huge support of  Fujitsu. We are looking forward to the further cooperation!

Under the theme “Reshaping IT – Reshaping the Business” we are going to present solutions and services which reflect various benefits of cloud computing at Cebit 2012 taking place in March.

Yesterday, we already gave the press a preview including a  first glimpse at our upcoming attractive 10.1-inch STYLISTIC M532 media tablet for business and private usage.

This tablet represents a new generation of devices, combining extensive capabilities for private usage scenarios with business usage scenarios like accessing your company data in the cloud. Thanks to a ready-to-use software, the Fujitsu STYLISTIC M532 supports the secure management of corporate exchange email, calendar and contacts while protecting sensitive data. The media tablet comes “VDI-ready” and supports the VDI environments Citrix, as well as VMware and Microsoft. The Android operating system provides rich multimedia applications, thus ensuring a high degree of usability. Furthermore, the STYLISTIC M532 comes with integrated 3G/UMTS and GPS and the operation on the capacitive touch screen is done via multiple touch.
Media Tablets like the Fujitsu STYLISTIC M532 follow the “Bring your own device” trend as well as the current changes in user behavior in the era cloud computing. The STYLISTIC M532 media tablet belongs to the category of devices that integrate the strengths of smartphones, supporting the use of business apps, offering new ways of presenting information.

Further details and specifications will be announced within the upcoming months.

-Barbara

I was on my way to see a customer in the northern part of Germany this week when my flight was delayed due to fog. It was actually the perfect setting as we were going to talk about cloud services.
This particular customer had decided to optimize his IT environment with a standardized internal solution stack that provides automation as well as virtualization. So far, so good. The question I wanted to raise, however, was – Is this the best solution stack for cloud services as well? Do you even need the same stack in the cloud? Do you really want to shift resources to scale your IT up and down in a cloud environment? In short, does technology really drive IT improvement?
My short answer is – no! Ultimately, cloud services are not a question of technology; they are a matter of business needs. Cloud services are about optimization, flexibility and competitiveness. As a result, the decision about what a business needs should not be left up to the IT department alone. Business units should have a say in the matter as well.

It’s only human nature that we stick to tried-and-trusted solutions. Thus, there is a tendency on the part of IT departments to pick known solutions from known vendors and to stick to proven processes and principles – an easy and successful approach in the past. Today, however, this approach has maneuvered us into a lack of flexibility, a lack of cost efficiency and – the major downside – a lack of innovation for business units and the entire company.
In contrast, cloud computing has become a commodity with a direct line to the end user. The danger that business units will bypass IT is greater than ever. It’s a situation that no business can tolerate.
So how can IT stay in the driver’s seat? My advice would be to embrace change. Honestly answer some tough questions like:
•    Are we trapped in a closed eco system?
•    Do we need to optimize the old technology stack? Or are its limitations already apparent?
•    Do we really want to continue counting CPU’s, say, for licensing software?
•    Would a hybrid solution provide a better fit for our business needs?
•    Is the existing provider an adequate partner?

Coming back to the questions posed at the beginning, I would like you to ponder the following:
•    Would you agree that cloud services are cost efficient due to the use of tightly integrated technology managed and shared by multiple customers?
•    Would you agree that individualized IT services may be a nice luxury? However, in order to gain maximum benefit from the cloud, would you agree that it should be strictly standardized to the needs of business units or processes?
If your answer to the latter question is “yes”, you probably would agree that technology is not the most important factor when it comes to cloud services. Regardless of how you optimize your internal IT in terms of automation and virtualization, choose a cloud provider who is able to support you in bridging today and tomorrow. And make sure he is not simply integrating good old technologies while urging you to continue counting processors, spending money on pre-investments and calculating license costs.
Be bold! Seize the opportunity! Improve your IT and your approach to it as a matter of business, and not just technology. From a customer’s perspective, technology should be irrelevant when it comes to the cloud. All that counts are the results.

Yours,

Andre Kiehne