Cloud Washing 101 - The cloud marketing playbook
Posted by Rhett Glauser on Tue, May 25, 2010 @ 02:57 PM
Last week a couple of alphabet soup enterprise software vendors held their annual user conferences and triumphed in the delivery of some truly epic cloud washing. The marketing machine was on full throttle, puffing out clouds of all different shapes and sizes.
Some of their cloud intentions had an ETA years from now. I'm thinking by then they'll have to change the buzz word of the day on the shrink wrapped box the CDs are shipped in.
As is traditional, the vendors invited all their customers, partners, press and analysts. This the vendor's opportunity to upsell the customers and to tell the press and analysts about all the "new" things they've been working on. Some even went so far as to add Technology to the portfolio.
In an effort to maintain relevance in an IT world that has changed drastically without them, they instinctively grab onto the latest trend and don't let go until every last drop of maintenance revenue is squeezed out of it.
For the wannabe cloud washlings out there, here is the cloud marketing playbook:
- Create a new consulting service to help cloud customers feel assured.
- Dust off old CD boxes, apply white out liberally, change words like "network," "storage" and "software" to "cloud" and "SaaS". Give no thought to actual meaning of any terms.
- Form an industry consortium for the purpose of gathering luddites in the spirit of creating standards that will save the dinosaurs.
- Announce cloudy partnerships simply because a fusion of synergy always means 1+1=3.
- Call everything a cloud service just for effect, even if it is simply a basic IT service. Cloud is a way bigger tent than any of us ever realized.
- Convince customers they need cloud management tools in addition to the management tools they already have. Apparently the cloud broke the old tools, or was that the Internet's fault?
Anyway, earlier today I gave a presentation in Helsinki at the DeskIT conference. It was well received but I don't think it was what they expected. The presentation was basically about ITSM in the cloud but a good portion of it was spent answering the question, "Should I be skeptical?"
Given the current scrubbing going on, of course the short answer to that question is, "Heck yes."
I needed a good graphic to use in the slide deck because bulleted lists make me sleepy. A quick Google search lead me to this wonderful and very real product called Cloud Wash.
Cloud Wash Inc. needs to get out of the home improvement industry and focus all efforts on selling to the legacy enterprise software vendors. They'll buy this stuff by the barrell.
The parallels between what is going on in IT and this unsuspecting paint vendor's product are both humorous and revealing. By the way, is that a bunny as a service?