Venyu Blog

We’re all familiar with varied and sundry “Top 10 Lists” (ala David Letterman), and all sorts of numerical queues (five best practices in managing your ERP budget, 7 things you can do right now to change your life, or your datacenter – ok that’s interchangeable depending on your lifestyle or IT status), but in coming across this essay by Jeff Kaplan in the latest issue of Internet Evolution, I have to add a new category: as Kaplan sublimely calls it: “The 10 Es of Successful Cloud Services.”

As Kaplan explains, “in the past most tech companies and software vendors were product-centric, pushing their “solutions” either directly to potential customers or via an assortment of third-party channels. Getting their systems and applications to work typically entailed lots of up-front consulting and extensive training, followed by costly ongoing support and maintenance. The quality of these services was critical to the successful deployment of major systems or business applications, but suppliers tended to understate this significance in the sales process to avoid bringing attention to the costs involved. And despite enormous capital investments, too often the new systems and applications failed to achieve their original business objectives and became underutilized.”

Enter the cloud, where results are easy to see and service has become the litmus test by which the quality and functionality of the software is delivered (and presumably measured). As Kaplan states, in the old world where the four Ps – product, price, placement, and promotion – were the ubiquitous standards for tech companies to convince buyers their products aligned with their existing systems environment or software architecture – today’s SaaS and cloud service providers are using something he calls “The 10Es.” According to Kaplan these ten Es aid and abet user-oriented, go-to-market strategies and include:

• Ease-of-use. If a cloud service isn’t easy to acquire and use, it isn’t worth acquiring.
• Economize: If a service doesn’t generate substantial savings, it isn’t worth using.
• Evaluate: The functional capabilities and adoption path should be easy to assess, eliminating as much risk (‘friction’) as possible.
• Engage: A service should create a compelling experience that permits a user to quickly benefit from the cloud solution’s functional capabilities.
• Enable: A solution should empower the user to perform a function more effectively.
• Energize: A service should excite the user about additional ways it can be leveraged.
• Encourage: It should drive the user to adopt additional solutions and push others to do the same.
• Elicit: A service should generate ongoing feedback that permits the vendor to quickly identify problems and potential enhancements.
• Ecosystem: There should be a broad-based set of third-party suppliers and channel partners that enhance the value of the solution and assure the success of the provider.
• Evangelize: Successful customers should be enthusiastic enough about the value of the solution to serve as proponents and advocates in the market and among their peers.

So, based on this new “E-world” system, how does your current cloud provider rate? Discuss among yourselves (or on your own, of course), and feel free to comment below. Is Kaplan right? Could your cloud computing provider satisfy all, or at least most of these? And, finally, do you share these standards with Kaplan? Are there others you would include?