{"id":98450,"date":"2014-04-03T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/OutsideInnovation\/~3\/Pb_HFLSbl18\/can-ibm-deliver-customer-clouds.html"},"modified":"2014-04-03T08:05:04","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T15:05:04","slug":"can-ibm-deliver-customer-clouds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/can-ibm-deliver-customer-clouds\/","title":{"rendered":"Can IBM Deliver Customer Clouds?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>We all walk around with the cloud in our pockets. Our mobile devices are our connection to the cloud. Computing resources, networking resources, storage, content, applications, and even business processes now run using cloud computing. That means that the actual data we\u2019re accessing is sitting on one or more secure database arrays in one or more locations somewhere in the world. The computers whose cycles we\u2019re accessing are spinning up and down in various server farms somewhere in the world. We don\u2019t care where. We don\u2019t need to care where. Except that, if the data we\u2019re accessing includes personally identifiable information, we DO care. That\u2019s information that we don\u2019t want to cross borders. That\u2019s information we want to know is encrypted. That\u2019s information that we don\u2019t want bad guys to steal or government spies to tap into.<\/p>\n So, the location(s) in which customer data resides does matter<\/a>. But that doesn\u2019t mean companies should eschew the use of cloud computing for their customer information. In fact, customers\u2019 information is among the first<\/em> information that belongs in the cloud because customers want access to their information 24×7 from anywhere in the world and from any device. Customers want their information and customer-impacting business process to be synchronized across all the devices they may use to complete actions and to monitor activity status.<\/p>\n But it looks to us as if IBM understands the importance of data jurisdiction better than most of its competitors. As IBM announced it surprisingly \u201copen\u201d BlueMix Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering in February, 2014, the company stressed the importance of giving enterprise clients control over where their data resides. IBM\u2019s cloud strategy is also being billed as \u201cMobileFirst\u201d \u2014 in other words, it\u2019s being driven by the need for end-customers (business and consumers) to interact and transact using their mobile devices more than their laptop and desktop devices.<\/p>\n