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Tag: StructureConf

Structure Conference: A Chat with John Hagel III about Risk vs. Reward in the Cloud

JohnHagel-Structure0610 I was delighted to run into John Hagel III as I hustled through the exhibit room at Structure during the final afternoon break.  I’ve had the opportunity to meet John a couple of times over the years at tech conferences, and hear him speak on more than a few occasions. Deloitte-CenterForTheEdge He is one of the most respected authors and speakers out there on technology and management issues, and always one of my favorites. John has a very impressive background (see above link) and is currently Director and Co-Chairman (with John Seely Brown) of Deloitte Consulting’s Center for the Edge.

John had been part of the opening panel on the first day: “Cloudonomics: The Value of the Cloud” (video here), which was fantastic. I actually tweeted that it made the whole trip worth it — which Om Malik immediately retweeted.  Meaning I could’ve left then and been happy. But I of course stayed for the whole enchilada — and chatting with John was just one of the great side benefits of doing so.

Download or listen to Graeme’s interview with John Hagel about the role of risk vs. reward in enterprise cloud adoption… (MP3)”

Structure Conference: A Chat with Paul Mikesell, CEO of Clustrix

PaulMikesell-Clustrix0610 Clustrix is all about clustered database systems for Internet-scale applications. It claims the first solution to "combine the high scalability of NoSQL key-value stores with robust relational database functionality, immediate transactional consistency, and seamless deployment of SQL."  Lest you think it's blowing smoke, the company was funded last month to the tune of $18 million by Sequoia Capital, U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), and ATA Ventures. Clustrix-logo

CEO and cofounder Paul Mikesell (who also participated in a great panel at the Structure conference) was previously cofounder of Isilon, which went IPO a few years ago and recently has had a valuation of around $1 billion.  Now he's back to build another company from scratch.

Paul talked to me about what his new firm is doing, and why.  Here's the news announcement Clustrix made at Structure.

Download or listen to Graeme's interview with Paul Mikesell of Clustrix about what's really needed to reach Internet scale.. (MP3)"

Structure Conference: A Chat with Tien Tzou, CEO of Zuora

TienTzou-Zuora On the afternoon of the second day at Structure, I had set up an appointment to interview the founder and CEO of a growing cloud enabler, Zuora. I'd met Tien a couple of times before — last saw him at another cloud conference, back in May, the AlwaysOn "OnDemand100" event.  Tien founded Zuora after nine years at Salesforce.com — he was one of the “original forces” there, joining in 1999 as the 11th employee. Zuora-logo (More about Tien here at the Zuora management page. He even served as CMO of Salesforce at one time!)  

I wanted to have Tien tell me about an announcement they made at Structure, concerning what they call "the first on-demand commerce solution for cloud businesses": Z-Commerce for the Cloud.

Download or listen to Graeme's interview with Tien Tzou about how he sees Zuora powering growth for cloud businesses.. (MP3)"