As reported in Federal Computer Week, a January 19 report from the Defense Business Board (DBB) states that “pursuing IT efficiencies could save DoD between 25 and 50 percent on annual expenditures, while also improving mission effectiveness and achieving return on investment even ahead of schedule.”

The report outlines a four-step approach of “normalizing, standardizing and rationalizing applications; rationalizing and consolidating data centers; rationalizing data and security; and then migrating appropriate components to the cloud.” The DBB urged the department to act decisively in these areas, warning that the consequences could otherwise be disastrous.

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Tags: , BPM for Government, BPM in the Cloud, Business Process Management and Government, Cloud Computing, defense business board, Government 2.0

ScienceLogic, a provider of IT operations and management solutions, has released the findings of a cloud computing survey conducted with more than 100 IT directors across North America. As reported in Integration Developer News, the data shows a growing movement towards putting mission-critical applications in the cloud. In addition, IT executives increasingly see the cloud as transformative to IT operations – although they remain unclear about key issues, such as which core applications are right for run-time in the cloud. Appian’s Cloud BPM can help these forward-looking execs sort out their cloud strategy, and address many of their lingering concerns.

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Tags: , Appian Cloud, BPM in the Cloud, Cloud Computing

Today, government IT pros have a great opportunity for a crash-course on best practices in building secure, on-demand clouds for their federal agencies. InformationWeek is hosting the GovCloud 2011 event at the Reagan Pavilion in Washington, D.C. Appian is an event sponsor, in keeping with our strong commitment to Cloud BPM for the federal market.

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Tags: , BPM for Government, BPM in the Cloud, Cloud Computing, Government 2.0, Informationweek

The non-profit IT industry association CompTIA has published its “Second Annual Trends in Cloud Computing” study (read a summary here). The data shows that cloud computing is weaving its way into the IT and business mainstream.  Per the report, “the hesitation is disappearing and companies are moving quickly past experimentation and into heavier use of cloud computing.” That heavier use is in both increased numbers of users and increasingly complex applications and processes going into the cloud. From that perspective, our Cloud BPM has the hallmarks of the platform of the future for the CIO and his or her team.

The trend beyond Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) consumption of fairly simple cloud applications to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) creation of new and complex solutions is significant. PaaS accelerates IT’s ability to meet the needs of the business. In addition to speed, BPM PaaS specifically does even more. It creates a flexible and unified enterprise IT infrastructure, and delivers economies of scale in creating new enterprise-level cloud services and applications. That’s what our Cloud BPM gives the CIO.

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Tags: , BPM in the Cloud, Cloud Computing, CompTIA, PaaS BPM, SaaS BPM

Appian is a proud sponsor of Gartner, Inc.’s upcoming Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2011 in Orlando, Florida. Gartner’s Symposium Series is all about the CIO. Orlando attendees (October 16-20 at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel) will enjoy an entire conference track dedicated to business process improvement (certainly a sign that BPM practices and BPM software continue to be critical strategic levers for technology’s corner office). There will undoubtedly be a lot of research data and theory discussed around the conference’s focus on “IT Game Changers” including Mobility, Cloud Computing and Social Technology. To get beyond the theory, visit Appian in exhibit hall Booth #1136 to see Mobile BPM, Cloud BPM and Social BPM in practice.

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Tags: , BPM in the Cloud, CIO, Cloud Computing, Gartner, ITxpo, mobile BPM, Social BPM

The folks at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are charged with making sure the DoD’s mission-focused cloud infrastructure is safe and secure. They announced a program called Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds (MRC) in May, and are tapping into commercial and academic expertise to accomplish their goal. Defense Systems recently reported on DARPA’s program, and how it is driving the federal government to a more secure cloud computing environment.

DARPA is talking about the most advanced cybersecurity effort the Internet has likely ever seen. Further, the broader effect this will ultimately have on cloud computing, as MRC’s results trickle out to the private sector, could be enormous.

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Tags: , Cloud Computing, DARPA, federal cloud

Mobile phones have certainly come a long way. Remember the halcyon days of the 1980s, when you could feel like Michael Douglas in Wall Street, provided you had the upper body strength to lift the thing to your ear? Or how about back in ’65 when Don Adams introduced the world to the first combination footwear and “Smart” phone? (sorry, terrible pun).

Gordon Gekko and Maxwell Smart could certainly both take care of business (in their own inimitable ways). Today, though, you can take care of a lot more business on mobile devices that fit in the palm of your hand. For business, the focus today is cloud computing, mobile IT and social networking. Today’s smartphones enable all of that. So it’s a good idea for corporate IT to keep an eye on the latest and greatest mobile devices coming our way. Ginny Mies at CIO.com recently took a look at the possible future smartphones. It is definitely worth a read.

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Tags: , Cloud Computing, enterprise mobility, mobile BPM, Social

This morning we announced that Amazon Web Services has named Appian an official solution partner for the new AWS GovCloud (US). AWS GovCloud (US) is an AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. This will help quiet some of the “exaggerated security fears” that are being voiced by opponents of federal cloud computing. It is also significant to Appian in that it is a deepening our our 3-pronged relationship with Amazon.

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Tags: , Amazon Web Services, BPM in the Cloud, Cloud Computing, federal cloud, GovCloud (US), Government 2.0

The New York Times has published an excellent op-ed piece from former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra on the national and global importance of cloud computing. He points out that, in the midst of a very slow economic recovery, governments here and abroad continue to waste enormous amounts of money on unnecessary information technology. Citing one particularly outrageous $850 million dollar fiasco as just one example, he blames the “I.T. cartel” – a “powerful group of private contractors [that] encourages reliance on inefficient software and hardware that is expensive to acquire and to maintain.”

His answer is to embrace Cloud Computing (this is Vivek “Cloud First” Kundra talking after all). My advice is to remember that Cloud BPM is an excellent way to initiate a cloud strategy.

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Tags: , Appian Cloud, BPM for Government, BPM in the Cloud, Cloud Computing, Government 2.0, vivek kundra

“I don’t think of cloud, mobile and social as really having boundaries now. I think of them as coming together and reinforcing each other.”

These are the words of Maribel Lopez, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc. and founder of market research and strategy consulting firm Lopez Research LLC. In an interview with SearchCIO.com, Ms. Lopez talked about the convergence of these three trends, why enterprise mobility strategies should focus on improving business processes, and how all of that together opens the door for a new world of “contextual services.”

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Tags: , Cloud Computing, contextual services, enterprise mobility, social technology