John Cowan

This is Part IV in a series by 6fusion Co-founder and CEO John Cowan on the emerging trend of Cloud Brokerage and the impact it will have on the technology industry and markets. Be sure to check out Part I of the series here, Part II here, and Part III here. The IT industry to me looks a lot like the commercial airline industry did many years ago and I think the latter is rife with lessons about the power of a true commodity market. For those of you keeping score, late last year American Airlines’ parent AMR declared bankruptcy.  The Chapter 11 filing of the once largest airline in the world brought to a conclusion the era of disintegration for the legacy commercial airline market.  You can argue about the principal cause for the airline industry’s demise, but ultimately it came down to the fact that the market leaders in the industry refused to adapt to the changes... (more)

Cloud Computing Is the Next Great Land Rush and It Is Happening Now

Cloud Computing is the next great land rush and it is happening now.  All the major technology companies have their offerings.  And it seems like everyone is entering the market – even the hosting companies want in on the land rush. In theory, migration to the Cloud makes business sense; you’re enabling companies to rent computing power that would cost them too much to buy.  I won’t bore you with yet another blog post on the ‘what is it’ topic.  There is a great synopsis of Cloud Computing published by Mache Creeger and I recommend checking it out.  In our model, we’re allowing ... (more)

The Long Tail of Cloud Computing?

My watered down translation of Long Tail theory is simply the notion that the aggregate sum of stuff buyers take in small, infrequent quantities will invariably outstrip the aggregate sum of the most popular counterparts. Research evidence is beginning to corroborate what we saw some three years ago: There is a Long Tail in Cloud Computing. Consider some well accepted research points from IDC and others of late: The Cloud Computing market will hit USD $42 Billion by 2012 Of that, more than 50% will comprise business process applications (the stuff we all use daily to run companie... (more)

Understanding the Role of the Channel in Cloud Computing

Larry Walsh, of Channel Insider, recently tackled the sensitive subject of the role of the IT service Channel in the burgeoning market for cloud computing services and then subsequently posted a follow up. Since 6fusion is the only 100% Channel focused cloud computing provider in the market that I know of, I naturally read Larry’s piece with an extra amount of attention. Walsh makes a couple of very poignant observations about what is happening in the market regarding Cloud computing and the impact it has on the thousands of IT intermediaries we often call Resellers or Managed Ser... (more)

How One Service Provider is Making Money from the Cloud

As you may or may not be aware, 6fusion is a channel focused company. That means we work exclusively with IT service providers of one variety or another to make the transition from legacy service models to a service model rooted in cloud computing. Our core technology is an algorithm that creates a single unit of measurement for the computing resources you need to run practically any application. You can check out our site to find out more, as this post isn’t intended to be a product pitch. But I thought I would take a few minutes to let readers know a bit more behind the video w... (more)