Where are the smart investment dollars going in the cloud computing area?
We’ve looked at a lot of cloud computing companies and tracked the number of companies that have been funded, and it’s daunting. There are too many companies looking for 10% of the market. What we’re looking for are a couple things. There has to be enough value in the features they offer or in their subcontractor capabilities that customers will demand those features or capabilities. If management capabilities are optimized for the cloud, then the customer will tell the likes of IBM that they need to include it. So those capabilities may be part of the solution from an IBM even though the customer doesn’t want to buy that same technology from a startup. When we do our due diligence on potential cloud investments, we may call 30 to 40 respective customers and understand how important the proposed capability is. The second thing we look for is whether the team has demonstrated an ability to create meaningful partnerships and alliances. You have to have confidence that you can build a com
