When SAP announced its decision to buy SuccessFactors in December last year, commentators and analysts said the purchase was a big deal, and not just because the acquisition cost SAP $3.4bn - a 52 per cent premium on the closing price of SuccessFactors at the time.

The purchase was hailed as significant because it could change SAP's delivery of cloud computing applications.

For the last five years SAP's cloud strategy revolved around Business ByDesign, a set of on-demand enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications for the mid-market that includes software for financials, human resources, supply chain management, business analytics and compliance management.

The SuccessFactors technology gave SAP the capability to put core business applications into the cloud as standalone offerings. And this is exactly what SAP has done now, revealing its new strategy at the Sapphire customer event in Orlando.

SuccessFactors clearly stole the limelight at the event - even from SAP's baby of the moment, in-memory database Hana.

Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP co-chief executive, said a new SAP cloud business unit had been created to save the firm from integrating SuccessFactors technology with its own, and to ensure SAP did not risk hurting its newly acquired powerful portfolio of cloud technology.

Perhaps even more interesting is that SAP is quickly dumping its Business ByDesign set of applications for the newer model of SuccessFactors.

It was the SuccessFactors founder and chief executive Lars Dalgaard who broke the news.

"Business ByDesign was a beautiful vision but it was too big. Everyone does not want to put all their apps out in the cloud in one go. It was intimidating," he said.

SAP will now break up Business ByDesign into a number of different applications that customers can buy as they like.

"The pricing of these applications is attractive and their availability is immediate," added Dalgaard.

Snabe also admitted during a press conference that trying to create cloud versions of on-premise applications, like SAP did with Business ByDesign, was not the right approach to the cloud. He said that Microsoft with its Dynamics offering, and Oracle with its Fusion alternative, would soon find this out.

"It is a fundamental mistake to take an app that is designed for on-premise and put it in the cloud," said Snabe.

"We know this because we worked on Business ByDesign. The fact that they [Oracle and Microsoft] started to create them [Fusion and Dynamics] six years ago, tells you they cannot have been creating them with the cloud in mind."

There have been some notable moves in the world of government IT personnel this month, and V3 wonders if it’s alone in spotting a potential link between them.

Last week, Chris Chant, a government IT veteran whose most recent role was to lead the government’s cloud computing project, stepped down from the position with the Home Office CIO set to take over at the end of the month.

The G-Cloud project lets public sector bodies purchase systems from a selection of vetted vendors on a pay-as-you-use basis, and is an attempt to prevent the costly, unwieldy and ultimately unsuccessful IT contracts of the past, which have seen millions of pounds of public funding wasted.

Although it could be argued that the timing of Chant’s departure isn’t such a blow as it comes after the project went live, rather than jeopardising it before launch, G-Cloud could still do with its champion on-board at this early stage to ensure it continues on the right path.

Chant also had plans to open up the CloudStore to third parties to host, plans that may never be followed up now he's gone.

To coincide with the news of his departure, Chant posted a scathing blog post about government’s approach to IT, headlined ‘#Unacceptable IT is pervasive’, listing a series of complaints about the single supplier, out of date technology in use in the public sector.

“CIOs across government, including me in various roles at the centre of government, have been guilty for too long of taking the easy path,” he lamented.

What's interesting to note is that just a week before Chant’s departure from the world of government IT, Liam Maxwell was appointed the new deputy government CIO, reporting into CIO Andy Nelson, who himself only took the position in January.

V3 can't help but wonder whether the timing of Chant’s rant and subsequent departure was purely coincidence, or whether it was in response to others getting the nod for the top spots in government IT.

After all, surely the man who developed and launched the G-Cloud project, which – if it goes as planned – could totally turn government IT on its head and make the public sector a leader in innovative technology use, would be an ideal fit to lead the government’s IT strategy?

Chant certainly didn’t hide his feelings about the lack of suitability of certain government IT chiefs.

“CIOs will need to increase the capability of their teams – and their own capability too – otherwise they will find that they are no longer playing a part in this new approach.  Some CIOs and some teams will not be able to make that transition,” he noted.

“CIOs across government need to recognise what has changed and stop hiding behind the comfort blanket of what has always been done before. That blanket is on fire.”

Chant clearly doesn’t have a high opinion of current public sector CIOs, so he could be frustrated that unqualified people – in his view – are being put in charge and won’t make the necessary changes to improve government IT strategy.

Perhaps his resignation was a drastic way of making the government sit up and take notice of the current poor state of its IT.

Then again, perhaps he just wants to retire to a nice, quiet life by the sea or in the countryside, far away from all the Humphreys and Malcolms in Whitehall.

ORLANDO: With IBM beating the drum on the use of social tools and collaborative software, its chief information officer Jeanette Horan, outlined the firm's own work in these areas, to show it practices what it preaches.

With almost half a million full-time employees (currently around 450,000) IBM has a huge workforce using a vast array of tools, both internally and externally and the figures she revealed are truly astounding:

•    On average 360,000 staff use the firm’s instant messaging platform every day.
•    This generates a staggering 50 million instant messages per day.
•    There are 198,000 members of staff on Facebook.
•    A much smaller 20,000 are on Twitter.
•    LinkedIn Is the most popular platform, though, with 281,000 users.
•    20,000 members of staff run their own internal blog on the firm’s Connections tool.

She also revealed its willingness to shake things up by explaining it runs a reverse-mentoring system in the company where some of the youngest new staff members teach its most senior executives how to use the latest social tools.

However, one area the firm admitted it is still addressing is the growing issue of what should happen to employees' Twitter accounts after they leave the company.
 
Carol Sormilic, vice president global workforce and web processes, explained to V3 that it is an area the firm is currently debating internally, but has yet to reach an answer.

One area where the firm is up and running, though, is letting staff bring their own devices to work after the end of a two-year pilot that involved feedback from 20,000 members of staff, which actually equates to just five per cent of its workforce.

This led to the creation of a set of policies that include an enforced eight-digit password for each device to access the corporate network and Horan revealed that she herself uses her own personal BlackBerry phone as her work device.

On the issue of cloud computing, Horan explained that IBM operates six datacentres to help it run a private cloud computing network as the size of the firm makes this a viable return on investment.

“We have the scale to be able to see the benefits of managing the cloud behind the firewall,” she added.

As well as a fascinating insight into the day-to-day IT demands of a firm the size of IBM, its willingness to embrace new trends and give staff the power to take advantage of new tools may give IT leaders in other, smaller, firms the courage to go forward with their own plans in these areas.

SAP co-chief executive Jim Snabe went on the offensive at the company's Influencer Summit 2011 in Boston on Tuesday, promising "innovation without disruption" across mobile, cloud, in-memory computing and its core systems, and offering new features to its on-demand customers every quarter.

Snabe was keen to impress that, despite the firm's near 40-year history of designing and building "core" business software, the German firm is making huge strides in newer technology categories.

In a dig at arch rival Oracle's disruptive updates, Snabe claimed that SAP is able to offer continuous improvements to the firm's flagship on-premise Business Suite product.

"We've decided to go from annual releases of enhancements to quarterly opportunities to consume innovation," he said. "From next year these are the new features you will be able to consume on top of the Business Suite without any upgrade at the pace you want."

Snabe said that as a result Business Suite will not need another upgrade until 2020, although some analysts questioned the strategy.

Ray Wang, chief executive of Constellation Research, argued that there may still be too much disruption for customers.

"#SAP customers won't be able to handle quarterly updates in on-premises world. They need to be in #saas to do this," he tweeted at the event.

The SAP UK & Ireland User Group sees things slightly differently, however. "The important thing here is that SAP is giving customers the choice in how and when they adopt some of the innovative technologies and solutions the company is developing," said chairman Alan Bowling.

"This is a smart move by SAP, as it means those customers who have not yet moved to the latest versions of ERP now have more incentive to do so. It also makes it much easier for users to invest further in new SAP modules."

Elsewhere during the keynote there were the usual bold predictions - "we want to reach one billion people with our mobile solutions" and "Hana can replace data warehouses" - as well as some admissions that things haven't always been done right in the past.

"You don't get things right if you take an on-premise solution and throw it into the cloud. We've tried that, trust me," said Snabe.

Most interestingly, however, he argued that SAP could actually begin to differentiate in the cloud by offering zero integration time and a great user experience.

"That is kind of a new thought for SAP," Snabe remarked. About time too.

The inaugural London Conference on Cyberspace begins today with the aim of bringing together politicians, law enforcers, industry chiefs and other internet stakeholders for the first time to discuss the opportunities and risks that exist online and how to take advantage of the former while mitigating the latter.

Featuring top level politicians from India, the US, Europe and the United Nations, alongside law enforcers, private enterprise, not-for-profits and world-leading academics, the conference is the brainchild of foreign secretary William Hague, whose aim is to put the UK at the centre of the debate.

The various tracks will cover international security, cyber crime, economic growth and development, safe and reliable access and social benefits, and the conference organisers see this as an opportunity to shape the debate rather than lay down any prescriptive rules on internet governance.

The conference could not come at a more pressing time, as newly discovered sophisticated cyber attacks, such as the Nitro campaign uncovered by Symantec on Monday, appear on an almost weekly basis, while senior government officials warn of the increasing dangers presented by cyber space.

Also on Monday, GCHQ director Iain Lobban warned of the growing threat to private business and government from cyber space, branding it "one of the greatest challenges of our day", while a story in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday reported Baroness Neville-Jones as accusing China and Russia of carrying out cyber attacks aimed at stealing other countries' intellectual property.

V3 will be at the conference on both days, covering the opening keynote from William Hague as well as the first session on Tuesday featuring Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Facebook UK president Joanna Shields and UN administrator Helen Clark, among others.

In the afternoon we'll be bringing you live coverage from US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's keynote, while on Wednesday there'll be a focus on cyber security.

The announcement that RIM is adding support to Microsoft Office 365 should be welcome news to firms that have investments in BlackBerrys and Microsoft's email system, a group which no doubt makes up a large proportion of the business world.

RIM's BlackBerry Business Cloud Services offers access to Microsoft Exchange Online email, as well as calendar, contacts, tasks and memos via the BlackBerry. And even better for IT workers is the news that they can provision, manage and secure individual handsets using a web-based console.

If RIM handles this rollout correctly, it could reinvigorate its popularity in the business world, letting its enterprise customers take advantage of the latest cloud technologies from Microsoft while still retaining the famed BlackBerry security standards.

However, there are still challenges for RIM to overcome, highlighted to V3 during a conversation with the global IT manager of a UK media company off the back of Tuesday's announcement.

The first of these is the recent BlackBerry outage issues.

"Our confidence in RIM has taken a bit of a bashing recently with the outages. Do I really want to put 200 users in a new cloud service, when the reliability hasn't been proved?" he said.

Another issue is the early stage status of the BlackBerry Business Cloud Services. The company V3 spoke to is in the process of a move to Office 365, so has been eagerly awaiting this move from RIM.

"As someone who's responsible for the email of the entire company, am I really comfortable using a beta version?" he questioned.

However, he added that there is pressure from elsewhere in the business to adopt the technology as soon as possible, now that the investment has been made in Office 365.

"I've got close to 200 BlackBerry users, and otherwise I need to keep those mail boxes in house, rather than move them to the cloud," he said.

On the positive side, he welcomed the news that this technology could be free of charge for organisations, as there was a concern that there would be an additional cost to tie the two products together.

And he supported V3's initial suspicions that this release has been timed to help RIM wipe away lingering concerns over the recent service outages.

"The expectation was that this release wouldn't be ready until Christmas, so it's very useful that they're doing it now," he said.

If RIM did indeed rush this one out earlier than planned, hopefully it won't backfire and end up with glitches in the technology and more unhappy customers.

VMware is predicting the death of the corporate LAN. The company's UK chief cloud technologist, Joe Baguley, said that organisations are keen to move to an environment where apps are delivered to the workforce straight from a virtualised, secure datacentre via the public internet.

Baguley explained at a roundtable discussion at VMware's plush Bankside offices that this would ultimately be more secure than traditional IT environments, where security is treated as an add-on rather than built in from the start.

"We've built applications and infrastructure without thinking about security first," he said. "What we're seeing is a desire to say: 'Let's shrink everything to be within the datacentre and then deliver everything out of it to the internet, so there is no concept of the corporate LAN anymore. There's just the internet.'"

The road to this kind of infrastructure is likely to be a long one for IT departments, so it will need to be achieved in steps. The biggest challenge at present is desktop applications, which is why many companies use desktop virtualisation and thin client architectures.

However, the ultimate goal is a set-up where apps are hosted securely in the public cloud and delivered to a firm's staff, removing the need to run a datacentre.

Of course, VMware has products that help companies to migrate to this new way of delivering and managing applications, most notably with Horizon App Manager which provides the "aggregation point" where customers can consume all apps from a single portal in a fully compliant way.

Security in this new virtualised world is reduced to the level of each individual service, explained Baguley, because "the smaller the thing is, the easier it is to secure".

Trend Micro's EMEA chief technology officer, Andy Dancer, made the valid point that many organisations erroneously try to treat virtual environments as they would traditional IT security.

Putting anti-virus agents on every virtual machine, of course, will cause a storm of problems as the resource-hungry security tools grind systems to a halt.

Security needs to be complementary and virtually aware, behaving more like a human immune system than a protective bubble, according to Baguley.

Vertical specific cloud providers are already cropping up, such as NYSE Euronext, with strict service level agreements and more guarantees on uptime and security than more general cloud vendors.

How quickly this will accelerate the path to the future envisaged by Baguley and VMware remains to be seen. Early adopters, yes, but the vast majority are probably years off considering such a move.   

The European Commission is to introduce new rules in an update to the Data Protection Directive that will allow cloud providers to take legal responsibility for the data they host, in a move that could drive cloud adoption.

The changes, scheduled to be unveiled in November, will include Binding Safe Processor Rules that will let firms such as Google, Amazon and Saleforce apply to data protection authorities to be considered legally responsible for information.

Companies will have to demonstrate to the data protection authorities in a particular European member state that they meet a series of security criteria. If approval is granted, the order will be effective across the EU.

Lost data is currently the responsibility of the owner of the information, which has made many firms wary of using the cloud.

Stewart Room, a lawyer at Field Fisher Waterhouse, described the new measure as "a bridge to the cloud" that will enable more firms to take advantage of the technology without the legal repercussions should data be lost or stolen.

There will be more on this developing story which could have huge implications for cloud computing.