One of the issues that has held cloud computing back from even faster market adoption is a lack of understanding by rank and file business and consumer users of the benefits of moving to the cloud.

Spearheaded by Box.net, CEO’s of a number of prominent cloud vendors have banded together to talk about the benefits of the cloud with the; I Choose the Cloud, initiative. Other vendors who have joined include Xobni, SocialText, Zuora, Get Satisfaction and Freshbooks.

Will be interesting over time to see if other cloud vendors join this or similar initiatives as the cloud continues to becomes even more mainstream.

There are a number of new events scheduled at this years conference including new cloud computing workshops and an open enterprise study.

The popular Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad returns in 2009 and a strong group of Enterprise 2.0 developers and entrepreneurs have made it to the round of 8. The comunity will choose 4 finalists to present at the conference based on each firms 2 minute product video.

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference organizers at TechWeb have offered 1 free conference pass valued at $2200 that I will give away to one of the OnDemand Beat’s readers.

The pass will go to the first reader who can answer either via twitter to @ondemandbeat or via a comment to this post the answer to the following question:

“Who were the 5 finalists in the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 Conference LaunchPad?”

If you do not win the Free Conference Pass you can still save 30% on conference registration or get a free Pavillion Pass by using code CNAPEB22 on the conference registration page.

I am surprised that a startup that has developed a solution for managing online advertising (In the middle of a huge economic and online advertising downturn) won the challenge over companies with more pragmatic solutions such as Pixily and Knewton.

Pixily’s solution actually ended up with 38% of respondent votes while Knewton edged out all 7 finalists with 39% of the vote.  Check out the videos for Pixily and Knewton and judge for yourself if these solutions seem more fitting for our current economic environment.

The Customer Development Process

Acting on Customer Discovery
 

Jimmy Wales sat down this week with a group of Bloggers and analysts prior to his keynote address opening the 2008 SAP TechEd conference in Las Vegas and discussed a number of topics relating to Wikimedia.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit charitable organization set up to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of wiki-based projects to the public free of charge.

The Wikimedia Foundation also operates Wikimedia Commons, the repository of free images and other media and MediaWiki, the popular open source wiki software behind a huge number of corporate wikis.

I asked Mr. Wales what the Wikimedia Foundation’s plans were to increase revenue, especially now that the foundation has increased its staff.

Mr Wales said that the Wikimedia Foundation has to date relied on individual donations and volunteer efforts to achieve its mission and one of the longstanding goals of the foundation has been to increase revenue so that it can expand its mission and keep Wikipedia and the various Wikimedia projects running.

Mr. Wales mentioned that the foundation has recently hired dedicated fundraising staff and is looking at several strategies to increase revenue including:

• Working with additional philanthropic Institutions like the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to increase grants and donations to the Wikimedia Foundation
• Spending time contacting wealthy donors who the Wikimedia Foundation in the past could not engage due to the small size of the foundations staff
• Utilizing the Wikipedia brand in co-licensing deals with Mobile Carriers for example, who want to offer a quick and easy way for thier customers to access Wikipedia
• Creating Wikipedia Branded Books
• Launching Wikipedia Branded Games

Mr. Wales said that all of the ideas for raising addition revenue have to adhere to the Wikimedia Foundations values and that the Wikimedia Foundation will never considered offering advertising on its varied projects. But with a dedicated fundraising staff in place he and the Wikimedia team look forward to working through the various ideas and strategies.

The 2008 Office 2.0 conference officially starts today. The brainchild of Ismael Ghalimi; Office 2.0 is now in its 3rd year and has a great agenda and a Startup LaunchPad on tap for attendees.

Those unable to attend in person this year have a number of social networking options available to participate in the conference online.

Register here for the Clearspace Office 2.0 conference website

You can also particpate online by using:

• Google Apps Account:  http://www.google.com/a/office20.com/
• Twitter Feed: twitter.com/o208

Buyers & Vendors Enterprise 2.0 Perspectives
Bernard Lunn has composed a 2 part kickoff series on Enterprise 2.0 in Read Write Web. Part One focuses on Enterprise 2.0 from the Buyers Perspective while Part Two focuses on Enterprise 2.0 from the vendors perspective. If Enterprise 2.0 startups followed even half of Bernard’s tips they could avoid the fate (the fate of no revenue) of many of their Web 2.0 brethren.

Selling Social Software To The Enterprise
Ben Yoskovitz; CEO and Founder of Montreal Based Standout Jobs, follows on to the Read Write Web articles with his tips on selling social software to the Enterprise. Ben’s tips on creating distribution channels and managing market perception are very important but often neglected by Enterprise 2.0 Startups.

The Semantic Web Has An Image Problem
Peter Sweeney waxes poetic about the Semantic Web’s branding and perception issues.

Is It Time for the Creation Of Cloud Computing Standards?
Reuven Cohen lays out a strong foundation for the creation of standards for Cloud Computing. I am a big fan of standards as SOA and Web Services did not take off until global standards were agreed upon.

USPTO Refuses Dell’s Cloud Computing Trademark Application
A collective sigh of relief was heard from the Cloud Computing industry last week when the USPTO reversed course and denied Dell’s initial attempt to trademark the term Cloud Computing.

Workday Signing Large SaaS Clients
Evidence is starting to mount that SaaS is becoming more accepted within large Fortune 2000 companies. Workday; in particular, is a good case study as Dave Duffield’s company was architected from Day One as a SaaS provider ; like Salesforce.com and Netsuite, and is not attempting to switch gears like traditional application providers.

Why Firms Should Wait Before Entering The Cloud
Jim Connoly outlines a few valid reasons why firms should wait a bit before moving their mission critical data to the first phase of Cloud Providers. The recent bankruptcy of Saas provider Marqui lends additional credence to this warning.

Will SOX & Auditors become a threat to SaaS Vendors?
Vinnie Mirchandani recently posted an article that indicates that another threat to full adoption of SaaS and Cloud Computing in the Enterprise could very well be Sarbanes Oxley (SOX). Many OnDemand Beat Blog readers may not be aware of the implications of SOX but it will more than likely impact SaaS vendors sales cycles in the future and as such SaaS vendors should become more familiar with SOX.

Phil Wainewright On Why Multi-Tenancy Matters
Although Multi-tenancy could very well become an issue with many firms in terms of SOX compliance; Phil Wainewright discusses why Multi-Tenancy is the choice of most SaaS providers from an architecture and business model standpoint.