Welcome To The Cloud

Greetings! I decided to kick-off my inaugural blog post talking about a hot topic these days - the Cloud. It seems like everywhere you turn, someone or some company is promoting the “whys” of going to the Cloud. But I noticed there are very few actually focused on the “hows”of getting into the Cloud. As far as I am concerned, if you can’t get there efficiently and effectively, you will never experience those advantages in the first place!

Recently, CRN interviewed my colleague Mike Ormerod and me for an article, Marrying the Cloud? 7 Items to Include in a 'Cloud Prenup'. The article talks about the critical things to think about when developing your Cloud strategy. I realize that not everyone has the ability to invest extensive amounts of time researching the Cloud. Therefore, an underlying point that I tried to make was this: if I can help you become better informed, moving to the Cloud can be simple, straight-forward, and easy.

Beyond just information, another way that I can help make moving to the Cloud simple, straight-forward, and easy is with a new solution called Progress Arcade™. Arcade is a portal environment designed to facilitate moving OpenEdge applications to the Cloud.

Arcade provides free community resources to help you:

• Share – network and discuss all things SaaS and Cloud with others just like you
• Try - take a test-drive of other Progress applications and solutions with just a few clicks
• Browse - visit our virtual marketplace of complementary products & services

Then, when you are ready you can take advantage of premium resources to help you:

• Stage - configure and prepare your application for the Cloud quickly and easily
• Demo - offer prospects the ability to demonstrate your products in the Cloud
• Deploy - deploy your production application in the Cloud with just a few simple clicks

If you would like to learn more, I suggest you check out the Progress Arcade website for more information, visit Progress Arcade to have a look at the community and premium resources, or drop me a line and let me know what you think: mcicciari@progress.com.