Canadian firms are adopting cloud computing faster than rest of the world !

Being at QLogitek I was not surprised by IT World Canada report indicating that large Canadian enterprises are more aware and more likely users of cloud computing compared to their global counterparts. This study was conducted by “Kelton Research.” If you were familiar with QLogitek’s client list (see a short selection of clients) using SaaS EDI and SaaS supply chain management solutions even you would not be surprised.

The study surveyed 502 C-level executives and IT and business decision-makers from mostly large enterprise organizations in 17 countries including the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Singapore.

It showed that more than 67 per cent of Canadian organizations reported they are currently using a combination of cloud computing and internally owned IT systems, compared to only one-third of companies worldwide.

Nearly two in three IT executives worldwide (65 per cent) and four of five in Canada (80 per cent) believe cloud computing reduces upfront costs.

QLogitek’s clients in retail and CPG markets have been using software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Integration-as-a-service (IaaS) both of which are subsets of cloud computing for over 8 years.

Alternative perspective discussion on SaaS

Madison Laird a fellow denizen of Twitterverse initiated an interesting conversation few days ago. He tweeted “I’m ranting about the drawbacks to SaaS. I love being a contrarian. Anyone want to brawl about it?” and I, like others, tweeted back saying yes SaaS has drawbacks, but its benefits to small and medium size business outweigh the drawabacks.

Madison did the appropriate thing and took the conversation to his new blog with the post titled Alternative Perspectives on SaaS. By the way Madison, I applaud you for doing so. It demonstrates your good social-media acumen and gives us more space (>140 characters) to share our thoughts.

I look forward to understanding your perspective better. I did post a comment, that I will repost here next and respond to your questions better.

In-line marketing = f (online marketing x offline marketing)

I am a firm believer in aligning online and offline marketing efforts. At QLogitek while working on marketing our SaaS supply chain solutions I always strive to drive this point to my team.

Mathematically, effective marketing, what I refer to as inline marketing, is an integral fucntion of both online and offline marketing. In other words

In-line marketing = f (online x offline marketing)

When a HARO inquiry,requesting for input from marketing experts on effective ways to unite online and offline efforts, came in few weeks ago. I suggested a simple strategy featured as a Tuesday Tip by LotusJump.

I suggested that cafes, restaurant or small business do a periodic (annual, semi-annual, monthly, etc.) special discount day for bloggers in your neighborhood and advertise to all store visitors using flyers in their store and through verbal promotions

My view is this will help you connect with the bloggers in your community and will likely get you free publicity from people linking to your site who want to share this special discount day info with all of their blogger friends.