Saying No to Cloud, Cloud Cases, Mobile Web vs. Native Apps – Q1 2010 Research Agenda

I rarely ever have a “research agenda.” Most analysts seems to (people often ask what mine is and I give them a blank stare), and that makes sense given the typical analyst beat of writing quarterly (?) market overviews.

Anyhow, I’ve somehow come up with a little, uh, “research agenda.” These aren’t the only things I’m doing (in fact, these are more like the things I’m not really doing much of given all the other, usual stuff that comes up in the job ;>), but I wanted to put them here in case you, dear readers, had any input or suggestions:

1. “Saying No to Cloud” – I’m putting together valid and invalid reasons to “say no” to the cloud. Security, regulations, costs, lack of integration, and so forth. There’s plenty of good and bad reasons to not do cloud computing and I’d like to catalog some of them and the “responses” to those reasons. There’s a good thread going on over at Quora on the topic and I’ve been talking with some folks as well. If you’re a vendor or a user of cloud, I’d love to hear from you on this topic.
2. Cloud Cases – “hey, cloud computing sounds great, but we’re not Facebook.” That’s the sum-up of some discussions I have with normal, “boring” IT folks. At this point, they get what cloud computing is but they’re not really sure hot to apply it to their “enterprise” (better, “corporate”) day-to-day. Meanwhile, there are some trail blazers who’ve been doing cloud on purpose or by accident who’ve been figuring out how cloud applies to the mainstream world. I’m looking to pick a handful of these “cases” and write them up as RedMonk-style case study and then best practices that can be gleaned from the stories. If you’re one of these “normal” folks, it’d be great to hear your experiences – or if you know someone to introduce me to, I’d appreciate it. I’ve had some initial, enthusiastic folks pitch in already, which I really appreciate.
3. Mobile web vs. native apps – as mobile becomes more important, the question of doing mobile web or native apps has been coming up a lot. I’d like to write-up a short note on picking between the two, without getting too “it depends on your needs” vague. The recent write-up from Evernote (more or less) on this topic is interesting, for example. I’ve been lucky to know a few folks who know a lot of mobile developers to give input here, and I’d love to hear from you too.

If you’ve got any input or pointers, it’d be great to hear about ’em ;>