I am pleased to say that my third paper for Outsell’s Gilbane Group was published yesterday, in which I return to thinking about cloud computing and the benefits it offers for deploying web experience and engagement technologies.

Titled Taking Online Engagement to the Cloud this short beacon paper looks to provide a guide to digital marketers, senior IT folks and business analysts faced with the decision to deploy these technologies outside the server room. In it we set out to answer the following questions:

  • What do we mean by the cloud? There is a great deal of hype, sales, and marketing messaging around “the cloud.” We explore what it really is and the opportunities it represents for digital marketers.
  • What are the deployment options when working with a cloud platform partner? The decision around deploying to the cloud is not always a binary choice to host in the server room or not. We look at possible solution architecture options and the benefits of each.
  • What do organizations need to look for in a WEM solution in the cloud? If deploying into the cloud is an attractive option for an organization, we consider the key attributes that organizations should build into their selection criteria when choosing a solution.

As with all of our papers, once you register you can download it for free from the Beacon area of our website. While you are there, I suggest taking a look at our Whitepapers section, scrolling down a little to the Engage Me! paper by Mary Laplante. I think it’s a great introduction to our research on the business practice of web engagement and web experience.

I hope you enjoy the paper and I’d very much like to hear your feedback – either here or you can find me on Twitter (@iantruscott)

The paper was sponsored by FatWire and we are looking forward to joining them on a webinar to explore this subject further – follow us on Twitter for an announcement on that.