So far I’ve got Salesforce, Iterasi, Intalio, NSV, Microsoft, Sofinnova, Sun, Aruba Networks. I’ve got Cisco, IBM, Amazon, VMWare, Google, and GoGrid scheduled, and there might be the great opportunity to get some face time with Aneesh Chopra, the first Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States…
One big lesson learned, though: It is not easy for publicly noted companies to talk about the future – of course I’m not a journalist but an analyst, and any forward looking statement is dangerous or could give me some insights I’m not supposed to have. I learned about the details of Salesforce Chatter a good six weeks before it was public, and I got some hints about what’s going to happen with Sun’s Cloud once the merger with Oracle is approved in very early December.
Also people move chairs right now, you can see how the Cloud market(s) become more structured and subsequently people move to positions and areas where they feel more comfortable right now. That reminds me that whatever I try and write about in the Book I should really focus on the future beyond 2010 – otherwise this book would have been nice to read about six months ago.
Which brings me back to my first point: how do you get people on the record about the future without talking about concrete product roadmaps? You also don’t just want to talk about big visions, like “everything is going to be connected”, or “the future is mobile”, or “Cloud will become increasingly important”, or “connectivity will become a challenge and an opportunity”… you will be able to read that a lot of the time in any blog, so I’ll try and spare you that…
