Page 213 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

C A L C ULATING THE FUTURE

environment in which you develop aids deployment. Salesforce
.com has been and remains a pioneer in this space, constantly
expanding the tools that a customer can use to enlarge an ex-
isting Salesforce application or build a new one for the Force
.com platform. Fewer and fewer specialized skills are needed
to construct a cloud application. Software that exists in the

cloud helps build software to be run there.
In addition, cloud development will extend programming
skills to many new participants because the platform itself can
invoke many automated steps in the process. The tools used
will be simplified, and in some cases users will be given a check-
list of choices, unfolding in a carefully planned sequence, that
will allow nearly anyone to build simple software applications,

then run them.
How will such a resource be used? Well, as Christensen
observes, “Disruptive technologies often enable something to
be done that previously had been deemed impossible.” In the
face of a disruptive technology, he urges “agnostic marketing.”
No one, neither supplier nor consumer, is sure how or in what
quantities a new product or resource will be used. So don’t
assume that you know. Find a way to experiment with the cus-
tomer.

“Markets for disruptive technologies often emerge from
unanticipated successes. ...Discoveriesoften come bywatch-
ing how people use products rather than by listening to what
they say.” In other words, the new markets are discovered, not
by focus groups of existing customers who may not even be
familiar with a disruptive technology, but by those who use it
directly. In many cases, there will even be a generation split as

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