Tag Archives: Mark Skilton

by | May 1, 2012 · 4:04 PM

And the Winner Is… A Full List of Winners of The Open Cannes Awards

By The Open Group Conference Team

The Open Group hosted the Open Cannes Awards 2012 at the Cannes Conference last week. Much like the Festival de Cannes recognizes achievement in film, The Open Cannes Awards recognized 10 individuals and organizations that made key contributions to The Open Group over the past year. Categories included:

  • Best Newcomer – The “I Think I Cannes” Award
  • Outstanding Achievement in Acting in a Supporting Role – The “Cannes Opener” Award
  • Outstanding Achievement in Screenplay – Adapted from Original Material – The “Multiple Cannes-tributions” Award
  • Best Ensemble – The “Multiple Cannes-tributions” Award
  • Outstanding Achievement in Film – Internationals – The “Un-Cannes-y” Award
  • Best Producer – The “Grand Cannes-yon” Award
  • Outstanding Achievement in Direction – The “In-Cannes-descent” Award
  • Outstanding Achievement in Film – The “Cannes-esblanca” Award
  • Outstanding Achievement in Acting in a Leading Role – The “Cannes-ed Ham” Award
  • The Lifetime Achievement Award – The Open D’or

Each award winner received some great hardware (no, not that kind) that was presented at the Gala Dinner:

Without further ado, here is the list of award winners:

Outstanding Achievement in Acting in a Supporting Role – Ernst & Young (Peter Haviland accepting the award on behalf of  Ernst & Young)

Best Newcomer – BIZZdesign (Henry Franken accepting the award on behalf of BIZZdesign)

Outstanding Achievement in Screenplay – Adapted from Original Material – Capgemini (Mark Skilton accepting the award on behalf of Capgemini)

Best Ensemble – Cloud Computing for Business (Mark Skilton, Capgemini and TJ Virdi, The Boeing Company accepted the award on behalf of the Cloud Work Group)

Outstanding Achievement in Film – International – Serge Thorn, Architecting the Enterprise

Best Producer – U.S. Navy for the FACE™ Consortium, a consortium of The Open Group (Dennis Taylor, NASA presenting the award to Judy Cerenzia who accepted it on behalf of the U.S. Navy)

Outstanding Achievement in Direction – Heather Kreger, IBM (Terry Blevins announcing Heather Kreger as the winner; Heather was not present)

Outstanding Achievement in Film – Oracle for the UNIX Certification of Oracle Solaris V.11 (Bob Chu, Kingdee International Software Group presenting the award to Michael Cavanaugh who accepted it on behalf of Oracle)

Outstanding Achievement in Acting in a Leading Role – Andras Szakal, IBM

The Lifetime Achievement Award – Mike Lambert, former chief technology officer of The Open Group and X/Open Company Limited (Mike is pictured with his wife, Sue, in this photo)

 We hope that you enjoyed the conference (and if you weren’t able to attend, the coverage via the blog, Facebook and Twitter). Until next time, au revoir!

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by | April 19, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Is Cloud Computing a “Buyers’ Market?”

By Mark Skilton, Global Director at Capgemini

At the Open Group Cannes Conference, a session we are providing is on the topic of “Selecting and Delivering Successful Cloud Products and Services.” This is an area that comes up frequently in establishing costs and benefits of on-demand solutions using the term Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing terms have been overhyped in terms of their benefits and have saturated the general IT marketplace with all kinds of information systems stating rapid scalable benefits. Most of this may be true in the sense that readily available compute or storage capacity has commoditized in the infrastructure space. Software has also changed in functionality such that it can be contractually purchased now on a subscription basis. Users can easily subscribe to software that focuses on one or many business process requirements covering virtually all core and non-core business activities from productivity tools, project management, and collaboration to VOIP communication and business software applications all in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model.

I recently heard in conversation a view stating “Cloud Computing, it’s a buyers’ market,” meaning that customers and consumers could just pick their portfolio of software and hardware. But underlying this concept there are still some questions about using a commoditized approach to solving all your enterprise system’s needs.

Is this the whole story, when typically many organizations may seek competitive differentiation in user experience, unique transaction and functional business services? It’s ultimately more a commodity view of Cloud that matches commodity type requirements and functional needs of a customer. But, it does not fit the other 50 percent of customers who want Cloud products and characteristics but not a commodity.

The session in The Open Group Conference, Cannes on April 25 will cover the following key questions:

  • How to identify the key steps in a Cloud Products and Services selection and delivery lifecycle, avoiding tactical level decisions resulting in Cloud solution lock-in and lock-out in one or more of the stages?
  • How Cloud consumers can identify where Cloud products and services can augment and improve their business models and capabilities?
  • How Cloud providers can identify what types of Cloud products and services they can develop and deliver successfully to meet consumer and market needs?
  • What kinds of competitive differentiators to look for in consumer choice and in building providers’ value propositions?
  • What security standards, risk and certifications expertise are needed complement understanding Cloud Products and service advice?
  • What kinds of pricing, revenue and cost management on-demand models are needed to incentivize and build successful Cloud products and service consumption and delivery?
  • How to deal with contractual issues and governance across the whole lifecycle of Cloud Product and services from the perspectives of consumers and providers?

 Mark Skilton is Global Director for Capgemini, Strategy CTO Group, Global Infrastructure Services. His role includes strategy development, competitive technology planning including Cloud Computing and on-demand services, global delivery readiness and creation of Centers of Excellence. He is currently author of the Capgemini University Cloud Computing Course and is responsible for Group Interoperability strategy.

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by | January 31, 2012 · 2:00 PM

Cloud Interoperability and Portability Project Findings to be Showcased in San Francisco

By Mark Skilton, Capgemini

Over the past year, The Open Group has been conducting a project to assess the current state of interoperability and portability in Cloud Computing. The findings from this work will be presented at The Open Group San Francisco Conference on Wednesday, February 1 by Mark Skilton (Capgemini) Kapil Bakshi (Cisco) and Chris Harding (The Open Group) – co-chairs and members of the project team.

The work has surveyed the current range of international standards development impacting interoperability. The project then developed a set of proposed architectural reference models targeting data, application, platform, infrastructure and environment portability and interoperability for Cloud ecosystems and connectivity to non-Cloud environments.

The Open Group plans to showcase the current findings and proposed areas of development within The Open Group using the organization’s own international architecture standards models and is also exploring the possibility of promoting work in this area  with other leading standards bodies as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about this project and if you’re at the San Francisco Conference, please come to the session, “The Benefits, Challenges and Survey of Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability” on Wednesday, February 1 at 4:00 p.m.

Mark Skilton is Global Director for Capgemini, Strategy CTO Group, Global Infrastructure Services. His role includes strategy development, competitive technology planning including Cloud Computing and on-demand services, global delivery readiness and creation of Centers of Excellence. He is currently author of the Capgemini University Cloud Computing Course and is responsible for Group Interoperability strategy.

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