True to usual practice at Cloud Circle events, the half-day interactive Masterclass, hosted at Cloud Circle HQ in Victoria, was abuzz with insight and debate. Attendees – limited to 25 places – were offered advice and tips for developing business focussed Cloud strategies and overcoming the barriers they face along the way.

In the opening case study, Stephen Griffin and Jonathon Broughton of famed architecture firm Allies & Morrison told delegates how they had benefitted from moving their email, calendar, document sharing activities and more over to Google Apps.

Once the primary objective of allowing the entire 300 strong workforce to use their email accounts remotely and on mobile devices was achieved, the firm found a raft of further benefits including vastly increased email inbox size, improved filing systems and further platforms for quick and easy communication. Griffin said the firm has to update its software very regularly and he hopes that in the future the Google Apps interface will become more customisable and support the niche applications and programmes that the firm uses.

Next up, Tom Ray of Cloudreach talked the audience through his experience of taking a large oil and gas company which he used to work for through its initial entry to the cloud. The end objective for the company – which it achieved – was to have its whole 15 terabytes of data backed up in two different cloud locations with real time update functionality in place in order to allow multiple engineers to access and utilise it at the same time.

This inspired some debate from the audience, with members keen to know if they can ascertain exactly where their data is physically stored. Ray said that Google Apps can only guarantee that it will be stored within the European Union or North America whereas with Amazon Web Services not only are you able to find out exactly which country your data is being held in, you are able to choose too.

Brad Kilshaw of Google Enterprises then entered the fray to update on what the company has been doing to try and aid efficiency. The primary benefits of the Cloud lie in increased collaboration, he said. He gave the example of Local Motors – a company which allows customers to feed in to the design of new cars and takes designs from concept to production in 18 months. “Traditionally that process would take at least four to five years,” said Kilshaw.

The advent of quick and easy video conferencing facilities will change the way people speak to each other within businesses, Kilshaw contends, as research suggests people are more likely to watch a video under two minutes long than they to read an email. He also pointed to Google’s live six language translation facility within its Chat App.

Pontus Noren, co-founder and director of Cloudreach, then wrapped up the Masterclass by fielding further questions from attendees on metrics, legalities, security, jurisdiction and disaster recovery based issues.

Hannah Mitchell, Senior Business Partnerships Manager at The Cloud Circle, says the Masterclass events offer a unique opportunity for a small group of end users to interactively engage in the best practice insights that are presented. 

“We like to keep these types of event very exclusive so that the delegates can get as much out of them as possible,” she said. “It’s great that delegates can just put their hand up and ask for clarification or request to have something put in the context of their own business. This was something our members had asked us to provide and the first two Masterclasses have been a massive success in fulfilling that request.

“I particularly enjoyed listening to the case studies of the companies that have recently got the first phases of their cloud implementations underway and finding out how they overcame the problems they came up against.”

The next Cloud Circle Strategy Masterclass takes place on June 14. Email hannah.mitchell@thecloudcircle.com if you are interested in attending. More are scheduled over the next few months covering a plethora of different topics. Get in touch if you’d like further information.