When making a strategic cloud decision, organizations can follow either one of two ideologies: open or closed.

In the past, major software technologies have been widely accepted because an emerging market leader simplified the initial adoption.  After a technology comes of age, the industry spawns open alternatives that provide choice and flexibility, and the result is an open alternative that quickly gains traction and most often outstrips the capabilities of its proprietary predecessor.

After an organization invests significantly in a technology, the complexity and effort required steering a given workload onto a new system or platform is, in most cases, significant. Switching outlays, shifting to updated or new software/hardware platforms, and the accompanying risks may lead to the ubiquitousness of large, monolithic and complex ERP systems – reason not being that they offer the best value for an organization, but rather because shifting to anything else is simply – unthinkable.

There’s no denying that these are critical considerations today since a substantial number of organizations are making their first jump into the cloud and making preparations for the upsetting shift in how IT is delivered to both internal and external clientele. Early adopters are aware of the fact that the innovation brought about by open technologies can bring dramatic change, and hence are realizing how crucial it is to be able to chart their own destiny.

Recently, I asked my friend, Ray, to list those he believes are the top 10 most forward thinkers in the IT industry.  Below is the list he generated. 

Like most smart people, Ray gets his information from institutions such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, Ted Talks ...  Ray is not an IT expert; he is, however, a marketer: the type that has an opinion on everything and is all too willing to share it.  Unfortunately, many of his opinions are based upon the writings/editorials of those attempting to appeal to the reading level of an 8th grader.  I suppose it could be worse.  He could be referencing Yahoo News, where important stories get priority placement such as when the voluptuous Kate Upton holds a computer close to her breasts.

Before you read further, note that missing from this list and not credited are innovators: Bill Joy, Dennis Ritchie, Linus Torvalds, Alan Turing, Edward Howard Armstrong, Peter Andreas Grunberg and Albert Fent, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz/Hermann Grassmann ... You know the type:  the type of individual who burns the midnight oil and rarely, if ever, guffaws over their discoveries or achievements.

With the rise of the smart phone, many people who have long seen themselves as non-gamers have began to download and play to occupy themselves throughout the day. If you're a game developer who has a history of writing your code in C#, then perhaps this still emerging market is something you should consider taking advantage of. This, however, will require the familiarization with other programming languages.

One option for moving away from the C# language is to learn Java. Java is the programming used for apps on the android platform, billions of phones run on this programming language.

If you want to break into the android market, then learning Java is an absolute must.

There are both some pros and some cons to learning java. Firstly, if you already know C# or other languages and understand how they work, then java will be relatively easy to learn due to having similar, but quite simplified, syntax to C-based languages, the class library is large and standardized, but also very well written, and you might find that it will improve the performance and portability of your creations. Not to mention, learning java opens you up to the entirety of the android app and game market, a very large and still growing market that would otherwise stay closed off to you. That's too much ad and sale money to risk missing out on.

The few cons that come with learning the language is that, when coming from other languages, the syntax may take some getting used to. This is true for most languages. The other problem is that you must be careful with the specifics of how you write your code. While java can be written in a very streamlined fashion, it's also possible to write working, but bulky, code that will slow down your programs. Practice makes perfect, and the knowledge to avoid such pitfalls within the language.

If you wish to develop for the iOS on the other hand, knowledge of Objective C is required. The most compelling reason to learn Objective C is the market that it will open you up to. According to the website AndroidAuthority.com, in the article "Google play vs. Apple app store", users of iPhones and other iOS devices are much more likely to spend money on apps rather than downloading free ones.

Though learning Objective C might be a far jump from someone who currently writes in C#, it's certainly learn-able with a little bit of practice.

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Data has always been important to business. While it wasn't long ago that businesses kept minimal information on people who bought their products, nowadays companies keep vast amounts of data. In the late 20th century, marketers began to take demographics seriously. It was hard to keep track of so much information without the help of computers.

Only large companies in the '60s and '70s could afford the research necessary to deliver real marketing insight. The marketers of yesteryear relied upon focus groups and expensive experiments to gauge consumer behavior in a controlled environment. Today even the smallest of companies can have access to a rich array of real-world data about their consumers' behavior and their consumers. The amount of data that is stored today dwarfs the data of only a few years ago by several orders of magnitude.

So what kind of information are businesses storing for marketing purposes? Some examples include:

- Demographic information — age, gender, ethnicity, education, occupation and various other individual characteristics.