Cloud Player – Lon Binder, Vice President Technology, Warby Parker Part 2

May 22nd, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Cloud Perspectives, Interviews
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Warby Parker: Different than other e-commerce experiences.

Recently we had the pleasure of sitting down for an extended conversation with Lon Binder, VP of Technology at Warby Parker. We discussed a range of issues central to how Warby Parker approaches IT, including going beyond the standard customer experience, utilizing outsourced expertise, the challenges of finding talented hires, and much more.

This is the second of 2 parts. Check out Part 1 here.

Thoughts? Feedback? Let us know on Twitter @CloudGathering.

GC: How are you looking to go beyond like the standard e-commerce experience, and how are you using cloud to actually enable that. Already people are tracking the development of Warby Parker for a number of reasons, but the standout stories so far has been the business model itself and the industry that it’s in.  Being the leader of the IT organization, what are you looking to build here that’s going to be looked at in the same way?

LB: There are a number of things that we’re doing in cloud that enable customers to have a better experience and that differentiate us from a typical e-commerce company.

Most e-commerce companies – at least traditionally – think about getting a lot of customers on the site and then converting as many of them as possible.  It’s a numbers game.  And the longer they’re on the site, the more risk there is for them to not convert, and so actually most e-commerce companies are trying to get you to buy as quickly as possible on the site, which is not the way we think about ourselves.
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Cloud Player – Lon Binder, Vice President Technology, Warby Parker

May 21st, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Interviews
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Lon Head Shot

Lon Binder, VP of Technology at Warby Parker

Recently we had the pleasure of sitting down for an extended conversation with Lon Binder, VP of Technology at Warby Parker. We discussed a range of issues central to how Warby Parker approaches IT, including new store launches, what IT is meant to achieve for a business, cloud strategy, and much more. 

This is the first of two parts. Check out Part 2 here.

Thoughts? Feedback? Let us know on Twitter @CloudGathering.

Gathering Clouds: So you just had your recent store launch. How did that process go and what was your involvement from the perspective of the technical head of the company?

Lon Binder: The process of opening the store was really like launching a whole new business.  We were technically multichannel before, because we generate the vast majority of our revenue through the E-commerce website, and have showrooms around the country, which represent a pretty fair piece of revenue as well.
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Has “Cloud” Lost Its Meaning?

May 20th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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What does cloud mean any more?

Recently on the blog, we discussed how we presently speak about cloud computing, broadly suggesting that the focus should be on value it provides to a business rather than the underlying technology.

Taking a step beyond that, it’s interesting to look out at the news cycle within the cloud industry to see how the rest of the world is seeking to express their involvement in cloud. Much of the reporting that occurs focuses on the very high level business outcomes of mergers and funding – just read 7/10 articles on GigaOm or VentureBeat.
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Who’s Who in Cloud May 17, 2013

May 17th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Private Cloud, Who's Who in Cloud Series
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Did you make this week's Who's Who?

It’s another Friday, and for that we are grateful. This week’s cloud publishings including an emphasis on the ongoing battle for feature dominance between the largest cloud service providers, how and why cloud is continuing to change the way business operates, and some of the key uses and challenges around big data usage.

If we missed anything let us know on Twitter @CloudGathering.

David Linthicum walks us through a success migration to the private cloud.

Brandon Butler explores Google’s latest foray into database services for the enterprise.

Patrick Burke discusses why cloud is booming… with a few surprise insights.
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Learn From the NY Knicks: Why Disaster Recovery Is So Important

May 16th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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Carmelo Anthony

Should your business put all its eggs in one basket like the Knicks?

After a record setting season, the Knicks look as though they’re heading out of the playoffs earlier than the pre-post-season performance would have indicated.

As we sat watching Tuesday night’s dismal performance, our mind naturally wandered to the cloud (duh) and to the lesson that the Knicks’ playing represented to businesses working in the cloud.

As an analogy, the Knicks (or insert your favorite, flagging basketball, baseball, football, etc., team) work well to help us understand how disaster recovery plays directly into how a company performs. Right now the Knicks are disastrous; teetering unnecessarily on the edge of defeat, so what can we learn from their missteps?

Let’s say the Knicks are a business deploying a cloud strategy at AWS. If the foundation of that cloud strategy wasn’t solid and that business found itself at the brink of a complete collapse, it’s safe to say that their DR plan was similarly lacking.
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Cloud, Mobile Bringing New Value to Agile Development Methods, Even in Bite-Sized Chunks

May 15th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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dana gardner

Check out briefingsdirectblog.blogspot.com for more from Dana Gardner.

This blog was originally posted by Gathering Clouds friend Dana Gardner on his blog, Briefings Direct.  It is used with permission by the author. 

As IT aligns itself with business goals, Agile software development is increasingly enabling developers to better create applications that meet user needs quickly. And, now, the advent of increased mobile apps development is further accelerating the power of Agile methods.

Thought it’s been around for decades, Agile’s tenets of collaboration, incremental development, speed, and flexibility resonate with IT leaders who want developers to focus on working with users to develop the applications. This method stands in contrast to the more rigid and traditional process of collecting user requirements, taking months to create a complete application, and delivering the application to users with the hopes that it fits the bill and that requirements haven’t changed during the process.
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Where Cloud Automation Can Go Wrong

May 14th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Private Cloud
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What have been your challenges with automation?

From the most basic tasks in our day to the products we buy, automation factors in on a massive scale. Automation is a benefit, allowing a range of businesses and industries to achieve greater levels of productivity more quickly and at reduced cost.

In the cloud automation is no different, playing a huge role in how a business can better utilize time and resources to provision infrastructure to support the mission critical applications that generate revenue. However, automation has side effects too. While a process standardization, automation is not immune to design flaws and even human error.
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“Why Cloud” VS “What’s Next For Cloud”

May 13th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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We all talk about cloud differently, but is there a way we should be speaking about this tech?

Cloud computing is now a widely reported, if not accepted, IT movement that, depending on who you talk to, has changed or is changing the way businesses utilize infrastructure.

The question remains, however, that if 2012 was the year that cloud really came into itself as a fully fledged concept, how has 2013 shaped up? As we reach the near midpoint of the year, its hard not to reflect on whether the conversation around cloud computing has evolved to the point that we are no longer talking about the benefits of the service itself, but whether what the service enables a business to do is much different than what had previously been possible.

Looking at the headlines on GigaOm, Techcrunch, Venturebeat, and other outlets, the reporting seems to be focused more on what cloud companies are doing from an M&A standpoint than on the technology or its value to businesses generally. Sure, there are explorations of OpenStack, but those reports seem to be focused on whether anyone actually cares or uses the platform.
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