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Browse: Home / Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes

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Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

More about Ben here.

Continuity Rolls Out Public Beta of its Big Data PaaS

Continuity Rolls Out Public Beta of its Big Data PaaS

By Ben Kepes on February 28, 2013

When Continuuity launched late last year I was pretty skeptical given the buzzword heavy press release, light on any real specifics. After spending some time talking with the founders however I was more positive, and not only because of the princely $10M funding round the company had just raised. As I said at the time: […]

Posted in Featured Posts, Platforms | Tagged Application programming interface, big data, CloudComputing, Continuuity, devops, facebook, platform services, Todd Papaioannou

Apprenda Shifts the Game on Polyglot Vs Best of Breed PaaS

Apprenda Shifts the Game on Polyglot Vs Best of Breed PaaS

By Ben Kepes on February 27, 2013

One of the biggest battles raging in the PaaS world has been between the Polyglot and the Best of Breed camps. In the polyglot corner stands Heroku, Engine Yard and Cloud Foundry who all say that only a platform that gives an organization the ability to develop in multiple different

Posted in Featured Posts, Platforms | Tagged .NET Framework, apprenda, Cloudfoundry, engineyard, heroku, java, JPMorgan Chase, platform services

Tensions in the Cloud Foundry Camp–On the Problems with Forks

Tensions in the Cloud Foundry Camp–On the Problems with Forks

By Ben Kepes on February 27, 2013

Let there be no doubt, open source projects are hard. Balancing central control while still allowing individual members a degree of autonomy is like walking a tightrope – too much control and it looks like a dictatorship, too little and the initiative risks spiraling out of control in the face

Posted in Featured Posts, Open Source | Tagged Cloudfoundry, Krishnan Subramanian, Linus Torvalds, openstack, platform services, Stephen O’Grady, vmware

Engine Yard Differentiates through Control and Choice

Engine Yard Differentiates through Control and Choice

By Ben Kepes on February 26, 2013

I kind of feel sorry for Engine Yard sometime – once seen as one of the two best-known Platform as a Service offerings (alongside Heroku), the acquisition of Heroku by Salesforce kind of reduced Engine Yard’s visibility. The subsequent release of Cloud Foundry, and the significant uptake it has had in the marketplace have further […]

Posted in Platforms | Tagged CloudComputing, Cloudfoundry, engineyard, heroku, platform services, salesforce.com, sap, SAP AG

Chartio Supporting Salesforce–Pretty for the Enterprise

Chartio Supporting Salesforce–Pretty for the Enterprise

By Ben Kepes on February 25, 2013

Two themes I often talk about are specific functionality from specialist vendors and delivering enterprise solutions in new and friendly ways. A good example of this I came across recently was from small company Chartio. Chartio, a Y Combinator company, touts itself as the best interface for data. Essentially it allows organizations to take data […]

Posted in Application Software, Featured Posts | Tagged Chartio, database, google, google analytics, mysql, postgresql, salesforce.com, Y Combinator

Box Answers IT Concerns–Deeper Security Option Roll Out

Box Answers IT Concerns–Deeper Security Option Roll Out

By Ben Kepes on February 25, 2013

Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about Dropbox releasing an entire swathe of new security functionality that sees it firmly mark itself as entering the corporate market and responding to the needs of IT. As I said at the time, Dropbox has long signaled an intention to move up the food chain. In […]

Posted in Application Software, Enterprise, Featured Posts | Tagged #BoxHQ, android, box, box.com, cloud computing, dropbox, gooddata, Mobile World Congress, Samsung KNOX, Star Trek: Enterprise, vmware | 1 Response

StitchLabs–Solving SMBs Inventory Woes

StitchLabs–Solving SMBs Inventory Woes

By Ben Kepes on February 22, 2013

Many readers know that outside of technology, I own a business that manufactures apparel and other products and sells them both online and through retail outlets. Having been involved in that business for 17 or so years, I’ve had first-hand experience of just how difficult it is to run a tightly integrated operation with e-commerce, […]

Posted in Application Software, Featured Posts, Small business | Tagged brightpearl, Ecwid, inventory management, netsuite, paypal, Point of Sale, smb, sme, software as a service, stitchlabs, Storenvy

FinancialForce on a Tear

FinancialForce on a Tear

By Ben Kepes on February 21, 2013

When salesforce.com invested in FinancialForce a few years ago, there was keen interest in how this would help the company grow. There’s never been much clarity around those numbers since the parent company of FinancialForce, Unit4, doesn’t break out the individual numbers of operating divisions. That is a bit clearer now since in its last reporting period, […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged accounting, CloudComputing, Economic growth, FinancialForce.com, intacct, netsuite, Professional Services Automation, United States

Clown Computing–Entertaining and Attention Grabbing but a Flawed Thesis

Clown Computing–Entertaining and Attention Grabbing but a Flawed Thesis

By Ben Kepes on February 19, 2013

Recently I attended Webstock, a conference in Wellington, New Zealand that is well known for bringing together technology, design and general brain stimulation. It was a great event, with some awesome speakers but one presentation, by Jason Scott, part of an activist preservationist group Archive Team, kind of stuck in my craw. In his presentation, […]

Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged Archive Team, christchurch, cloud computing, cloud storage, clown computing, GeoCities, Internet Archive, webstock, wellington

Book Review–Bank 3.0

Book Review–Bank 3.0

By Ben Kepes on February 18, 2013

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, talking with and sometimes consulting to organizations in what I think of as traditional sectors about how the rise of a new way of doing business, of communicating and of personalization affects them. From telecommunications carriers to airlines, from retail to banking there is a number of […]

Posted in Business | Tagged bank, Bank 2.0, Bank 3.0, book review, Brett King, facebook, financial services, iphone

Celebrity Engineers–Software’s Equivalent of Arts Patronage

Celebrity Engineers–Software’s Equivalent of Arts Patronage

By Ben Kepes on February 15, 2013

Back in the days gone by, if you were part of the landed gentry, lording over your landholdings and the common folk who lived on said land, you’d look to becoming a patron of the arts as a way to ensure your name would live on after your death. While perhaps not a particularly sound […]

Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged aaron levie, Benevolent Dictator For Life, dropbox, google, Guido van Rossum, heroku, python, Ruby, Sam Schillace

The Future of Organizations, The Future of Technology

The Future of Organizations, The Future of Technology

By Ben Kepes on February 14, 2013

While attending HP’s Discover event (disclosure – HP covered some of my expenses for attending the event) in Frankfurt in December I was invited to take part in an interview alongside fellow Antipodean Paul Muller. The interview started off with Paul Muller explaining what he does in terms of looking at the macro trends impacting […]

Posted in Enterprise | Tagged bigdata, Frankfurt, future, Information Technology, london, Machine learning

Dropbox Listens to the Criticism–Starts to Mature Corporate Product

Dropbox Listens to the Criticism–Starts to Mature Corporate Product

By Ben Kepes on February 12, 2013

I’ve been a harsh critic of Dropbox in the past – mostly because I feel they lack maturity – both as a company and as a product – and this lack of maturity is a real risk for enterprise customers using their product. It seems Dropbox has been listening to the criticism that myself and […]

Posted in Application Software, Featured Posts | Tagged dropbox, Filesharing, google docs | 3 Responses

ComodIT–IT Automation as a Service

ComodIT–IT Automation as a Service

By Ben Kepes on February 11, 2013

I’m always interested to speak with companies trying to build innovative solutions outside of the US. Despite living away from the epicenter of technology myself, all to often I find myself displaying a Valley-centric perspective on companies and the solutions they bring to market. It’s good for all of us

Posted in Featured Posts, Open Source | Tagged chef, Cloudswitch, ComodIT, Configuration management, enstratus, puppet, rightscale, software as a service

Dell Boomi Announces New Milestones and Partnerships

Dell Boomi Announces New Milestones and Partnerships

By Ben Kepes on February 8, 2013

Only days after the announcement that Dell was going to return to private ownership, Dell subsidiary Boomi has come out with some news about its integration platform This is really timely given the near universal acknowledgement that software lies at the core of Dell’s future (more on this in a later post) and that it […]

Posted in Featured Posts, Platforms | Tagged boomi, dell, deloitte, IBM, infosys, personal computer, rick nucci, SnapLogic, wipro | 1 Response

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