In a recent CMS Wire article by Henrik de Gyor, he writes about what scale is, how to scale search from the beginning and long term and short term thinking on scale. Here is a portion of the article:

One thing many people do not think about enough is whether something will scale (up, out, in and/or down) as needed. Scalability is critical for any organization to consider if they plan to grow and thrive, not just survive. Otherwise, staying with decisions made in the short term will affect the organization rapidly in the long term.

What is Scale?
Ever seen a scale model car or train? It is usually smaller, less functional, less powerful and less expensive than the real thing. The same principle applies to the number of people working, the processes followed and technology in use.

Digital Asset Management is a business tool to search, find, use, reuse and repurpose digital assets quickly. That still takes people following good process empowered by technology.

Unless we archive offline at the end of an established digital asset life cycle or purge (due to regulations), we will only accumulate digital assets. The rate of growth is likely increasing and likely even multiplying regularly. We can measure and track this growth based on asset count over given periods of time. Measure what you manage. Otherwise, we better plan on increasing storage space exponentially and very often. Specific to technology, scalability is more important than ever. Nowadays, increasingly more of our assets are intangible, digital assets which require more of everything, including:

• Bandwidth
• Storage
• Hardware
• Software (that scales up)
• Concurrent users
• Processing power
• Languages (not just in the user interface, but the assets themselves if you truly have an international audience going beyond one language)
• Metadata
• Version control (of assets and metadata separately)
• Access (including mobile)
• Security vs. openness
• Rights and permissions (clearly explained)
• Collaboration
• Workflow
• User adoption
• Delivery portals to various channels/vehicles
• Reducing silos and exact duplicates
• Analytics (to measure and track usage)

CopperEgg wrote an article about how Windows Azure is enabling companies like MediaValet to improve their operations and achieve greater cloud scalability. Here is the first bit of the article:

Microsoft has continued to offer its cloud computing solutions to help companies of all types to improve their operations. The vendor recently announced that VRX Studios, a global content services and photography business – which is now operating under MediaValet – has adopted the Windows Azure platform to replace its digital management system to achieve greater cloud scalability.

By providing MediaValet with the new cloud solution, Microsoft also said it is the first vendor to establish a digital asset management system that is 100 percent cloud-based.

"Windows Azure enabled us to harness more than a decade of experience in producing, managing, distributing and licensing digital media to build an enterprise-class digital asset management system – in less than 12 months – that can compete with the best and biggest in the digital asset management industry," said VRX founder and CEO David MacLaren.

MacLaren also said that launching an asset management solution before the availability of an option like Windows Azure would have been difficult for a variety of reasons. He said large budgets and a "massive" IT team would have been needed to support this system.

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

Peter Wolchak recently wrote this article about how cloud computing is steadily creating new jobs around the world.

Cloud computing will create almost 14 million new jobs worldwide by the end of 2015, with more than 70,000 of those being created in Canada. In Toronto alone, the growth of new cloud-related jobs will average 20 per cent annually, resulting in more than 14,500 by 2015. Those numbers are from an IDC study commissioned by Microsoft, which said in a report that these impressive numbers will be generated because the cloud is "so cost-effective that businesses of all sizes are moving away from the expensive maintenance of legacy systems, and instead opting to build on top of the cloud's common infrastructure."

Currently, IDC said 75 per cent of worldwide IT spending is tied up with the maintenance of legacy systems and routine upgrades.

The study also concluded that:

• In 2011, more than $28 billion was spent on cloud services worldwide
• In 2011, the cloud helped businesses around the world generate more than US$400 billion in additional revenues and 1.5 million new jobs
• More than 50 per cent of those jobs were in small and medium businesses
• By 2015 in Toronto, businesses with less than 500 staff will see an increase of more than 6,300 new jobs; larger companies will increase by more than 8,100 jobs.