Marketing Operations can save your life. Or at least your marketing sanity.

By Mark Helfen

If you've been in marketing for a while, you know that the job can range from merely difficult, to completely impossible.

• It's hard to manage the individual parts of the marketing mix.
• It's very hard to do well
• It can range from hard to beyond hope to control, or even influence all of the other parts of your organization that have to work in sync to make your marketing strategy effective.

Or to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, marketing gets no respect.

Successful marketing operations is "a much bigger hairball than meets the eye."

By Mark Helfen

Mastery of marketing operations is key to the success of your business, and may be a key to your own career success.

Or so says Gary Katz, President, CEO, and founder of Marketing Operations Partners, a consulting group that helps companies get their marketing operations in shape.

Katz will be the speaker at the May 9 SDForum MarketingSIG, with a talk titled Marketing ROI: It's Simpler... and Way Harder...Than You Think.

His history includes more than 20 years of experience with marketing, change management, and public relations. In various roles, he has directed or managed corporate marketing, communications, public relations, lead generation and qualification programs, investor relations, and employee communication programs. He is a past president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

Panel forecasts explosive growth for cloud computing

By Mark Helfen

Cloud computing has an "explosive" growth forecast, driven by a better economic model, faster implementation time, and less risk. But along with the upsides, security is still an issue that requires close attention.

These were some of the conclusions or the panel discussion at last Monday's (4/11) Marketing SIG. Included on our expert panel were:

Bernard Golden - CEO of HyperStatus, a Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Consultancy.
Mathew Lodge - Senior Director of Cloud Product Marketing at VMware.
John Morley - Director of EMC's West Coast Executive Briefing Center.
Chenxi Wang, PhD - Vice President and Principal Analyst for Security and Risk at Forrester Research.
The panel was moderated by Sheryl Chamberlain, EMC's Senior Director for Technology Alliances. (More detailed biographies for the panelists are in the SDForum Marketing SIG meeting preview.)

The panel forecast rapid growth in the cloud computing market. In response to a question about which segments will grow the fastest, Golden's answer was that all segments were growing.

Have your head in the cloud? Hear expert insights on marketing Cloud Computing at the SDForum Marketing SIG

By Mark Helfen

Which part of the cloud market is growing the fastest?

Does cloud computing make it easier to launch a new product?

Clouds computing, along with mobile applications, are two of the top technologies getting both media and industry attention. Both are new concepts, not fully defined. Both seem disruptive, changing the competitive landscape. If you are responsible for developing or implementing marketing programs, the disruption offers both advantages and challenges.

Product Camp Silicon Valley - Apr 2 - a free barcamp for product managers

P-Camp - Product Camp 2011 - is an annual barcamp for people who are product managers and in related fields. I have been at the last few, and it is a day well spent.

Barcamp's (barcamp.org) are free or near-free, open source meetings - the agenda is usually set at the start of the day.

Product Camp this year will be April 2. It's free. but you must register to get a space.

Sponsored and organized by SVPMA - which is a great service for the Silicon Valley tech community.