How can cloud play a role for mid-market CIOs, especially where solution providers can help them?

Cloud is a wonderful leveler. (When he was a large-company CIO), I had all of the key vendors knocking at my door, desperate to explain their best and brightest solutions to me, and I got all of the attention … I needed. As a mid-market vendor, I wouldn’t have had that privilege, and I realize that … it was because of the role I occupied. My budget was big enough to attract their attention.

As a mid- or a small-cap company, you don’t have that privilege, so the cloud is a wonderful leveler. It now allows you, with a relatively modest sum of money, to go and use (a solution provider) as a niche service provider and you retain the architecture and you are the orchestrator of these multiple third-party services and you piece them together. …  The cloud is a wonderful opportunity for mid-cap and small-cap companies to be more agile than their large-cap brethren.