Selling the Cloud Sublime - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 83

Football League's (NFL's) star. In fact, strange as this may sound, one
of its major competitors, SAP, paid for the right to be the “oficial cloud
solutions software sponsor” of the NFL. Nor was Salesforce the irst to
try to sell the cloud to a mass audience. In earlier ads Microsoft sought
to reach its business and consumer audiences separately. The software
giant's campaign relects one of the chief marketing challenges that cloud
companies face: how to sell a service aimed at both corporate and indi-
vidual consumers. Microsoft's answer was separate tracks, both of which
attempt to advance the myth of the all-powerful cloud but, as with most
campaigns that try to sell technology, with more magic in the sales pitch to
consumers. In 2010 with the unveiling of its new business cloud services,
Microsoft developed commercials around “cloud power.” The typical one
features managers and IT professionals boasting about all that they can
do with the new force of the cloud:
I can change how everyone works . . . without changing how every-
one works.
I can turn a spike in demand into a joy ride.
I can expand overseas, overnight.
I can take apps live in ifteen minutes.
I am master and commander of my own private cloud.
I am the champion of a corporate culture of yes.
I have cloud power. I have cloud power. I have cloud power.
The most comprehensive solutions for the cloud, on earth. Microsoft.
The ad is simple, with the sublimity restrained by winking references
to bringing about change without the unsettling experience that change
often involves. The emphasis is on pleasure. The equally unsettling spike
in demand is no longer an IT nightmare; it is a joy ride. Global expan-
sion takes place overnight and software that would inevitably bring