Cloudy with a chance of tech spending

Mostly mixed clouds and some sun today in La Jolla, not the constant bright sunshine that can entice a person to abandon indoor conference sessions in favor of strolling the beach along the Pacific Ocean (many of the advisers present tend to favor the golf course next door I think).

Despite the siren call of the outdoor surroundings, hundreds of advisers have been dogged in their pursuit of useful technology and advice today here at the Technology Tools for Today conference.

While some advisers expressed disappointment at the mostly high-level opening general sessions, the first on not giving up on financial planning and the second on cloud computing (with an almost peripatetic speaker/advocate from IBM), the early afternoon panel sessions are being met with more interest.

I sat in on that cloud computing session that did in fact seem to hold the attention of around 300 advisers in attendance. Elaine Lennox, speaking in what I took to be a slight Irish lilt (forgive me if that’s not the case Elaine) made the point that cloud computing, rather than being just a set of technologies a company or person accesses over the Internet, was becoming a ubiquitous part of the business landscape. And that landscape is rapidly changing in terms of what is, or will be, available.

A case in point was her illustration of rapid elasticity. If, for example, you are a smallish aircraft design company why would you invest in purchasing supercomputers that you will have to maintain 24/7 when you will only be running airflow analysis simulations to your designs maybe once a week? Why not meet the demands of those intensive calculations when you actually need them by renting that processing power from someone like, oh I don’t know, IBM? Let them take care of purchasing the hardware, maintaining it, backing it up etc.

Most advisers are already accessing software as a service applications which are one form of cloud computing, whether it is their custodial platform, say Pershing’s NetX360, or backup and archiving through a service like Carbonite. Advisers can expect to find an ever-growing menu of services as providers adopt the cloud computing model of delivery.

In a bit of self-serving marketing Ms. Lennox showed the new LotusLive offerings from IBM which included LotusLive Meetings, LotusLive Engage, and LotusLive Connects, all of which are delivered over and through the cloud. These products mirror and in some cases overlap with what is provided by similar offerings from the likes of Microsoft with their Sharepoint products, as well as GoogleApps and several other companies. She offered that one aspect of all these services that should resonate with advisers is the ability to collaborate with other professionals as well as clients. Whether you are talking about a portal where documents can be shared, constantly updated, and all versions saved or something that is more real time like online desktop sharing to illustrate a financial plan, advisers should expect to have access to better tools for interacting.

The session following that one was presented by George Tamer, the director of strategic relationship management for TD Ameritrade Institutional. I found interesting a few statistics he called out from a recent survey of 500 advisers they had conducted.

Among those 500 respondents, 61% intended to increase their technology spending in 2010. He noted that larger firms (Mr. Tamer said he didn’t want to get into what defined a large firm) were twice as likely to buy new technology as smaller firms.

Among other findings 48% of respondents said they would buy new technology this year, 55% planned to upgrade existing technology, and 41% planned to invest in ongoing training to get more out of what they already had.

“Advisers should look at technology, not as an expense, but as an investment,” he said.