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Right now, the buzz around cloud computing is endless. But, it’s just the latest trend. In the past, it’s been B2B marketplaces, best-of-breed solutions for targeted business challenges and even the internet as a whole. The hidden cost of innovation is that IT solution provider’s need to explain the value and viability of these emerging technologies to skeptical decision-makers who are heavily invested in the status quo. Eventually, you know, today’s innovation will become tomorrow’s legacy platform, but that doesn’t make getting over the hump any easier.

So, how do you approach a CIO or IT director with something new, like private cloud computing solution?

Well, cautiously.

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You need to connect with the CIO or IT director, of course, when you are selling a solution. Also, you’ll need to show the CFO the value to what you are proposing. Getting a new system’s ticket punched by these two executives is standard practice in IT sales. But, there may be another angle. If your client has a risk manager and you don’t know him — find a way to get on his calendar.

We’re still pretty early in the millennium, but if the first decade is any indication, the next thousand years will be the domain of the risk manager. Financial busts have become commonplace, and natural and manmade disasters (including those resulting from terrorism) have caused profound loss. With these threats looming, businesses need to conceive of a broader set of business continuity/disaster recovery solutions than they did in the past — while also gauging the systems and applications needed to help them identify, monitor and remedy financial risk.

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An aggressive approach to marketing may not be right for your company. After all, some businesses are uncomfortable with risk, while others thrive on it. What’s important, however, is that you know what type of company yours is in regards to marketing risk and return.

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If every marketing effort you pursue is successful, then it’s screamingly clear that you need help. A sky-high success rate means you aren’t being aggressive enough – and you’re probably leaving ROI on the table. This week, we’ll dig into the opportunities that come from unsuccessful marketing efforts – and not the “learn from experience” kind. The concept of learning from your mistakes is old and established: we all know the drill. Instead, I’m talking about the salient and immediate efforts of a swing and a miss.

Starting Monday, we’ll look at the benefits of an imperfect success rate from several angles. Everybody wants to deliver an overwhelming success every time, but life rarely works out that way. So, enter:marketing will show you how to extract the most value from your marketing budget, balancing risk and stability to optimize your investment.

Click here for a page to bookmark for the “Swing for the Fences″ series >>

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According to Forrester Research, you should expect some major changes in how Chief Information Security Officers – and other IT risk and security professionals – will support their business users next year. Even with the economy showing some signs that it has stabilized, memories of the financial crisis have yet to fade.

IT departments around the world are developing and implementing capabilities to address new internal policies and are readying themselves for regulatory changes currently in the pipeline. Since regs lag the business environment, we have yet to experience this second act in the financial crisis saga.

Below are four ways IT risk and security are expected to change next year. Watch these trends, and contact enter:marketing to plan and execute client outreach programs on these themes.

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