7/30/2019 Keeping Your IT Agile Through Cloud Computing

1/2

Cloud computing represents a shif t in IT thinking similar to the just-in-time philosophy that

revolutionised manufacturing.

The cloud allows you to stop tying up capital expenses in IT systems that are under-used.You can get the IT service you need, when you need it, and only for as long as you need it.You can pay for cloud computing services out of operational expenses, and pay for whatyou use when you use it. This is truly agile from a technology investment perspective.

The promise of cloud computing is to deliver on-demand IT capacity reliably. Servicesdelivered from the cloud can be accessed from remote offices, from the road using mobiledevices, or just about anywhere theres a good internet connection.

Accessibility and flexibility

The scalability of cloud infrastructure translates into the ability for service providers to shift

resources and route around problems easily. Put this accessibility and flexibility of cloud-based services together, and you have a highly resilient model for business continuityplanning and disaster recovery.

Organisations are also discovering that the scalability and accessibility of cloud-basedservices creates opportunities for collaboration, not just between colleagues but alsoopening up applications, information, and processes to partners, suppliers, and customers.

Because its fast, easy and cost-effective to provide, with cloud computing resources youcan also explore new ideas more readily. Cloud computing is ideal for software testing anddevelopment needs, as you can call on as much capacity as you need while in develop-ment. Then, when the project ends, you can release its resources or migrate to a productionenvironment and easily scale up.

The major benefit that is typically associated with cloud computing is cost. Studies show thecloud can offer significant cost benefits when compared with on-premise alternatives. AFrost & Sullivan study shows that for many organisations, IT costs can be halved when cloudcomputing alternatives are selected.

But the cloud offers additional benefits, not least in terms of its ability to make businessesmore agile. Andrew Milroy, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, says, In a cloud computingenvironment, organisations can increase and decrease the number of users of computingresources instantly. They can provision new resources and stop using them when required.This provisioning is typically automated, further increasing business agility.

In this type of environment, says Milroy, focus is shifted away from IT and towards businessservices. IT becomes less of a cumbersome weight around parts of the business andmore of a business enabler, he says. Organisations can, for instance, decide they want aservice for leave management or sales management and simply provision it instantly ratherthan having to deal with implementation and the complexities around it.

Milroy says cloud computing can enable managers to arm their employees with tools toundertake their jobs in a much more straightforward manner than before. The resources

WhitepaperHow to keep your IT agile

through cloud services

a whitepaper fromComputerWeeklyCW+

Is your IT able to keep up with the constant pace and demands in enablingorganisational agility? Businesses in the post-recession economy know theywill have to react more quickly to change than ever before. Agility will be akey factor in building IT as we see rapidly changing organisational structures.The cloud is a key enabler of this agility. This report examines how organisa-tions can reinvent themselves through cloud services to be better preparedfor the new economic realities.

in association with

DESIGNPI

CSINC/REXFEATURES

7/30/2019 Keeping Your IT Agile Through Cloud Computing

2/2

used can be increased and decreased instantly in line with business requirements. In acloud-centred environment, IT will become commoditised, he says.

Gartner analyst Mark McDonald says business technologies are transitioning from heavyowner-operated solutions to lighter-weight services and social media technologies likevirtualisation, cloud computing and Web 2.0 social computing.

He says these strategic technologies are of increasing importance to the CIO. Exploitingthem provides the cost, capacity and capability gains needed to define, source, create anddeploy information- and process-intensive solutions that will reshape IT and its future role.

These technologies can be implemented quickly and without significant upfront expense.Instead of investing millions to get millions in benefits, with these technologies, up-frontinvestments are measured in thousands of dollars to get those same benefits, says Gartner.

McDonald says, These technologies, implemented properly, create the opportunity for IT tochange its role and the operational performance of the enterprise. Asymmetric technologieslike virtualisation, cloud and Web 2.0 enable companies to get out from under a front-loadedheavy investment model that limits ITs agility and flexibility.

Gartner says worldwide cloud services revenue is expected to reach $68.3bn this year, a16.6% increase from 2009 revenue of $58.6bn. By 2014, says the analyst, cloud servicesrevenue is projected to reach $148.8bn.

Gartner analyst Ben Pring says, The scale of application deployments is growing. Multi-thousand-seat deals are increasingly common and IT managers are thinking strategicallyabout cloud service deployments. More-progressive enterprises are thinking through whattheir IT operations will look like in a world of increasing cloud service leverage. After manyyears of germination, most notably in the software-as-a-service arena, the core ideas at theheart of cloud computing such as pay for use, multi-tenancy and external services ap-pear to be resonating more strongly.

Pring says growth in the cloud services market is partly down to macroeconomic factors. Hesays the financial turbulence of the last 18 months has meant every organisation scrutinisingevery expenditure. An IT solution that can deliver functionality less expensively and withmore agility is hard to ignore against this backdrop, he says.

Empowering workers with agile communications

The concept of empowering a workforce with agile IT extends to communications. Gartnerpredicts that social networking services in the cloud will replace e-mail as the primaryvehicle for communications for 20% of business users by 2014.

Gartner analyst Monica Basso says, In the past, organisations supported collaborationthrough e-mail and highly structured applications. Today, social paradigms are convergingwith e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles.

Gartner says newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communi-cate via a social network, but they will use e-mail in parallel. The rigid distinction betweene-mail and social networks will erode. E-mail will take on many social attributes, such ascontact brokering, while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities, says Basso.

Gartner predicts that the percentage of e-mail accounts on cloud services will grow to 10%by year-end 2012, up 7% from 2009. It says mobile business agility wil l also be extendedthrough the use of smart phones. By 2012, says Gartner, contact lists, calendars andmessaging clients in all smart phones will be social-enabled applications.

Analyst Forrester Research says there is also progress towards supporting agile mobilebusiness processes. Although the adoption of mobile business processes is well behind thetake-up of mobile business e-mail and calendars, says Forrester, firms are expected toincrease their adoption as suppliers launch more easier-to-deploy packaged solutions.

Forrester recently published its Mobile Applications will Empower Enterprise BusinessProcesses report, which says mobile applications for business use are receiving a greatdeal of attention from package application software vendors and considerable interestfrom business process professionals at firms.

cloud servicesCW+in association with

Verizon says...