The Half Full Cloud
- Date: 16 May 2012
- Author: broyer
- Category: Cloud Computing, News, Services
There’s all kinds of ways to view clouds ― public, private, hybrid and a wealth of acronyms ― PaaS, IaaS, SaaS to accompany them but when you get right down to it there’s only two that really matter: the technical benefits of cloud and the business benefits of cloud.
This post is grounded exclusively around the latter of these two concepts and based on a recent article appearing in Forbes.com by Mike Pearl, a U.S. Cloud Computing Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Pearl sets the table for his essay, Looking at Cloud Strategy Through the Lens of Value, with his contention that for many organizations cloud computing is inevitable. It’s not the latest buzzword , fad, or technology du jour that time will simply pass by. Instead, Pearl contends that “the cloud is…fueling a cultural shift, as business leaders are no longer limited by the technology they own, but rather empowered by the capabilities they can access dynamically…and undermining its true potential to give them a competitive edge.”
Leveraging the cloud’s true potential, Pearl outlines four PWC “value lenses” that help organizations develop their cloud strategies. These “lenses” help organizations, writes Pearl, to shift their focus from the underlying cloud technologies to developing and implementing a holistic cloud strategy that can lead to significant business opportunities.
Briefly, these “lenses” include the following:
Cloud-enabled IT transformation. This effort leverages cloud technologies from infrastructure through software to change the role of IT from custodian of IT assets to orchestrator of business services. For example, instead of investing in their own large data centers, IT organizations within life sciences companies can now leverage elastic computing resources available through the cloud to analyze large data sets – generated by electronic health records (EHRs) for predictive modeling, statistical tools, and algorithms – to improve clinical trial design and provide better analysis of disease patterns.
Transforming internal business operations to increase operational performance. In other words leveraging the best of what cloud has to offer in order to increase agility across the enterprise. For example, many organizations adopt cloud-based applications to meet process capability needs that their current on-premise systems may not be able to address.
Innovate around new products and services to generate additional sources of revenue. Pearl uses the example of new online media broadcasting offerings which use innovative video interfaces over high-speed broadband developed within a cloud environment to create new business models, ala San Francisco’s 311 non-emergency reporting system which has increased citizen collaboration and engagement, as well as shortened the time to address service requests and implement updates even during peak times.
Energize broader and more diverse channels and communities to connect with an ever-expanding pool of internal and external stakeholders in entirely new ways. These digital interactions rely on the cloud communications backbone ― on both the technical and social levels. Companies should orchestrate these multiple social and mobile interactions for a greater share of the market and consumer demand. The ability to engage with audiences across this spectrum creates opportunities for enterprises.
Pearl suggests that for enterprise executives cloud can enhance the value that their businesses provide, from their IT organization to their go-to-market and customer-engagement models, in fact cloud can serve as a strategy (or strategic asset) for maturing to a new level of technology enablement with cloud computing as its foundation.
In other words it’s time for enterprises to see “the cloud” as half-full, helping them transform their business models by creating new products and services and new modes of engagement among employees and with customers.