Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 6: Elastic Capacity

A highly elastic, scalable, and flexible IT environment is critical to organizations seeking to remain competitive or enhance their competitive position. The Cloud Computing paradigm provides elasticity to support changing workloads and business priorities. Applications, services, and infrastructure can be scaled up or down as needed. “Elasticity is a trait of shared pools of resources. … Elasticity is associated with not only scale but also an economic model that enables scaling in both directions in an automated fashion. This means that services scale on demand to add or remove resources as needed.” __Gartner, Press Release, 2009-JUN-23, ( http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1035013 )

Organizations can leverage the elastic capabilities of Cloud computing to serve varying workloads; from small departmental applications to large enterprise applications, and from routine transactions associated with daily operations to large transaction spikes from special promotions. Enterprises can also leverage the service-oriented capabilities of Cloud computing to evolve transaction processing as business requirements change, to improve resource utilization, and to manage costs as well as allocate costs by allow business units to pay only for capacity that is actually used.

The relevant question is how to begin transforming the IT estate so that applications and workloads can effectively and efficiently benefit from Cloud computing to better support the business. Organizations seeking to leverage their IT environments for competitive advantage are beginning to transform their data centers to enable and automate their ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’ business capabilities and processes cost effectively using the Cloud Computing paradigm.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 5: Time to Market

It is not surprising that Cloud computing has captured the attention of IT departments. Promising higher resource utilization and decreased demands on data center power, cooling, and footprint, Cloud computing is attractive to those seeking cost reduction and containment.

Facing greater market and competitive pressures, IT departments are also looking to Cloud computing to improve time-to-market for new and enhanced applications. Given the Cloud computing maturity level, Gartner recommends that organizations “…focus on opportunistic solutions — quick-hit, tactical opportunities where time to market and developer productivity outweigh long-term technical viability…” __Gartner, Press Release, 2009-FEB-02, ( http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=871113 )

However, IT-driven time-to-market initiatives are mostly tactical and often miss strategic business time-to-market opportunities. Such strategic opportunities extend well outside the IT department boundaries. Organizations can utilize the Cloud Computing paradigm to accelerate time-to-market for new products and services. When coupled with Business Intelligence capabilities, the Cloud allows companies to learn from and respond to customer needs, wants, inquiries, and complaints. Amazon has modeled the way, “Even more interesting are the experiments using cloud computing to accelerate learning from customers, speeding up both time-to-market and customer feedback. For instance, Amazon uses its own cloud-based Relational Database Service to much more quickly and cheaply manipulate the tremendous amount of data it generates from simulations of its 98 million active customers.” __Forbes, ‘Learning From The Cloud’, 2010-OCT-20, ( http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/20/microsoft-amazon-varian-technology-cloud.html )

Organizations can further enhance the time-to-market value proposition by coupling the Business Intelligence capabilities with enterprise sense-&-respond and social media capabilities. The organization achieves integrated market-awareness, marketing and sales, product and service development and delivery, and customer service with near-real-time responsiveness. “A dramatically higher level of experimentation and learning--and therefore talent development--is the real potential of cloud computing. Those who understand and harness these forces can develop a significant advantage relative to those who continue to view the cloud as just another form of low-cost IT outsourcing.” __Forbes, ‘Learning From The Cloud’, 2010-OCT-20, ( http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/20/microsoft-amazon-varian-technology-cloud.html )

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood )

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 4: Resource Leverage

People and organizations have formed alliances and partnerships with others for centuries. The strengths and advantages of each member in the value chain facilitate creating and delivering products and services to customers at competitive prices.

The Cloud Computing paradigm provides another platform for establishing alliances and partnerships and building value chains. Its service-orientation makes it flexible to changing demands and new opportunities. Membership within the value chain can change quickly to incorporate new members and leverage their strengths and advantages.

Organizations can use the Cloud computing paradigm to build and evolve value chains in which they focus on enabling and automating their ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’ business capabilities and processes. These organizations invite partners to participate in those functions where the partners bring strengths. The partner organizations deliver, what is for them, ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’.

This allows each organization to more sharply focus its professional and technical resources on creating and delivering products and services, serving customers, and generating revenue.

__ Joseph Starwood ( www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood )

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 3: Business Focus

Most business and IT executives would rather invest in those business capabilities and processes that are essential to serving their customers and that differentiate them from the competition. They are focused on enabling and automating their ‘Core’ and ‘Differentiating’ business capabilities and processes.

The Cloud Computing paradigm allows organizations to focus their professional and technical resources on building and delivering functionality that provides business value. This minimizes investment in business capabilities and processes that are not ‘Core’ or ‘Differentiating’.

Whether in the form of a Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, or Private Cloud, organizations can leverage the service-orientation within the Cloud computing paradigm to focus IT investments on solving business problems and enabling business capabilities rather than technical details.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 2: Business-IT Alignment

Increasingly, business are insisting that the information technology (IT) function lead innovation of business practices and contribute to increased revenue generation. “If IT still thinks of itself as something that keeps the lights on, it is limiting its potential. Today, business wants IT to lead the way and show how to: Acquire more customers, enhance customer experience and keep employees happy.” __CIO.com, ‘2011 Non-tech Prediction: Business-IT Alignment’, 2011_JAN-19, (http://www.cio.in/article/2011-non-tech-prediction-business-it-alignment)

The Cloud computing paradigm can help organizations transform the role of the IT function and ensure that it meets these goals. Many organizations are using Cloud computing to deliver services to their customer in ways not previously practical. Additionally, the Cloud computing paradigm is enabling organizations to offer new services and improved pricing to their customers. General Electric (GE), for example, leveraged Cloud computing to greatly improve its global supply chain and e-procurement capabilities. __CIO.com, ‘GE CIO Gets His Head in the Cloud for New SaaS Supply Chain App’, 2009-JAN-22, (http://www.cio.com/article/477499/GE_CIO_Gets_His_Head_in_the_Cloud_for_New_SaaS_Supply_Chain_App)

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Finding Value in Cloud Computing – Part 1: Introduction

Businesses, under increasing market and competitive pressures, are seeking new ways to improve business operations, enhance value propositions, meet variable demands, reduce costs, and manage risks. Cloud computing presents a viable option for many organizations.

Interest in Cloud computing has grown over the past few years. Today, it is the investment option most on the minds of these executives. “A report just published claims to show that cloud computing has shot up to the top of the agenda in most corporates, as the number one investment priority in the IT stakes for the year ahead.” __InfoSecurity.com (UK), ‘Cloud computing is top investment priority for 2011’,2011-JAN-27, (http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/15480/cloud-computing-is-top-investment-priority-for-2011/)

Cloud computing has captured the attention of Business and IT executives around the world; especially those in emerging market economies. “Don't be surprised if the growth rates of cloud computing in emerging economies far outstrips that in more developed nations.” __CIO.com, ‘Cloud Computing: 2011 Predictions’2010-DEC-09, (http://www.cio.com/article/645763/Cloud_Computing_2011_Predictions?page=2&taxonomyId=3112)

An Enterprise may obtain several benefits from the Cloud computing paradigm. These include:

• Business-IT Alignment
• Business Focus
• Resource Leverage
• Time-To-Market
• Elastic Capacity
• CapEx Management
• OpEx Management
• Green Initiatives

This is the first in a series of articles in which we will explore the benefits of Cloud Computing.

__ Joseph Starwood (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)

Executive Seminar – Enabling IT Value Through EA – Prof. Jeanne Ross

Executive Seminar – Enabling IT Value Through EA – Prof. Jeanne Ross

Location: Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Peter B. Lewis Building Room 201, 11119 Bellflower Road, Cleveland OH 44106
Date: 2011-02-18 / Time: 12 Noon
Price: Free
Spaces Available: Limited Space Remaining

Description
This premier half-day seminar is brought to Northeast Ohio collaboratively by the Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management, the Northeast Ohio IT and Enterprise Architects (NEO-ITEA), and the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM). It provides an opportunity to engage with recognized experts and local IT executives to identify the roadblocks standing in the way of realizing the full value of IT investments. Discover how enterprise architecture can overcome roadblocks, enabling corporate strategies and turning IT from a liability to a strategic asset.

This event is essential for business and IT executives and leaders, enterprise and IT architects, and others with a stake in enabling IT value and driving business–IT alignment.

Registration is free and does not require NEO-ITEA membership.


About Prof. Jeanne Ross
Dr Jeanne W. Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Information Systems Research is our keynote speaker. Dr Ross is a nationally recognized authority on leveraging Enterprise Architecture to enable business strategies and corporate operating models, and is the co-author of several widely read books: 1) Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution; 2) IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain; and, 3) IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results.

Special Features
In addition to Dr. Ross’ keynote, Case Western Reserve University will present their research on the impact of enterprise architecture on the performance of Federal Government Agencies, IBM will present on the impact of enterprise architecture on financial companies, and there will be a Panel discussion with Dr Ross, corporate IT executives and IBM speaker on opportunities and challenges in leveraging Enterprise Architecture to gain IT value.

Space is limited. Register now! http://www.neoitea.com/ea-seminar/

__ Joseph Starwood, NEO-ITEA Co-Founder & Past-Secretary (www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)