Cloud Computing - What Does it Mean to Your
Enterprise?
Consumerized services, available to anyone, delivered from ‘the Cloud’,
have become widely discussed as Cloud Computing. While millions of
people and thousands of businesses are already using Cloud Computing – whether
they know it or not – it is early days with the technologies that are being
deployed. Enterprises need to understand exactly what is meant by ‘Cloud
Computing’ as every vendor tries to turn the phrase to their advantage.
Essentially, Cloud Computing is part of a wave of change that is washing over
IT organizations. Components of the wave include the consumerization of IT,
mobility, the rise of much more tech-smart employees and a shift in business models
from vertical integration to horizontal, networked and collaborative businesses.
Backed by the massive scale of consumerized offerings, the Cloud is a source
for new services for enterprises at multiple levels including infrastructure, platform,
software application, and process. Surrounding these layers are new orchestration
offerings for scaling, security, identity, and management. These layers
form a stack with important consequences.
Going down the stack gives firms the ability to precisely do what they want.
However, it is at the expense of much greater attention to detail. Going up
the stack frees management attention, but at the cost of having to abide by decisions
made lower in the stack.
We have been looking at this phenomenon for some time now and ran our 2008
Study Tour on this topic looking at the choices and risks in moving to the Cloud.
Take a look at some of our work in this space via the links attached. We’ll
be continuing this journey to help you, our clients, identify and address the issues
as this transformational IT technology moves forward.
In developing your roadmap to the Cloud, keep in mind that for many the future
of the horizontal, networked business is collaboration. And that the future
of collaboration is in the Cloud.
Read Ed Sperling's article on 16 March 2009 from Forbes.com on Security
Risk: Frustrated Workers