In order to ensure that the Cloud is a real driver for value-creation – rather than just another layer of complexity – IT Departments must start proactively preparing for it now: seeing it just as much as another new option that they can include in their portfolios of technologies and services, as a competitor whose agility, speed and ease-of-use they have to measure up to. This white paper is designed to guide you in this transformation, recommending short and medium-term actions you can take to achieve rapid benefits.
White paper: Services-Oriented Infrastructures
The advent of Cloud computing is inevitable. With its flexibility and limited requirement for up-front investment, it can give organizations just what they are looking for today in terms of cost savings and responsiveness from their IT. But because it is so fast and easy to acquire and set up, the business (under pressure from Cloud providers) is likely to consider buying these services directly, bypassing the IT Department altogether. Which means we may well see the emergence of a kind of ‘black market’ (or at least a ‘grey market) within businesses, operating outside corporate information systems to the detriment of their consistency and security.
So for IT Departments, and organizations as a whole, the Cloud is a source of both opportunities and threats. On the one hand, it offers the prospect of more agile computing, that better suits business needs. But on the other, it could lead to uncontrolled fragmentation of information systems.
To ensure that the Cloud is a real driver for value creation – rather than an additional source of complexity, tensions and insecurity for businesses – IT Departments must start proactively preparing for it now: seeing it just as much as another new option that they can include in their portfolios of technologies and services, as a new competitor whose agility, speed and ease-of-use they have to measure up to if they do not want the business to bypass them altogether.
The Cloud will have an impact on IT Departments on every front:
- On the services they provide and the way they provide them
- On their business processes: the changing relationship with the business; the way that solutions are put together (from application development methods to the composition of services); how service delivery levels are managed (a commitment to results rather than just a commitment to provide resources); and customer-supplier relationships (different sourcing models)
- On technologies and the whole topology of information systems: security, ‘Cloudized’ structuring of applications, services-oriented architectures (SOAs), interfaces…
- On people: changes in traditional job roles (development, operation); the strengthening and emergence of certain roles (catalogue management, business account management, contract administration)…
As a result, preparing for the advent of the Cloud represents a major transformation project for IT Departments. And the aim of this white paper is to provide practical recommendations for getting started, structuring and planning for this.
In order to cover all the key issues, we have used a Balanced Scorecard analysis. Here it is used less as a methodology for transformation than as a useful means of interpreting the situation, which enables the challenges of the Cloud to be approached, analyzed and anticipated in a holistic way. The four pillars of the Balanced Scorecard (financial, customers, processes and learning) can.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- It’s time to get ready for the Cloud, right now!
- Cost justification
- The basis for a new customer relationship
- Efficient processes: a platform for innovation
- Learning and growing
- Bull can support you
As a trusted IT partner, Bull designs, implements, maintains and runs leading-edge digital solutions that effectively combine processing power, security and the integration of complex, heterogeneous systems. With its broad portfolio of technological expertise and its positioning as an independent supplier, Bull works alongside customers, supporting their digital transformation, helping them to reap the full benefit and manage risk.