Cloud Computing: Strategic End or Valuable Means?

Blogger: Lyn Robison

Cloud computing is a strategic endeavor. And like any strategic endeavor, understanding the conditions for success is the difference between success and failure. It is deceptively easy to lose sight of the strategic goal and to let the means by which we can pursue our goal become an end unto itself.

The struggle to implement information systems has become an end unto itself for many enterprise IT departments, without much consideration of whether or not those systems lead to any strategic goal. Likewise, cloud computing comes along, and implementing cloud-based infrastructure and applications becomes an end unto itself, instead of a means that we can use to achieve some desired outcome.

If cloud computing is indeed a means to an end, what is its end?

For those who don’t know the conditions for victory -- for those don’t know the goal behind implementing cloud-based infrastructure and applications -- their chances of success with cloud are pretty slim. When you know the conditions for success, success becomes possible.

If we could identify why the business pays for IT systems in the first place, that might suggest a path to success for cloud computing.

Even though the business asks their IT people to implement and operate IT systems, systems and technology are not all that the business wants from their IT department. Businesses pay for information systems not because businesspeople love technology, but because businesspeople need information to make decisions and do their jobs effectively. Clearly, businesses expect their IT departments to be proper custodians of business data and they expect information systems to provide businesspeople with useful information for making business decisions and for performing business processes.

So, if an IT person properly thinks of implementing cloud-based infrastructure and applications as a means, and providing useful information to businesspeople as the end, then that IT person understands the conditions for success with cloud. (And that IT person stands head and shoulders above all of those IT people who think of cloud computing as an end unto itself.)

The following blog posts suggest a few thoughts on data management and information delivery that work well within the cloud computing paradigm:

• Enterprise Data and “Which one?” vs. “What kind?”
• Three Guys Walk Into a Bar Code... 
• Are your assets fungible?
• Dear Mr. President, a Data Model for my Electronic Health Records Nearly Killed Me
• Change is Good
• Why would you ever want to do that?
• The product of an IT department
• It's all about Semantics

And, as always, please feel free to contact us in person by requesting a dialog via the Burton Group web site.

Comments

[Andy Ben-Dyke - RainStor]

Business people not only expect IT to deliver information systems that support the business, they’re also increasingly asking IT to deliver value for money, and in this economic climate “more with less”. That’s the real opportunity for business and IT with cloud computing. More specifically, there are 2 very obvious opportunities for IT to grasp the cloud nettle when you consider the lifecycle of business and information systems. Firstly, the birth of an application is ideally suited to the cloud where you can bring up, scale and take down development and test environments with ease. Second, the retirement or decommissioning of an application is also perfectly suited to cloud infrastructure where you can shut-down your application, send the data to the cloud and keep it accessible using services such as RainStor (www.rainstor.com ). Using the cloud in such ways not only simplifies the life for the IT department but also delivers real value for money to the business.

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Impressive blog! -Arron