3 compelling business reasons for moving to the cloud
As a reminder, the 3 reasons we need to consider are:
- To increase or defend revenue streams by being able to respond faster to market changes and customer demands through the faster deployment of supporting IT;
- To reduce our operating costs by controlling the over or under provisioning of IT;
- To improve our capabilities through the faster deployment of supporting IT.
Moving to the cloud can help us increase or defend our revenues because it allows us to respond more quickly to market changes and customer demand. For example, if we set-up shop in a new country, consuming an existing cloud capability and processes is much easier and faster to implement than creating a new local infrastructure from scratch. This is particularly true in emerging markets. This is because the enterprise does not have to invest the capital and human effort needed to build out the infrastructure. By consuming existing services, this laborious step may be bypassed completely.
Reducing operating costs is top of mind for most CxOs. Moving to the cloud helps manage the cost of IT by providing only the services that are needed at any particular time. This model helps mitigate investment in excess equipment or spending precious resources on underperforming systems. To get the sizing right it is important to match the characteristics of the applications and business processes when establishing the cloud platform and services. This can be achieved through a series of assessments to define the strategy for the portfolio of applications and associated business processes.
Improving capabilities is strongly linked to innovation. For organisations with large R&D demands, cloud computing offers more flexibility in the deployment of high performance compute and ‘Big Data’ storage over traditional solutions. The ‘elastic’ and on-demand scaling of cloud resources means that enterprises can meet their most demanding scenarios.
In addition, service standardisation inherent in moving to the cloud reduces risk for organisations engaged in mergers and acquisitions. The adoption of cloud services with the deployment of standardised APIs and web services not only eases seamless integration within the Enterprise and with business partners, but also with new applications that need to be considered through mergers and acquisitions.
I am sure that we can think of more good examples for moving to cloud. Assembling credible business cases is made much easier when we link our scenarios back to the “3 compelling business reasons” together with the supporting measures we can use to demonstrate the difference that it makes to our business.
What other good examples can you think of… and can you linked them to the 3 business reasons listed above? If you can, then you have the foundation for a good business case!
Be on the lookout for our up and coming blogs on cloud and mobility. And you can always check out our previous Knowledge Matters articles on the HP Applications Services blog.
