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Innovate business competitiveness: unleash the big value of the Cloud
The event “Osservatorio Cloud” (Cloud Observatory) of the Politecnico di Milano is just over, after the presentation of Cloud Innovation Awards for the most innovative projects. I estimated about 500 attendees in the conference room, while an unknown number connected to live streaming. I represented HP in the roundtable with all of the other major players to discuss the relevance of cloud as an opportunity (possibly the last?) to recover from economic crisis and its impacts on Italian –and not only!- competitiveness.
In the discussion, Prof. Mainetti of the Politecnico asked me whether cloud could even worsen the already low Information and Communication Technology/GDP spending ratio in Italy, having minimal impact on enterprises’ bottom line without increasing innovation and competitiveness.
You know that I see cloud as a stress factor that should force all of us to deeply review our digital strategy and its impacts on IT, and ultimately on the business (see my blog Don’t Allow Cloud to Stress Your Organization). The GS1 Canada success story on food recall demonstrates that rethinking business processes by leveraging best practices and differentiating through excellence – and, of course, technology – can bring terrific results. And it can do so not just for one player (via cost savings, reduced IT TCO, and fewer resources engaged in compliance-related tasks) but for an entire business community, opening the door to further business innovation. ICT/GDP ratio could then even increase as ICT becomes a critical component of the business value chain.
The secret sauce for success can be summarized in the usual three bullet points:
- Adoption of open standards to simplify interoperability across the whole value chain. HP’s support for OpenStack is an example of our commitment.
- Consistent architectural design to ensure the harmonious integration, by design, of all components -- traditional and cloud – and to avoid the addition of multiple silos that cause the complexity of information and services to skyrocket.
- Leveraging converged technologies (infrastructure, management and security, information) to enable innovative service and process implementation.
As shown by end users’ success stories presented at the event, for example by NTV and Barilla, business innovation enabled by digital services is what actually matters. Cloud introduces a discontinuity in consolidated practices, opening unprecedented transformation opportunities: it’s a tool (not an end in itself) for building the competitiveness of enterprises and ecosystems.
Learn more about HP Converged Cloud solutions.





