Monthly Archives: August 2011

3 Ways To Create IT Flexibility And Scalability In The Cloud Era

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When making decisions about replacing or upgrading business technologies in today’s competitive environment, it is crucial to consider your business strategy and how these technologies will help you adapt to changing market conditions. If the past decade is any indicator of changing marketing conditions, the best way to adapt is to build in flexibility and create your contingency plans through the scalability of IT and adding or adjusting business processes.

Getting ahead of your IT is tough as the rate of technological change is fast. However, these strategic choices will be a key differentiator between you and your competitors in your ability to adapt your rhythm of business with the market demand. For most companies, the rapid change of technology sometimes means that technology drives business decisions, but to make the right decisions it is better for the CIO’s and CTO’s to work together to build a business strategy that uses technology to solve their business problems.

Forrester is seeing a trend that business technologies are being increasingly managed outside of IT’s direct control. The best way to plan for the future and mitigate the risks inherent in being in the technology field is to allow IT to fully respond to the business strategy and implement flexible and adaptable business technologies.

3 Simple Ideas To Create Flexibility From Forrester

  1. Extra bandwidth or storage that provides a scalability option.
    Anytime an organization acquires excess capacity, whether on a server, in a network, or in a storage array, it acquires a scalability option — the ability to quickly increase use of the resource with more transactions from an existing system, or the addition of new functionality.
  2. Reusable components or extensible layers that add leverage options.
    Technology standards, defined service layers, and business process management tools all create the option to change the rate at which new applications are developed or implemented. When you purchase such an option with the adoption of any such standard, you can reduce licensing, integration costs, or testing requirements on future applications.
  3. Pilot projects and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.
    System or application pilots or prototypes represent this type of option. With these options, you reserve the right to cancel, change, or modify the investment prior to the total commitment of funds. The pilot is the creation of the option. Implementing or extending the pilot, if appropriate based on then-current market or business conditions, represents the exercising of the option. Additionally, short-duration contracts with SaaS providers also create the option to abandon a platform, should it prove less valuable than anticipated.

The important thing to realize in the best-case scenario is you’re likely not going to use all of your options. Options are built-in contingency plans designed to adapt to unanticipated changes and act as a form of insurance. The main idea is to be able to act quickly and adjust your business to meet the need of the most important aspect – your customers.

Most technology companies are moving their products to the cloud in order to meet the consumer demand for flexibility in IT. This is due to recent hardware innovations, business need for ubiquitous access across all devices and the extreme cost associated with building and maintaining your own unique environment.

Microsoft Cloud Solutions

Vorsite responded to these needs by adopting Microsoft solutions that deal with the development and proliferation of the concept of the cloud. Windows Azure and Office 365 are the two primary solutions that allow the business strategy to lead the technological decisions and offer the flexibility IT needs to adjust to changing market demands.

Windows Azure works on a pay-per-use basis, allowing businesses to only pay for the services they use when inventing applications. For cost-focused businesses, it gives us all the opportunity to access enterprise-level services but without worrying about reinventing the wheel. Microsoft also took this approach to their business productivity solutions in Office 365, offering businesses the ability to add or remove licenses as needed.

This flexibility also extends into the concept that the cloud, for Microsoft, is not an all or nothing concept. The point of the cloud is to offer businesses flexibility where they need it as it pertains to their business strategy. The cloud is the future, but each business will determine which solutions make the most sense for the overall strategy.

With the future of computing unknown, it’s best to place your bets on what you know to be the right solution that will meet your needs now and in the future. And for CIOs struggling to make a decision with all the hoopla in the news, it’s best to start actively managing the technology that will best serve your business by educating all stakeholders, assigning resources to research the technology and communicate the potential savings and value achieved from its use.

Sources
Gliedman, C. (2011, 08 25). CIOs Need To Act As Investment Managers To Best Manage Their Options.Higginbotham, S. (2011, 01 21). Is This the Stealthy Return of Hardware Innovation?Microsoft. (n.d.). Make the cloud yours. Mold it to fit your specific needs. Microsoft. (n.d.). Windows Azure.MSDN. (n.d.). Exercise 3: Creating a Reusable and Extensible Caching Layer.

 

Your Corporate Intranet —There Will Be an App For That.

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Corporations spend thousands of dollars and hours on building, securing, nurturing and organizing their IT. Then, the future comes along and asks us to evolve our thinking. It’s almost unbearable, until our eyes flip open. We can see the dramatic shape the future holds for corporations and our venture into the freedom of mobility.

As usage of mobile devices becomes more prevalent in our daily lives, it will become increasingly important to move your IT to the cloud. Cloud technologies are the primary shift that will support the future of business communication and team outputs.

Mobile devices are surging forward.

The world is full of mobile opportunities and it only shows signs of future growth. According to the International Telecommunications Union in 2009, 90% of the world’s population was covered by a mobile cellular signal as compared to only 61% in 2003. The ability to reach multiple people has increased and we will soon be fully connected through wireless signals.

International Telecommunications Union - Global Mobile Cellular Subscriptions

It might be a little obvious to suggest that mobile cellular subscriptions have a direct impact on the global footprint of wireless signals, but looking at the growth of mobile subscriptions, the future suggests we will each have a personalized mobile service customized to our specifications.

The U.S. is leading the pack with 55% of people purchasing Smartphones over feature phones (Nielsen Wire, June 2011). This increase in Smartphone purchase will open the doors to an increased adoption rate and eventual cost reductions in data plans. With the current penetration rate of 38% (Nielsen Wire, June 2011), companies like Nokia are abandoning features phones and focusing their attention in the smartphone market (MediaPost – Nokia Won’t Sell Phones In U.S., Canada, 2011).

What’s incredible about this market is that despite the high cost early data shows that people are four times more likely to access their emails with a smartphone over a feature phone and typically have between 35 – 48 applications installed (Nielsen Wire – Smartphone Penetration, 2011).

The mobile cloud service landscape is expanding.

It’s not just cell phones that are getting attention. The sales of tablets have been surpassing expectations and sliding their way into the business landscape (WSJ, 2010) empowering the end user to choose from multiple devices, leaving IT executives to work out the difference between the end user needs, business decision makers and the typical standardized approach to IT.

Unfortunately for most IT executives, the cloud evolution has already hit its first stage – the availability of an application store with multiple business-focused productivity applications.

Forrester Research - Enterprise Mobile Cloud Services

As applications grow and become more popular on a variety of devices, the second stage is an increased interest in mobile security and storage cloud services. Security services include locking, back up and restore, and data-wiping devices and storage services enable end users to share, synchronize, encrypt, and store files that are accessible from any web-based mobile device or laptop (Forrester, 2011). This will be demonstrated by an end user’s increased ability and comfort to engage in financial transactions over mobile devices.

In the third stage of mobile cloud evolution, companies will move beyond mobile cloud services and deploy mobile cloud solutions, which include collaboration capabilities and infrastructure-as-a-service (Forrester, 2011).

Mobile apps have transformed the way we view accessing the Internet.

Corporate app stores become the intranet of the future (Forrester, 2011). As the app-centric view of Internet matures, apps will take on the roles we typically associate with CMS platforms. Obtaining corporate apps will be the way that companies ensures employees have access to the most current versions of key policies and management practices.

We can already see this coming with current acquisitions, like the Microsoft’s purchase of Skype and its plans to integrate this popular communication medium into their office productivity line of business (10). Wearable technologies, like Microsoft’s Twitter Dress and advanced input methods will depend on cloud computing in order to support the lack of physical storage and mobility demands.

With the rise in mobile devices, it becomes important to make sure your business is preparing for an app-centric view and mobility demands of the evolving concept of the Internet. Moving your IT to the cloud will help ease your business into the new world of business communications and ensure your seat at the table during the next wave of technological advancements. Sure, your employees are downloading apps and look like they’re playing on their phones in the office, but one of those birds they fling might land in the hands of your next big client.