What is your organization's Cloud Computing strategy? Does one even exist? The number of cloud based services is increasing every day. With offerings from SalesForce.com, Google, Amazon, and even Oracle, this is not just a trend. For many this will be a strategic advantage. Organizations have been asking whether to develop in-house infrastructure, or use managed services for some time, and now cloud computing is another real option. Your organization has to consider factors like capital investment, ongoing support, time to provision, flexibility, staff expertise, security, service levels, and more.
So why should your organization consider cloud computing? There are a number of benefits: OpEx vs CapEx, pay for what you use, on-demand use, scalability, flexibility, simplified management, and disaster recovery. The most compelling reason to start using the cloud is to better understand how and if the cloud model works for your organization. Organizations that do not have experience in the cloud can't fully comprehend the impact that this paradigm shift will have on their business. Some organizations will lead the way and others will follow behind.
Organizations should embrace the cloud using a planned and methodical approach.
The CIO and CTO need to evaluate where the benefits of the cloud will best serve the business and evaluate the pros and cons. One functional area of the business may be better served than another. A small pilot project should be carved out with clearly defined goals, budget, timelines, resourcing, key success factors, and understanding of the impacts to the business if the project succeeds or fails. The pilot might involve Software as a Service (SaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or a combination of both. For example, the defect tracking used by the QA staff might be changed to JIRA (a bug/issue tracking and project tracking solution) for an internal project or the development servers may be hosted in Amazon's EC2 environment or maybe just the Load & Stress testing.
The type of project will determine the transparency to the business. For example, a software change to SalesForce.com or JIRA would impact the Sales, Project Management, and QA teams and business processes, whereas the virtualization of the development or load testing environment might be relatively transparent. The project's steering committee should monitor the project throughout its life cycle evaluating whether it is tracking to the intended goals, budget, and timelines, making adjustments along the way as would be done for any project. Choosing the right sized project will contribute greatly to the project's success.
The Litcom Approach
Litcom has professionals who are experienced in developing and aligning business and IT strategy. We can help your business understand the benefits offered by cloud computing and help you determine where the focus should be for your first project. Litcom professionals have real world experience integrating virtualized and cloud based solutions.
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