Dr. Jim Anderson tackles the question that all CIO’s are asking: just exactly what is “cloud computing”?
Dr. Anderson identifies the 4 different flavors of cloud computing that are available and points out how a CIO would go about using each one of them.
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By Dr. Jim Anderson
CIOs Need To Make Sure That Cloud Computing Is Not Just A Fad
Does anyone besides me remember the big Furby craze that swept the U.S. in the early ’90′s? People went crazy for these little plush dolls and they started collecting them in hopes that they would one day be valuable. Well, that never happened and a lot of people got stuck with expensive toys that they couldn’t get rid of. Is is possible that the current cloud computing craze in IT could be another Furby fad that will fade away?
If a CIO can move beyond the hype, he/she needs to spend some time doing their homework in order to find out what kind of services a cloud could offer that their company could make use of. Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has boiled cloud services down into four types of services:
The Forrester research company has done some investigating and they now claim that most company’s data centers are using less than 50% of their total capacity. Despite the hype that is currently surrounding cloud computing, Leavitt has uncovered three very good reasons for looking into having your firm start to use cloud computing:
It is all too easy for CIOs who are adverse to change to look at the current excitement over cloud computing and decide that it is yet another fad that will fade away in time. The reality is that cloud computing provides several different types of services that are useful to any IT department. This can’t be ignored.
Additionally, successfully adding cloud computing resources to the company’s existing IT infrastructure will mean that a CIOs will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.
How much of your existing IT infrastructure do you think that your firm is currently using – more or less than 50%? Which of the four types of cloud computing services would have the most immediate value to your company? Why? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.
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Cloud computing is all the rage these days and everyone who is anyone is making plans to implement at least some flavor of it as soon as possible. It turns out that the decision to go with a cloud computing solution for your IT department might not be as simple as some would lead you to believe. There are challenges to successfully using a cloud and we need to talk about them…
IT Department Alliances Can Make Everyone Stronger - If They Are Done Correctly
You would think that the more alliances that your company / IT department makes with other firms, then the better that they would become at making them. After all, practice makes perfect – doesn’t it? It turns out that this is not always the case.
Koen Heimeriks has spent time studying 200 firms that had formed more than 3,400 alliances. What he has found just might surprise you.
He found that those firms that had the most experience striking up alliances actually had worse results when compared to those firms who had moderate experience.
Why the difference? It turns out that there are two problems that develop in firms that already have a number of alliances:
So what can make an IT department’s alliance with another firm actually work out well? It turns out that it’s the methods and procedures that the firm uses to create alliances that will determine their eventual success. Established firms that already have many alliances will probably have rigid and inflexible business processes for making decisions and selecting partners.
However, IT departments with fewer existing alliances will have more flexibility built into their processes. An example of this would be where employees who have worked on previous alliances share information with the employees who are trying to create a new alliance. This type of discussion can lead to experimentation and allows novel approaches to each alliance opportunity.
So in the end, what does all of this lead to? Heimeriks reports that the larger firms who had many alliances and a more rigid alliance creation process had an alliance success rate of around 50%. Those firms that had fewer alliances and a more flexible alliance creation process had an alliance success rate of around 71%. Sure looks like flexible processes are the key to successful IT alliances!
Does your IT department have any alliances with outside firms? Would you say that you have a lot or a few of these alliances? Are they generally successful or not so successful? Do you feel that your alliance creation processes are fixed or flexible? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.
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