Cloud Frees Users For Business As Usual

Cloud computing has the potential to change IT and to change businesses. But people don’t trust it, because they see it as a complex technology.

This is ironic, because the pitch for using the cloud is exactly the opposite of complex. The pitch is that the cloud will simplify things, so users don’t have to worry about the complexities of technology. Far from making things more complex, cloud – it is promised – will actually allow users to get on with the business.

Make business choices first

Defining what cloud is can be an issue – and one which can distract people from the real issues. New bodies such as the Cloud Industry Forum tend to launch with new attempts to define the cloud.

In fact, the idea is simple: cloud computing involves oustourcing key services onto virtual servers, hosted on the Internet. It can begin with virtualising servers and other resources inside the company, which is a technological process, but is a business decision, not a technical one.

Businesses are run by processes, not by technology, says analyst Clive Longbottom of QuoCirca: “A new approach has to be taken,” he says in a report published by cloud provider Star. “One that starts with the business imperative, drills down to the business process and then uses technology – increasingly from outside sources – to enable and facilitate the business tasks that are the basic building blocks of business value.”

In an average organisation, around seventy percent of the IT budget is spent on “keeping the lights on”, Longbottom says: “dealing with fire fighting, patching, upgrades and so on”.  This figure makes it difficult to change IT processes, and is fundamentally unsustainable, because IT departments actually have to meet demands for new services.

Cloud computing offers help because it allows user companies to “offload variable management costs into a more predictable managed environment,” says Longbottom.

It’s not about technology

The main concern users have about the cloud tends to be security – and a recent webinar chaired by eWEEK Europe underlined that it is users’ lack of trust in the cloud that is holding them back.  Cloud providers such as Google have gone to great lengths to put forward the view the cloud applications are more secure not less.

Moving to the cloud is not an all-or-nothing action though. Longbottom suggests that an organisation should describe its business processes, and then prioritise them according to those which are “commodity”, those that are “differentiated”, and those that are “unique”.

Longbottom thinks email should be put out in the cloud: “Even though it is mission critical, it is a commodity.” And the same goes for order processing and expenses claims handling. Nobody would dream of making their own email server – so why should they format their own internal documents like expenses claims forms? “The idea is to shift the emphasis of IT spend from maintenance to investment, to make sure that as much as possible is spent in managing the ‘unique’ processes,” said Longbottom.

With these issues in mind, the Cloud Computing World Forum is taking place in London’s Olympia on 29 June to 1 July. It features talks from CIOs at companies including The Telegraph, Rentokil (a big Google Apps user), British Airways and the House of Commons.

Meanwhile for those who want to focus on the technology underpinnings, next week eWEEK Europe is charing a webinar on virtualisation.