CIO Talk Radio Blog

 

We've all heard discussions on "IT Agility" and how firms who have it are able to engage with their customers, beat their competition, achieve higher ROI, and execute their strategic plans.  Today's silver bullet for IT agility is supposedly cloud computing.  As in the past, the press and pundits are so gaga over this new concept that it's often portrayed as the panacea for IT agility, but we have heard similar panacea concepts before in our IT careers.  Examples include; client-server computing, object oriented programming, business liaison roles, service oriented architectures and many other hot-topic IT concepts.  None of these IT concepts ever achieved IT agility.  However, I believe we are closer to being able to achieve IT agility than ever before.  The difficult part is in defining what an agile IT organization looks like.  The dictionary defines agility as the power of moving quickly and easily, with nimbleness.  So, in the spirit of opinionated blogs, which is probably redundant and maybe an oxymoron, here's my top three enablers of IT agility.

Cloud computing is HOT! First, get IT plugged into the right cloud service providers who do IT cheaper but better than in-house. Then IT can sit down in its rightful seat at the management table and get down to business with the other big guys. Sounds sort of like the ultimate corporate plug ‘n play. If only things were that easy.

Cloud Computing Benefits are obvious.  Cloud computing companies can provide flexible, scalable infrastructure resources on demand, without the need for additional investment. This levels the playing field for mid and smaller companies, so they can be as dynamic as a Fortune 500 company.  A recent Info-Tech survey suggests that three quarters of IT leaders are first considering a private cloud, with one third already set on a private cloud.  Cloud computing leaders are currently debating whether public or private cloud will dominate the future.

Today, no company exists in a vacuum.  Social media and collaboration are becoming tools for business engagement. Enterprise cloud computing facilitates the use of social media and shared collaboration with partners, for greater competitive advantage. An Enterprise cloud can provide a virtual community, where business and IT employees from the company can work with each other, or interact with their counterparts from partners, vendors, even clients, allowing everyone to work together to resolve problems, speed decision making, or adapt to competition. With Enterprise Cloud computing people internal or external (partners, vendors, clients) can function as a single organization.

One of the most difficult items to forecast for new IT investment is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model.  Calculating TCO was never easy for purchased on-premise software or hardware packages, but it is more complicated for cloud computing solutions. You'll hear various vendors talk about turning capital expense into operating expense, where on-premise software is a capital expense purchase, and cloud computing is an operating expense.  However, this is overly simplistic. To truly evaluate the TCO of a cloud computing investment you need to look at the following categories of spending.