Migrating to Cloudware - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 422

Companies of all sizes have increasingly been affected by unpredictable
and uncertain changing business environments in recent years:
1. Externally, current business landscape is driven by new hurdles and
opportunities such as challenging economy, emerging technologies,
increasing commoditization of technology, shorter information life
cycle, increased transparency along the supply chains, changing
customer demands and preferences, evolving issues around trans-
parency, privacy, security, as well as associated regulations, compli-
ance, and standards.
2. Internally, enterprises are challenged by tighter budgets and empha-
sis on managing investments effectively, reducing costs, managing
the evolving complexity of markets, and managing new relation-
ships including developing new business models to differentiate
and stay competitive.
3. Technologically, enterprises are challenged for harnessing the tech-
nology capabilities for efficient and effective business delivery, pro-
cess, and operational efficiency, strategically aligning IT resources to
business needs for optimized business benefit realization, manag-
ing risk, and many more.
Addressing these concerns and maintaining growth and delivering business
value has more than ever driven enterprises to focus on their core compe-
tencies by carefully designing and leveraging the unique and differentiated
processes, architectures, skills and competencies, and relationships across
their business ecosystems. IT as a valuable strategic asset has also been the
center of attention due to its significant business impact and also the invest-
ment requirements and the need to lower operations cost, deriving business
benefits, improved productivity and performance, and streamlined pro-
cesses and services, just to name a few.
Strategic value of cloud is demonstrated when it plays a key role in an
enterprise's achievement of overall business strategy. As an ingredient of the
IT portfolio, cloud strategy needs to be focused on business outcomes and
plays a significant role in optimizing and improving core value chain pro-
cesses and drives innovation that enables new technology-enabled product
and service revenue streams. The results can be translated into and mea-
sured by improved customer satisfaction and market share.
Therefore, the underpinning premises of the planning for cloud include
the following:
• Going into the cloud requires strategic planning that leverages the
business effectiveness.
• A strategic planning framework can help ensure that cloud invest-
ments are aligned with and support the strategic business objectives.