The Hub Commentary_

Accenture research indicates 40% of all cloud knowledgeable business will use the cloud to drive new revenue over the next 5 years.  This is a shift from just leveraging it operationally currently to cut costs on infrastructure for irregular surges in capacity requirements or moving from an old system to a new one that is Software-as-a-Service based.

This is a typical approach and cycle, go after the low hanging fruit first to cut costs before a strategic use is put in place.  This should serve as a wake-up call to IT operations that it is coming and will you be ready to monitor, manage and communicate effectively when the infrastructure requirements are ready for production operations.  Monitoring, managing and measuring complex mixed environments will require one of three choices to be made:  1) Seek to an integrated, single vendor that has the platform to manage the infrastructure, 2) Build the integration yourself across your heterogeneous environment or 3) Seek an integration platform that is your manager of managers.

I find what was old is new again.  I’ve read many papers and sat through many analyst presentations as of late that call for the integration platform that will enable IT operations to stitch together the fabric of the infrastructure in order to continue to communicate technology as services.  Now more than ever it is important to get to measuring and communicating technology as services as it only gets harder in these mixed environments.

I agree with the parting comment by the author, Jeanne Harris, smart IT executives will jump on their preparation to not only define new revenue generating avenues, but also operations to support and manage the new services without delay.

How ready are you to manage services in the cloud?

Michele

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If an IT leader works for a company that isn’t named Amazon, Google or Facebook, chances are it hasn’t gotten a big revenue boost from the cloud. It’s much more likely that the company has used the cloud to cut costs, replace a standalone software application or back up older documents.  (Read Full Article…)