Cloud Computing For Business:Where Do We Begin?

Microsoft's latest announcement on Office suite has confirmed that cloud computing is here to stay. (Wainewright 2012). While at personal level people are feeling the impact on cloud computing by using applications like Dropbox or googleDocs, at business level still many CxOs are sitting on the fence. Their concern is due to the

- risks associated with cloud computing
- about the tangible benefits promised by the cloud delivery model
- fact that they do not know what is available in the market

Apart from Capex to Opex spending change and potential savings, cloud computing services do offer tangible benefits if properly managed.

In this blog, I will discuss the point 3, "the fact that they CxOs do not know what is available in the market". I have classified the cloud computing solutions in the three business areas. They are

- Business Continuity
- Business Growth
- Business Operations

Business Continuity

According to ITIL "the business continuity management process involves reducing risks to an acceptable level and planning for the recovery of business processes should a disruption to the business occur" (ITIL 2007). The key term here is "acceptable level of risks". Currently many Small Medium Enterprises (SME) and non-profit organisations do not plan for business continuity as the cost involved is high. With cloud computing, setting up a remote recovery site has become affordable to many organisations.

Market place – Infrastructure As A Service:

Here is a partial list of providers who can help to setup a remote recovery site:

http://kloudax.net.au/category/service-model/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas/

Business Growth

There are 3 ways a business can grow:

- By finding new customers
- By getting more orders from the existing customers
- By getting high value orders from the customers

The CRM tools provide campaign management and contact management features that enable you to grow the business. CRM is one of the relatively mature markets in cloud computing market started by SalesForce. The current tools offer a wide range of features.

Marketplace: CRM

You can find partial list of CRM providers here:

http://kloudax.net.au/category/service/crm/

Business Operations

There are many options to streamline the business operations through cloud services. Some of the service areas I want to discuss are:

- Email
- Service Desk
- Project Management
- Collaboration
- Enterprise Resource Management

I will address the first two areas in this blog.

Email:

According to Gartner, "Email is one of fastest growing cloud computing services. By the end of 2014, penetration of cloud email and collaboration services (CECS) will stand at 10 percent and will have passed the "tipping point" with broad-scale adoption under way." (Gartner 2011).

In Australia we are witnessing a trend in Educational institutes using Microsoft and Google email instead of in-house hosted Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft has offered Live.edu free of cost educational institutes. In the latest Microsoft release, it announced a Office 365 for Education product. (PCWorld 2012).

Moving Email management in cloud computing seems to be a fairly straight forward option if the security risks are assessed and managed. I believe, with Microsoft's push to cloud email the adoption of cloud email services will be faster.

Marketplace – Cloud Email:

You can find partial list of Email providers here:

http://kloudax.net.au/category/service/email/

Service Desk:

IT Service Management tools are sometimes referred as service desk/help desk/ticketing tools. A true service management tool encompasses features broader than help desk/ticketing. The features are generally compatible with ITIL.

Marketplace: IT Service Desk

You can find partial list of Service Desk providers here:

http://kloudax.net.au/category/service/it-service-management/