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Synthesis: an industrial IT world, by 2020
The 2010–2020 decade, the Cloud Computing one, is exciting to live and
follow. In 2020, organisations will wonder how they could have worked, in
2010,
when Cloud Computing was still in its infancy.
All organisations using IT will reap huge benefits when they embrace Cloud
Computing.
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3.5.3
The Foundation of a Cloud Business Model
The Cloud Computing Value Chain
In order to share IT infrastructure resources virtualisation of IT resource is a
prerequisite. It leads to converged infrastructure and ability to share
services. Cloud is the logical progression in terms of delivering IT resources
providing an efficient and agile IT infrastructure. Despite all the benefits,
moving to the Cloud is related to a transformation of business processes and
IT architecture. In order to better understand how Cloud Computing works,
the whole value chain from the infrastructure provider to the enterprise
customer has to be examined. Thereby we put the business model of Cloud
computing into the context of the role of services providers. The Figure
shows the Cloud computing value chain and identifies the primary actors on
the pathway from the infrastructure providers to the enterprise customer:
Figure 11: Cloud Computing Value Chain (Leimeister et al. 2010 )
1.
Infrastructure Providers:
Supply all actors in the Cloud computing value
chain with computing and storage services needed to run applications as
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An expanded version of this chapter can be found under
