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to adopt Cloud services in the near term, a five‐point roadmap
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could help
enterprises embark on the most essential elements of operationalise a Cloud
Business Strategy. This five‐step process allows the organisation to achieve
Cloud readiness for either the public or the Private Cloud:
1.
Optimise the current IT environment: Depending on the maturity of
your IT organisation start with standardisation and virtualisation of IT
resources, providing an internal set of Cloud services and enabling
the incorporation of external services. This will become the Cloud
services roadmap. Following the virtualisation begin to develop
service delivery models and manage your IT assets as a pool of
resources rather than discrete technologies. Then you’ll be able to
take a hard look at adopting Cloud services for your production
environments. You will experience cost benefits by optimising your
infrastructure and increasing utilization of existing assets, and there’s
no downside.
2.
Identify Cloud services opportunities: based on business needs, value
proposition, and the ability to choose those which enlarge an IT
services portfolio. It has to be evaluated which functions or
processes the organisation is willing and able to assign to an external
Cloud service, and which must remain behind the corporate firewall.
Build a portfolio of end‐user services and recommendations for how
they should be delivered. Evaluate external versus internal delivery.
Support all recommendations with a business case showing the
amount of cost reduction and the service level improvements.
Different business models may complicate or simplify the issues that
may arise in the context of Cloud enablement such as security,
privacy, and availability. There are good chances to avoid the locked‐
in syndrome experienced with outsourcers. Customised SLAs with
the Cloud service vendors are key.
3.
Communicate with the business units about Cloud services and the
roadmap and process, for incorporating them into the enterprise
architecture, regardless whether the services are internal or
external. Communication is vital because independent software
vendors (ISVs) are not meeting with IT to sell their products and
services, they are talking directly to the business units. Customers
need to let the business units know what they can expect.
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Wouter Belmans, Uwe Lambrette (2012): The Cloud Value Chain Exposed, Key Takeaways for
Network Service Providers; Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group; Cisco Systems Inc.
