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3.7
Cloud Organisation
3.7.1
Common goals of Cloud projects
In current times organistions are finding themselves faced with increasingly
dynamic IT pressures and challenges regardless of whether their core ICT
infrastructure and applications are self‐operated or managed by an external
service provider ‐ two central topics are driving the development of IT.
These are cost pressures and market pressures, that continue to drive
increases in productivity that effect organisations IT resources.
Changing markets: Companies today are faced with increasingly
dynamic markets. New products and services are brought onto the
market in ever shorter cycles. Existing products as well as expertise
become obsolete in ever shortening periods of time. Any advantage
gained over the competition is eroded faster and faster. This forces
existing businesses to create new ideas in ever shortening periods of
time. Today, Cloud computing makes it possible to realise new
business models and integrate new target groups in processes at
unprecedented speeds.
Increasing productivity: The interdependencies between
organisations ICT and business processes are getting tighter, and in
some areas the distinction between business processes and ICT are
becoming increasingly blurred. Therefore ICT is becoming a critical
factor for businesses, in that, IT has significant influence on the
competitiveness and creation of value. Fluctuations in quality, such
as the availability of ICT services have a direct and noticeable effect.
If inventory systems or e‐mail systems are not available, this causes
significant delays in many business processes and may even make it
impossible to work altogether.
Increasing cost pressures: Globalisation means not only that a
company has access to a larger market, but also that more
competitors worldwide have access to the market. This results in
falling prices while costs for energy, human resources and raw
material increase. In addition, financial crises aggravate the situation,
market growth slows down or stagnates. Companies need to be able
to respond by adapting or improving their cost structures. As a rule,
adaptation means lowering costs. Doing this by transforming fixed
costs into variable costs can make a strong contribution to improving
the overall longterm financial situation. Such a transformation
improves a company’s liquidity. Financial resources which are
