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business processes for purchasing, facilitating and maintenance of Cloud
applications licensing.
2.5
Cloud Organisational aspects
Cloud computing has matured over the past few years and has now become
a genuine and serious alternative to existing options. The Cloud has not only
changed the way businesses procure IT services are but also how they are
used. Dynamic and flexible IT services, of almost every type, are available at
any time in almost unlimited quantities.
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The flexibility gained through the Cloud makes it faster and easier for
companies to enter new business fields, and has changed the prevailing
market conditions. Customers can respond faster to the supply situation,
market shares shift, some supply and demand relationships have completely
disappeared and markets become smaller or disappear, a phenomenon that
has fundamentally changed the retail sector in the last few years.
Companies today need to respond to these influences and changes in order
to operate successfully in the marketplace. This not only puts pressure on
the company generally, but also on the management of IT. The
opportunities that Cloud computing offers, already established in our
everyday private lives, see companies face new challenges, thus
necessitating changes, not only at technical level.
The special thing about this is that these adjustments and changes need to
be implemented in the productive IT environment. This is, as it were, not
just replacing the tyres on the "IT car" while it is travelling at full speed, but
also chaning the oil change or perhaps even the entire engine; all of this
without stopping the car. Furthermore, this puts pressure for change on the
type of contract and agreement, and the payment mechanisms to pay your
car maintenance and servicing companies. At the same time the
environment is also changing; the team that monitors the drive and handles
the pit stops as needed, as well as the route and all the stakeholders.
This means that when businesses decide to use Cloud computing, they need
to do more than just consider their IT and business processes. At the same
time, changes in the organisation and environment, i.e., changes in business
and markets, need to be taken into account. This requires a holistic
approach. Stand‐alone solutions, e.g. IT services for individual departments
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An expanded version of this chapter can be found under
