Cloud computing has been in use in SA long enough for trends in success factors to emerge. And it has become apparent that a successful cloud deployment is one where the business case, not just the technology, is considered.
This is according to BMC Software, which will host its BMC Day executive forum in Bryanston next month.
Dominic Wellington, EMEA cloud lead for BMC Software, says: “One of the biggest misconceptions is that cloud is purely about cost savings. While a certain amount of cost savings can normally be found in a move to the cloud, concentrating on this aspect to the exclusion of others tends to lead to an overly narrow focus. Most of the larger benefits of cloud projects tend to be in the area of increased agility; not so much "do the same amount of work with fewer resources", but more "do much more work, to a much higher standard, with the same amount of resources or slightly less."
Wellington says this notion of agility is closely related to the business demand. Much of the service delivery time, as perceived by end-users, is lost to communication lag between different teams within the IT department, rather than to actual technical work.
The level of overhead that business users incur when dealing with IT can also have the effect of dissuading them from requesting services in the first place. In turn, the IT department struggles to communicate what difference it provides compared to new public cloud offerings, and what the added value is.
“In order to address these problems, a true business-oriented self-service capability is the first step. This enables non-technical users to request business services in terms and with units of measurement, which are aligned to their requirements. Full automation of the delivery ensures that the requested services are delivered rapidly and that the result is fully aligned to the original request.”
“IT's role therefore evolves from delivery and order-fulfilment to a more strategic involvement in defining new service offerings and working on the back-end infrastructure that delivers them,” she says.
The BMC Day, on 22 May at The Forum, in Bryanston, will bring BMC experts together to outline ways in which enterprises can simplify and automate IT, and elaborate on building and operating a cloud that works for business. For more information and to reserve a free space at this event, click here.
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