Maybe you can already recite the sales pitch for cloud computing in your sleep—how it’s faster, more flexible, and economical than amassing your own servers on site. But, as Joe Weinman argues in “Rethinking the Benefits of Cloud,” that’s just scratching the surface. In this exclusive white paper, Weinman, author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, explores some of the overlooked—and more nuanced—business benefits of moving workloads to the cloud, such as faster innovation, global expansion, and customer satisfaction.
Cloud computing is receiving an increasing level of attention, as evidenced by the rapidly growing number of qualitative surveys and analysis that has been published over the past few years.
Cloud computing is a paradigm shift organizations use the computing resources to conduct their business. Cloud computing is a new general purpose Internet-based technology through which information is stored in servers and provided as a service and on-demand to clients. The computing resources are accessed by mainstream businesses as a pooled or leased resource over networks. Hence traditional IT investment decisions models are not directly suitable to perform the cost-benefit and investment decisions for cloud computing resources.
This paper presents research on the return-on-investment and pricing models and seeks to build a model for quantitative assessment of cloud computing.
The results of this analysis model are intended to facilitate a more informed decision making for cloud computing resources.
Maybe you can already recite the sales pitch for cloud computing in your sleep—how it’s faster, more flexible, and economical than amassing your own servers on site. But, as Joe Weinman argues in “Rethinking the Business Benefits of Cloud,” that’s just scratching the surface.
In these slides, Joe Weinman, author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, explores some of the overlooked—and more nuanced—business benefits of moving workloads to the cloud, such as faster innovation, global expansion, and customer satisfaction.
How the Cloud is Revolutionizing the Retail IndustryRaymark
In this exclusive guide, you will learn about:
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A cloud revolution is brewing, and it promises to radically transform the way we compete, collaborate, and consume business services. Indeed, in an economy as volatile and hypercompetitive as today’s, the cloud’s potent mix of simplicity, security, faster innovation, and lower operating costs is proving increasingly attractive. For many businesses—small, medium, and large—the time to adopt this game-changing approach is now.
Cloud computing is receiving an increasing level of attention, as evidenced by the rapidly growing number of qualitative surveys and analysis that has been published over the past few years.
Cloud computing is a paradigm shift organizations use the computing resources to conduct their business. Cloud computing is a new general purpose Internet-based technology through which information is stored in servers and provided as a service and on-demand to clients. The computing resources are accessed by mainstream businesses as a pooled or leased resource over networks. Hence traditional IT investment decisions models are not directly suitable to perform the cost-benefit and investment decisions for cloud computing resources.
This paper presents research on the return-on-investment and pricing models and seeks to build a model for quantitative assessment of cloud computing.
The results of this analysis model are intended to facilitate a more informed decision making for cloud computing resources.
Maybe you can already recite the sales pitch for cloud computing in your sleep—how it’s faster, more flexible, and economical than amassing your own servers on site. But, as Joe Weinman argues in “Rethinking the Business Benefits of Cloud,” that’s just scratching the surface.
In these slides, Joe Weinman, author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, explores some of the overlooked—and more nuanced—business benefits of moving workloads to the cloud, such as faster innovation, global expansion, and customer satisfaction.
How the Cloud is Revolutionizing the Retail IndustryRaymark
In this exclusive guide, you will learn about:
The top 5 advantages of cloud for retailers
The economics of cloud computing
Frequently asked questions about the cloud
A cloud revolution is brewing, and it promises to radically transform the way we compete, collaborate, and consume business services. Indeed, in an economy as volatile and hypercompetitive as today’s, the cloud’s potent mix of simplicity, security, faster innovation, and lower operating costs is proving increasingly attractive. For many businesses—small, medium, and large—the time to adopt this game-changing approach is now.
To prosper in this new environment insurance companies can look to the cloud, in conjunction with other technologies, to help drive reinvention of their business model to offer new services and create direct, multi-channel relationships with customers
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Although cloud is widely recognized as a technology
game changer, its potential for driving business innovation remains virtually untapped.
Indeed, cloud has the power to fundamentally shift competitive landscapes by providing a
new platform for creating and delivering business value. To take advantage of cloud’s
potential to transform internal operations, customer relationships and industry value
chains, organizations need to determine how best to employ cloud-enabled business
models that promote sustainable competitive advantage.
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Cloud Computing is an information technology gold rush. Everything from social media and smart phones to streaming video and additive games come from the cloud. This revolution has also driven many to wonder how they can retool themselves to take advantage of this massive shift. Many in IT see the technology as an opportunity to accelerate their careers but in their attempt to navigate their cloud computing future, the question of what type of training, vendor-neutral or vendor-specific, is right for them
The Federal government today is in the midst of a revolution. The revolution is challenging the norms of government by introducing new ways of serving the people. New models for creating services and delivering information; new policies and procedures that are redefining federal acquisition and what it means to be a federal system integrator. This revolution also lacks the physical and tangible artifacts of the past. Its ephemeral nature, global expanse and economic impact all combine in a tidal wave of change. This revolution is called cloud computing.
The future of cloud computing is rapidly entering the phygital world. The cloud has turned out to be the foundation of a successful digital enterprise. However, only a few organizations have been able to optimize this powerful tool, and others misunderstood and underutilized this. Here is a complete guide on Cloud Computing. https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/what-is-cloud-computing/
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To prosper in this new environment insurance companies can look to the cloud, in conjunction with other technologies, to help drive reinvention of their business model to offer new services and create direct, multi-channel relationships with customers
As banks adapt to market changes and new technology landscapes, cloud computing is playing a major role, providing alternative ways to access to core banking technology.
Although cloud is widely recognized as a technology
game changer, its potential for driving business innovation remains virtually untapped.
Indeed, cloud has the power to fundamentally shift competitive landscapes by providing a
new platform for creating and delivering business value. To take advantage of cloud’s
potential to transform internal operations, customer relationships and industry value
chains, organizations need to determine how best to employ cloud-enabled business
models that promote sustainable competitive advantage.
Cognizanti Journal: XaaS, Code Halos, SMAC and the Future of WorkCognizant
This issue of Cognizanti Journal focuses on successfully transitioning to the Future of Work. Article topics include "everything as a service," the emerging world of Code Halos, anytime/anyplace models of work and how to harness social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, or the SMAC Stack.
Cloud Computing is an information technology gold rush. Everything from social media and smart phones to streaming video and additive games come from the cloud. This revolution has also driven many to wonder how they can retool themselves to take advantage of this massive shift. Many in IT see the technology as an opportunity to accelerate their careers but in their attempt to navigate their cloud computing future, the question of what type of training, vendor-neutral or vendor-specific, is right for them
The Federal government today is in the midst of a revolution. The revolution is challenging the norms of government by introducing new ways of serving the people. New models for creating services and delivering information; new policies and procedures that are redefining federal acquisition and what it means to be a federal system integrator. This revolution also lacks the physical and tangible artifacts of the past. Its ephemeral nature, global expanse and economic impact all combine in a tidal wave of change. This revolution is called cloud computing.
The future of cloud computing is rapidly entering the phygital world. The cloud has turned out to be the foundation of a successful digital enterprise. However, only a few organizations have been able to optimize this powerful tool, and others misunderstood and underutilized this. Here is a complete guide on Cloud Computing. https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/what-is-cloud-computing/
What is Cloud Computing? A Complete GuideAlaina Carter
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT-enabled capabilities over the Internet to offer business agility and growth. It works on the pay-as-you-go pricing model, and it has turned out to be the foundation of a successful digital enterprise. Read this complete cloud computing guide to know more.
AWS re:Invent 2016: Simplify Cloud Migration with AWS Server Migration Servic...Amazon Web Services
Data center migrations are often long and complex projects that involve thousands of servers. Without automated tools, these migrations can consume hundreds of hours. The recently launched AWS Server Migration Service speeds and simplifies the migration of on-premises servers to the AWS Cloud. SMS automates incremental replication of live server volumes, speeding up the migration process and significantly reducing the manual tasks required for server migration. This session for IT managers introduces key features and benefits of SMS, and includes a demo of the SMS end-to-end workflow.
A quick look at how the term Cloud originated, What is Cloud Computing? Cloud Infrastaructure, Cloud: Platforms, Benefits, Challenges and Opptrunities of Cloud
There are many questions on what are the best steps and ways to migrate to the cloud better. Enterprises need to have specific steps to follow when migrating to the cloud.
In this solution, we identify those specific steps and processes and how it can be adapted best.
To know more, please get in touch with us at info@blazeclan.com
Cloud computing consists of hardware and software resources made available on the internet as managed third-party services.These services provide access to advanced software applications and high-end networks of server computers.
Know more about Grazitti Salesforce services, visit http://goo.gl/5jJYJ
Major Disruption! (Report)
Cloud computing is disrupting more than our technological norms. It is also creating new business models and new ways of working together.
KEY MESSAGES
• Cloud computing is disrupting more than our technological norms. It is completely transforming the way businesses interact, people collaborate, and business models are designed.
• Both within and outside the IT sector, companies are capitalising on the changing landscape by using and offering cloud services. This allows them to meet customer expectations, operate in a more agile fashion,
and develop new revenue streams.
• As a result of these changes, companies are becoming both consumers and providers, sometimes simultaneously.
• New business models and changing customer expectations will lead to increased competition and declining revenue and profit opportunities
unless companies proactively change—and continue to change—their understanding of the market and their role in it.
• Survival—not to mention profitability and long-term viability—depends on a company's ability to transform its business models and go-to-market structures.
• Unfortunately, the majority of companies continue to pursue their traditional approaches, failing to satisfy customers and therefore missing out on revenue opportunities.
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The purpose of this first edition of the Market Trends Report is to shed light on the way digital technologies reshape trade finance, a sector which often does not get as much publicity as B2C financial services.
Given that disruption often comes from adjacent sectors or from the application of an existing technology to a new field, we found it essential to begin with a broad analysis of the latest trends before zooming in progressively on financial services and on trade finance specifically.
The report is structured around four chapters, starting from the general core techno trends, and converging towards the changes impacting the trade finance ecosystem:
1- Core techno trends, business model and social changes
2- Disrupted industries, changes in the way we live and work
3- FinTech disrupt (and partner with) banking and insurance
4- Conclusion: Trade Finance is also ripe for disruptive innovations
We really hope that you will like this Market Trends Report and that you will find it useful. When you read it, please keep in mind that it is still being refined. We welcome your feedbacks, insights and suggestions.
Insurance Cloud: From Tactical to Strategic Investment for European InsurersAccenture Insurance
Insurance companies have been relatively cautious about cloud adoption. However, the conversation among insurers has changed in the last few years, moving to “when and how” rather than “why.” Several factors are driving today’s insurance companies to move their applications and data into the cloud as they reassess their business opportunities. Learn more:
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Although businesses today are leveraging the power of Cloud to transform the way they function, they are yet to realize its potential when it comes to driving innovation in the organisation. When utilised effectively, Cloud capabilities offer numerous advantages to drive business innovation. Read through or download the study to find out more.
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2. Contents
Rethinkin g the business benefits of the cloud 1
Revenue growth 2
New business models 3
4
Global market expansion
Business agilit y and accelerated innovation 5
Enhanced user experience 7
Cost reduction 9
Risk mitigation 11
Summary 12
Author bio 13
CONTENTS
3. RETHINKING THE BUSINESS
BENEFITS OF THE CLOUD
Rethinking the business
benefits of the cloud
Cloud computing is interesting as both a technology and
operations model, but what impact does it have on the
business? The traditional answers have been cost reduction and
business agility, but the cloud offers a wide range of additional
benefits, including revenue growth—through new business
models, global market expansion, accelerated innovation, and
enhanced customer experience and satisfaction—as well as risk
mitigation. Moreover, while the cloud can reduce the cost of IT,
the way in which it does so is more nuanced than the simplistic
argument that “the cloud is cheaper due to economies of scale”
would suggest.
1
4. Revenue growth
REVENUE GROWTH
Research from the University of Maryland has shown that
investments in IT, on average, result in an almost two-to-one
return. This return is greater than that from several other
investments that businesses can make, such as in R&D or
in marketing.
We find that IT investments have a positive impact on
revenues and profitability. In addition, IT-enabled
revenue growth has a greater impact on profitability
than IT-enabled reduction in operating expenses.
Mithas et al., MIS Quarterly Vol. 36 No. 1 / March 2012, p217
Perhaps surprisingly, this same research shows that the return
on investment in IT comes mostly from revenue growth, not
cost cutting. Cloud computing can help grow revenues in
several major ways.
2
5. NEW BUSINESS MODELS
New business models
Emerging, often disruptive, business models such as purely
digital services are inherently cloud-centric, as are connected
digital products. Examples of the former are search and social
networking. Examples of the latter abound across industry
verticals: tablets and smartphones connect to cloud-based app
stores and digital services such as messaging, customer
relationship management, and social games; vehicles connect to
cloud-based navigation, entertainment, concierge, and
emergency services; wearables connect to activity tracking
services; medical devices connect to health management and
urgent care services. These new business models often exploit
new pricing models, such as “freemium,” advertiser-supported, or
two-sided monetization.
Activities
Resources
Business model graphic per Business Model Generation, Osterwalder, 2013.
Customer
Relationships
Channels
Partners
Value Propositions
Customer Segments
Cost structure Revenue streams
3
6. GLOBAL MARKET EXPANSION
Global market expansion
The world is becoming more interconnected. According to the
McKinsey Global Institute, global flows, i.e., international trade,
now account for almost a third of the global economy, and
“knowledge-intensive” flows, such as business communications
and smart products, make up over half of global flows and are
growing faster than capital-intensive or labor-intensive flows. It
used to be that a ticket on an ocean liner or international fax
services were all that was required to expand into global
markets, but today’s interconnected, digital economy relies on
the cloud. As examples, consider global collaboration to
develop those smart products or commerce networks and
websites for selling globally, which require various cloud
services, such as video and voice over IP and content delivery.
Goods
$17.5 trillion
11%
Services
$4.4 trillion
10%
Data and communication
21.2 million megabits per second
52%
Financial
$4 trillion
6% People
194m people
2%
1 Measured by cross-border migrants; values from 2000 and 2010.
2 Measured by cross-border Internet stock traffic; values from 2005 and 2013.
SOURCE: Comtrade; IHS Economics & Country Risk; World Bank; Bank for International Settlements; IMF Balance of
Payments; Telegeography; Web of Science, Thomson Innovation; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
4
7. BUSINESS AGILITY AND
ACCELERATED INNOVATION
Business agility and
accelerated innovation
Time is a critical dimension of global competition: market share
and profits often accrue to the first mover with a new product
category, new features, new manufacturing processes, or new
distribution channels, or the company best able to predict or
respond to shifts in customer demand, macroeconomic
conditions, or competitor moves.
Time to market—the interval between idea conception and
product launch—is important because being first to market
confers multiple advantages, such as higher margins before
competitors enter and engage in price wars that erode industry
profitability. Platform as a service is an essential ingredient in
reducing time to market for today’s digitalized products and
services, ranging from wearables such as sneakers with pressure
sensors that link to activity tracking services to e-commerce
websites. And component reuse means that quality can be
enhanced even as time is compressed.
5
8. BUSINESS AGILITY AND
ACCELERATED INNOVATION
Time to volume—the interval between product launch and
production at scale—is also critical because it doesn’t help to
be first to market if most prospects can’t acquire—and pay
for—your product or service. The inherent elasticity of
Infrastructure as a Service is key to supporting rapid,
unpredictable growth in demand for pure digital services, the
back end for connected products, and even basic ordering and
billing systems for traditional products.
Sales volume
Time Development
Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline
6
9. ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE
Enhanced user experience
Customers expect their digital experiences to offer rich and
responsive interactions, which in turn depend on processing,
storage, and network capabilities and architecture. Preferably,
computing resources should be located close to their users, and
while companies could invest in a global digital infrastructure
themselves, it is financially advantageous to leverage the
dispersed resources of a global cloud provider.
The business value of better user experiences is clear: studies
have shown that greater interactivity correlates to higher
revenue, because customers find the experience more engaging
and because they are less likely to give up in frustration and
switch to a competitor.
Users
Data centers
7
11. COST REDUCTION
Cost reduction
Businesses can reduce their costs by leveraging cloud
computing in two ways. One way is when cloud providers can
offer services more cheaply than a firm can “do it itself.” There
is a widely held view that cloud providers “must” be cheaper
due to their huge economies of scale, but reality is more
nuanced than that.
First, the extent to which a cloud provider can offer a unit of
compute or storage more cheaply than you can obviously
depends on the relative cost structure of your IT organization.
How efficiently run is your organization? How much purchasing
power do you have? Are you operating at scale? Are you using
the latest open server designs? Is your data center built where
land and electricity are relatively inexpensive? Did you get tax
breaks for construction?
For many companies, the cloud will offer an unbeatable price.
However, for well-run enterprise IT shops, their internal cost
may well be lower than a provider’s price, especially once
additional elements such as providers’ sales, general, and
administrative expenses are factored in. Moreover, today’s
complex applications can perform differently on different
physical and virtual infrastructure architectures, so merely
comparing unit costs is often insufficient.
However, unit cost comparisons don’t tell the whole story,
because it is the total cost that matters as well as strategic
factors, such as a company’s desire to focus on its core
business.
9
12. COST REDUCTION
Total cost
100%
private
cloud
100%
public
cloud
Pro forma total cost
for spiky demands
Hybrids
In determining total cost, application demand variability is the
key factor, and the pay-per-use billing model of the cloud is the
key driver of cost savings versus an IT shop’s need to build to
peak. By analogy, a rental car is likely to cost more per day
than the same car would cost per day to lease or finance.
However, rental cars can still save one money: the salient factor
is not that a rental car costs more per day than an owned car
does, but that renting a car for two days is less expensive than
buying a car and then discarding it.
The same way that most businesses rent cars and rent hotel
rooms frequently rather than buying cars or houses when their
employees need them, businesses can also benefit by “renting”
computing resources via the cloud. And, at a high level, the
same way that businesses use a combination of debt and
equity, car fleets and rental cars, owned, leased, and rented
assets, a hybrid architecture typically will achieve the best mix
of cost and performance.
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13. RISK MITIGATION
Risk mitigation
Reduced risk is another important benefit of the cloud.
Variability and uncertainty seem to be inexorably increasing,
whether from natural disasters such as hurricanes and
earthquakes or human causes such as terrorist attacks and
geopolitics.
In addition, the interconnectedness of the global economy
amplifies shocks which otherwise might remain remote such as
financial crises, but also can enable exponential growth in the
uptake of new services, such as mobile games or streaming
entertainment.
While demand forecasting has never been an exact science, it is
even more challenging today, with increased penalties for
wrong guesses. Without the cloud, unexpected customer
demand can lead to poor user experiences due to insufficient
capacity, yet excess capacity causes economic loss due to the
opportunity cost of the deployed capital.
Due to the inherent elasticity of the cloud, however,
sufficient pay-per-use resources are always available.
In this way, cost is continuously aligned with revenue,
minimizing risk.
On-demand resources also play a key role in support of
business continuity and disaster recovery. Data can be
continuously backed up in the cloud, and applications can be
migrated from impacted data centers to the cloud.
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14. Summary
Cloud computing offers a new business model for computing
that exploits innovative technologies. But more importantly, it
can positively impact the business, through greater revenue,
global market reach, and customer satisfaction, at lower cost
and risk.
SUMMARY
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15. AUTHOR BIO
Author
Joe Weinman is the author of Cloudonomics: The Business
Value of Cloud Computing, and the forthcoming book Digital
Disciplines, which explores four business strategies to exploit
emerging digital technologies such as cloud computing. He
has held a variety of executive management positions at
organizations such as Bell Labs, AT&T, and HP. He has been
awarded 20 patents in various information and
communication technologies.
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