FEATURE: INTRANET VS. CLOUD
T
raditionally, organisations
grew their IT landscape by
identifying applications for
every of their business critical needs,
acquiring the application as well as
the required infrastructure to operate
them, bringing in consultants or
technical skills required to deploy
them. Once these are deployed, these
applications need to be maintained,
upgraded and supported, which calls
for a continued presence of required
skills in the organisation, by adding
further costs to the business on an
on-going basis.
These applications typically
come under two classifications –
Business Applications (ERP/CRM/
Vertical Applications) and Internal
collaboration applications (or Intranet
applications) that aim at internal
communications and collaboration.
Rays of hope
This is where the ‘cloud’ is becoming
a game changer today. Relieving
the organisations of having to make
significant CAPEX investments in
expensive hardware and software
license acquisitions, cloud solutions
offer customers agility and leading
edge and niche solutions that
addresses key functions of the
business. Cloud applications, (known
as ‘Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
solutions) today addresses every
aspect of business application needs
allowing new age organisations build
themselves a ‘cloud centric’ business
model. This can be seen in both the
business applications as well as the
internal or intranet applications today.
Over time, these investments and
the cost of sustaining them as well
as keeping them current, has grown
to be a drain on the organisational
budgets. And the stress typically
gets further accentuated when the
business climate is not conducive
enough.
Cloud centric IT landscapes allow
organisations an amazing level
of elasticity that could have been
both time and cost intensive in the
traditional on premise model. With
an ability to scale up and down the
configurations & processing power,
cloud infrastructure helps many
CIOs to get instant gratification at a
fraction of the costs, which would have
otherwise been redundant in a CAPEX
model.
Even otherwise, organisations often
times find themselves spending more
money on keeping their ‘lights-on’
instead of spending on growth and
innovation initiatives. In other words,
instead of investing in the core
competencies of the business or in
the continued pursuit of their ‘raison
d’etre’, funds are consumed to
maintain what they have. This is the
classic dilemma that is bothering the
minds of many CIOs today.
The same applies for business
applications on the cloud as well.
With an ever-increasing array of
applications for every need, the SaaS
world presents the CIOs with an
ability to truly adopt best of breed
applications. These applications also
bring in great level of user experience
and agility that could not have
been achieved with an on-premise
application – either packaged or
custom built.
‘WITH AN ABILITY TO SCALE UP AND DOWN THE
CONFIGURATIONS & PROCESSING POWER, CLOUD
INFRASTRUCTURE HELPS MANY CIOS TO GET INSTANT
GRATIFICATION AT A FRACTION OF THE COSTS, WHICH WOULD
HAVE OTHERWISE BEEN REDUNDANT IN A CAPEX MODEL.’
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INTELLIGENTCIO
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