How Cloud Starts Cloud initiatives often start as “ shadow IT ,” with business units requiring better agility than central IT can provide given their physical hardware inventory . As usage grows , Compliance and IT become concerned over governance and security . They use the cost savings (“ TCO ”) over internal or outsourced infrastructure and associated costs to build a business case to define a larger , broader cloud strategy . Once companies migrate , they reaffirm that although hard savings justified the hybrid approach to compute , the real benefits are found in the soft savings , coming full-circle to why businesses adopted cloud in the first place .
Agility : The Cloud ’ s Most Undervalued Benefit
Cloud agility is the ability to rapidly change an IT infrastructure in order to adapt to the evolving needs of the business . This is becoming increasingly important in today ’ s disruptive markets and the reality is that many enterprises are plagued with IT infrastructures that are so poorly planned and fragile that they are limiting business growth . Cloud agility provides a huge strategic advantage and significantly increases a business ’ chance of long-term survival .
To help quantify the value of agility for your organization , start by breaking down its 3 components :
1 ) Your degree of change over time .
The degree of change over time is the number of times that the business reinvents itself to adapt to market demands . While a pulp and paper production company may only have a degree of change of 5 % over a 5 year period , a technology company may have an 80 % change , and a company in a downturn market may have a 40 % change over this same period .
2 ) Your ability to adapt to change .
The ability to adapt to change is a number that states the company ’ s ability to react to required change . For instance , a large manufacturer may need to rapidly pivot in order to take advantage of a new market opportunity , but may not have an IT culture that can change at the rate required . Thus , they don ’ t have the ability to adapt to change , so , no matter what you do to promote the use of disruptive technology , like cloud computing , they won ’ t be able to take advantage of it .
3 ) Your relative value of change .
The relative value of change is the amount of money made as a direct result of changing the business . For instance , a retail organization ’ s ability to rapidly establish a frequent buyer program to react to changing market expectations , and the resulting increases in revenue from making that change .
48 | THE DOPPLER | SPRING 2016