“Cloud isn’t the biggest thing to ever happen, it’s not an answer to everything, but it answers quite many things,” Todd Thibodeaus, Comptia. He said this while speaking at a session on Penetrating the Cloud: Opportunities and challenges of Businesses. At an earlier session on How Enterprise can achieve Transformational benefits of the Cloud, Jitendra Kapoor- PM Hosting and Cloud Services, Etisalat and Mehdi Quraishi – Product Management & Marketing, Etisalat both discussed the values of cloud computing and what factors businesses should consider before venturing into cloud.
They listed Speed of Deployment, Business Continuity and Flexibility to react to changing Market conditions as the top most three factors to consider when venturing into cloud for business. Mehdi noted that most businesses tend to assume that the most important factor is total cost of ownership.
This is the top most internal selling point for cloud, both private and public cloud. Speed of deployment comes second among existing Key Selling Points which stands as a weaker proposition for Private cloud compared to Public Cloud. But Mehdi says aligning of the business is indeed the first among firsts. Cloud is more than just another I.T. cost reduction Lever.
Cloud computing has been with us for a very long time and it has varying impact on different industries. The pace of transformation migration will vary with industries like electronics, high technology, Banking, communications and Capital markets being able to reap benefits faster than other industries like Transport.
Cloud Computing is not a “You must do” plan, but is essential for future growth, Mehdi Quraishi of Etisalat commented that your business should not be left as a case study of those that failed to adopt cloud and as a result missed out on the benefits of cloud. There are three well known benefits of cloud computing adoption; and these are flexibility, rapid provisioning and pay as you go which allows your business to run with no capital expenditure tied up to dead investments.
