Business changed by cloud

"Cloud" has brought about great changes in the IT field and even the whole business. As filmmaker Reinade Levinson said: "Pessimists only see the dark side of the cloud and are depressed; the philosopher shrugs on both sides of the cloud, and the optimist does not see the cloud-he is on the clouds." ”

In a few short years, cloud computing has leapt from its inception to a new stage. Not only in the United States, companies around the world, such as Nasdaq, 3M, COSCO and India's future group, have completed this new technology survey, and into the application phase. In the health sector alone, cloud services can save lives by saving time: it can help companies develop new drugs at an unprecedented rate, diagnose tumours and identify new outbreaks of infectious diseases, saving months of time. In other industries, cloud computing and related services are being used to streamline complex government data centers, build global logistics platforms, check bridge safety, develop new markets, design new product promotions, reduce power consumption and carbon emissions, and more.

about how the cloud changes management, we have some unexpected discoveries: companies are eager to use cloud computing as a technology platform to support important business processes and information exchange, and to use cloud computing to improve decision-making processes; Executives expect cloud computing to have a direct impact on the way they compete in the future and will have an important impact on innovation ; Companies that use virtualization and outsourcing and strong IT management are faster than other companies in cloud computing applications; security concerns have not stopped the use of cloud in most countries and regions, and executives expect governments to help establish cloud computing security, privacy and technology standards, and to take other measures when the technology is widely used?

In fact, we think that the top management, not just the CIO, should focus on cloud computing, not only because it is faster, more efficient, but also cost-effective, and it is possible to fundamentally change the business landscape. These developments are significant because the traditional separation of data and procedures between firms is expected to be broken and new business ecology and value networks will emerge.

Not just to reduce costs

While cloud technology is still a new area, the many potential advantages of cloud computing are becoming clearer. The low price of cloud services is tempting. For example, Eli Lilly, the American pharmaceutical manufacturer, chose to use Amazon Web services to analyze a drug in development for a fee of only 89 dollars. If analyzed by itself, the company will have to buy 25 servers for the researchers.

Private clouds are also less expensive to operate than traditional data centers. For example, one of the world's largest construction companies, the Baker Group, has lowered overall it costs by 25% to 30% by introducing private cloud architectures. The cloud provides extremely flexible resources. Unique technical design allows it to expand arbitrarily. The cloud can also quickly accumulate as needed, assigning multiple servers to a single task to grow rapidly. It can shrink or disappear when it is not needed. As a result, cloud computing is best suited to sporadic, cyclical, or ad hoc work, capable of rapidly accomplishing massive data-processing tasks and performing software development and testing projects.

At present, most companies focus on reducing costs through cloud computing to meet urgent computing needs in the short term. But forward-looking executives have begun to consider how to use the cloud to enhance the competitiveness of companies, streamline and more flexible operations, and achieve business growth. Cloud technology is powerful, and cloud services are maturing, in the field of computing has entered the implementation phase. Now is the time to move on and explore how cloud computing transforms the business and the industry, develops the management and technical skills needed for cloud computing, and holds new opportunities.

Cloud builds enterprise exoskeleton

The current enterprise IT model can be seen as an IT "skeleton" pattern: data centers and applications can support businesses from within the firewall. To a large extent, only large companies have the need and the ability to establish data centers and application systems. As a result, large companies have been the targets of hardware, software and services companies.

Cloud computing provides an "exoskeleton" It model: data centers and application systems can support companies from outside the firewall. The significant significance of this change is manifested in two aspects: small companies can have cutting-edge it technology without paying for the establishment of it centers, while it companies can now provide hardware, software and services, and other IT technologies, to scale, for tens of thousands of small companies in the "skeleton" model.

This sounds appealing, but how much does it mean to realize the overall development of the business and IT industry?

In many fragmented industries and government units, including construction, education, medical care, law and small city government departments, the whole industry is larger, but the enterprise is small. Due to the inability to bring economic benefits to large it entity enterprises, the development is relatively fragmented. Take the construction industry as an example. In the United States, construction accounts for about 4% of America's GDP. However, the industry is composed of architects, construction workers, material suppliers, construction equipment manufacturers, warehouse managers, housing quality supervisors and other personnel, both independent and need to coordinate with each other. Cloud computing and its "exoskeleton" model can help solidify processes and data and provide services to the ecosystem as a whole. In other words, although some small businesses are too small to build an ERP system, the entire industry needs it, and cloud computing meets the needs of the industry. Cloud computing enables enterprises to integrate internal and external resources to configure sound business processes more easily and efficiently, based on their business needs. As a result, it technology can fill a lot of gaps and create huge wealth.

Create a new outsourcing model

Cloud computing will make the "Business process enterprise" rise. Companies that provide simple, general business processes (such as sales tax calculations, levies, tax exemptions, and so on) will rise on a large scale, dwarfed today's software-service (SAAS) operators.

There are many identical business functions between companies. Complex operations such as supply chain management typically require specialized processes, but the simple business functions of sales tax calculation, collection and tax exemption have uniform standards and are relatively fixed. In the current "skeleton" it model, businesses are replicating these simple features.

To record sales tax as an example, although only a simple business function, but its significance is not negligible. If your company is operating in the world, the company's billing system will need to the company's business scope of sales and taxes to establish statistical reports, by the person regularly updated, and then timely sales tax and required documents to the relevant tax authorities. Today, all the big companies are doing the same. But with the use of cloud computing, the outsourcing of such business processes is relatively economical. Because of the simple operation, this kind of process does not need to be specially designed for the user, can apply directly to each company, make the company's IT system directly compatible with this business process program. For suppliers, this means that they do not have to adjust or customize the process to achieve scale development by providing the same program to thousands of users.

Such examples are not uncommon. VeriSign provides credit card authentication services for millions of E-commerce users, and PayPal offers a variety of payment options for small businesses and microfinance transactions. Cloud computing will massively develop such programs for industry and geography, which in turn will further simplify the enterprise system. In other words, the implications of cloud computing are much more than just pricing on demand or saving it costs, it also provides a new model for computing outsourcing, with the attendant dramatic changes in business and it. Quote movie producer Reinade Levinson: "Pessimists only see the dark side of the cloud, and the philosopher shrugs on both sides of the cloud, and the optimist does not see the cloud-he is on the clouds." ”

Enterprise process sharing configuration in the cloud

In the next 5 years, business processes between companies can grow at a high rate, which in turn will help to build a business ecosystem. In other words, major companies with complementary strengths will work closely together through the flow of business processes that permeate each other. Once the company's IT system passes through the firewall, it is very easy to exchange and exchange information with other company's IT systems, and execute business process across the company line.

Business processes between enterprises are not new. The tourism industry, for example, integrates business processes in the aerospace, car rental and hospitality sectors, providing an integrated travel experience for airlines, car rentals and hotel accommodations. However, the current data exchange system between these few business partners or a system managed by a Third-party data exchange center is connected by artificial or metal wires. Cloud computing will realize the sharing of business processes among enterprises at the industrial scale level, with complex business processes running through many enterprises and their IT systems, which can be configured and reconfigured during the process of operation.

You might ask: "Even if this is technically feasible, what is its business motivation?" ”

In fact, any experience you can imagine-whether it's a vacation, a hospital stay, or an ordinary daily routine-inevitably requires the use of all kinds of products and services. Today, companies provide a variety of unrelated products and services for individuals, and you need to manage and coordinate these products and services. The ability to flexibly combine the services and business processes provided by the company, such as the practice of the tourism industry, seems to be a powerful driver for the development of the world of the Business-to-consumer. Just as a person has access to a variety of products and services in his or her life, almost every process of a business needs to deal with different business partners. Now, each business partner sells a different product or provides a different service, and the enterprise manages and coordinates it internally (for example, purchasing or supply chain management). Cloud computing enables enterprises to set up enterprise business processes more easily and efficiently, in combination with their internal and external resources and complex processes. This seems to be a powerful impetus for the development of a business-to-business world.

We are still in the early stages of cloud computing, but it is rapidly becoming popular and may appear unexpectedly in unexpected ways. Global executives are looking for ingenious ways to make cloud computing truly the ground.

Faced with the advantages of cloud computing, corporate executives should also know how to "reconsider". For example, a complex old system that has to be rebuilt to run in the cloud can raise a huge amount of money, and the data must be transmitted in the Internet, and it will be at risk. On the other hand, cloud computing may surprise executives when they plan and envision new processes, applications, services, and projects that have been difficult or costly.

What is cloud computing

At its most basic level, cloud computing allows users to gain computing power on remote servers from anywhere on the internet. But the definition of cloud computing is not generalized, and can vary according to capacity and server holder changes. If, as a service provided by other companies, cloud computing enables organizations to eliminate the cost and complexity of purchasing, installing, running, maintaining, and upgrading data center networks and servers. Users can access the required services on demand at any time without a software license, all of which can be achieved by a telephone or a browser-equipped PC that requires a broadband internet connection. Business organizations pay for the type and quantity of service they use. The other end of the Internet connection is the computing cloud-a very large data center consisting of thousands of servers that host Web applications, some of which can even be stored in cargo ship containers. The cloud has a special design: its processing power can multiply as the number of servers increases, while software can run on any available server with idle processing power.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)