Tradition is changing! The practice of cloud computing began

Douglas Kim always knows everything about the promotion of cloud computing solutions.

Kim, general manager of global cloud computing at Pegasystems Inc., a provider of customer relationship and business process management systems, thinks so: "Believe me, I have to change the traditional way."

Kim radical enough to make any CIO astonished, and, holding the same view of the people is actually more than one.

At the recent Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) on cloud computing, cloud computing vendors, though not as straightforward as Kim, generally tend to be in the cloud, with CIOs being excluded from the mainstream . Now there is a general understanding that the business end, especially the end-user is the core force driving cloud computing. The business side has real needs and then goes looking for an application and starts to do it yourself - unless something goes wrong, the IT department may not know anything about it.

However, if the CIO has taken the lead, no one can shake its original position. The other four CIO participants insisted that the deployment of cloud computing will not lead to the establishment of a new order between IT and business.

Cloud computing practice: the curtain has been opened

When the economic crisis broke out two years ago, Larry Bolick, chief information officer at Aquent LLC (Boston-based), was trying to squeeze costs while maintaining agility. Using Google's Gmail mail system, he migrated some office applications to the cloud, replaced the internal phone system with cloud-based voice services, and put the ERP system on Amazon's AWS. So far, Aquent has more than 6 office applications using the cloud computing program.

"Think of all the hassles of moving offices before, and now we're just moving equipment and connecting to the electricity grid." Bolick said.

Bill Scudder, CIO at Sonus Networks Inc. in Westford, Mass., Is also trying to transform the company through cloud computing. While itself a provider of advanced IP networking solutions, the company itself faces the problem of poor IT operations.

Like Bolick, Scudder is also under the pressure of a recession. Scudderck drew on the experience of previous cloud solutions in the more agile and lower cost requirements. He used Salesforce.com's cloud solution in response to complaints from field engineers about the Seibel CRM system when he was at a different company. Now, at Sonus Networks, Scudder knows for sure where to go.

Scudder believes that in order to keep internal systems up to date, change management and internal promotion are essential. About cloud computing solutions, Enterasys Networks has conducted various attempts and exploration. Through Salesforce.com's user group, Scudder met and met with Dan Petlon, Enterasys' CIO. Afterwards, it was proved that the meeting was very important - since then, Sonus has been sticking to the path of cloud computing in the process of IT transformation.

IT Innovation Based on Cloud Computing Solution

When Petlon joined Enterasys in Andover, Mass., The company already ran Salesforce.com sales and customer service. At that time, the service department had already used PaaS platform to improve the service level, while the sales team performed mediocrely.

In order for the sales side to take full advantage of the cloud computing platform, Petlon's team has developed an application based on Salesforce.com that allows sales to make online offers to their customers. Moreover, faxing and manual work are also automated through this application.

"The first is the customer submitting the order over the network, which is followed by SAP's order management system and delivery process," Petlon said.

"Obviously, the way to service and sell cloud practices at both ends is not the same, the former is built on existing tools and the latter system I put considerable control on Salesforce.com." Pelton explained .

Due to the success of the new sales and service platform, cloud computing solutions can be further promoted. Now, Petlon has implemented 25 cloud-based applications.

IT leaders are somewhat hesitant to adopt cloud solutions because of their data privacy concerns, as Tom McLain, chief information officer of Old Mutual (US) Holdings Inc. But Mclain also believes that if IT can run the business side Good communication, then cloud computing is not a problem. At Old Mutual, there is annual training on compliance and privacy policies so everyone, whether IT teams or business users, can tell which information is sensitive (not suitable for the cloud) and which ones can be built on Cloud In order to keep his team rules and regulations behind, Mclain has been in close contact with the leaders of the relevant departments.

"We work closely so that everyone has a clear picture of where the risk lies - if someone does not think well enough to decide to put the app or data in the cloud," Mclain said.