The world of IT is undergoing a massive shift from the PC-based client/server-centric computing model of the 2nd Platform to one dominated by cloud, mobile, analytics, and social technologies. IDC refers to this as the 3rd Platform of computing. For 3rd Platform-based businesses, speed and agility are key to being future ready, today. They have the IT infrastructure and organizational practices in place to both initiate change and adapt to outside disruptions. Their business leaders don’t have wait weeks or months to deploy or scale new applications or services.
A well-defined and robust Cloud strategy enables enterprises to quickly scale their compute and storage capacity up or down for any particular app to respond to changing use cases and patterns of demand. The benefits of deploying a cloud environment in an enterprises datacenters and/or in a service provider’s facilities go beyond simply lowering infrastructure costs.
Cloud Benefits for the Future Ready Enterprise
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Source: Future Ready Enterprise Study, IDC, June 2015
The first step in this cloud journey is designing and deploying a cloud solution that your business partners want to use. IT organizations around the world recognize the importance of designing the right cloud environment for their business. They are looking to their IT hardware, software, and service suppliers to select the right system designs and define service catalogs that address the needs of developers and business analysts.
IT organizations that want be future-ready enterprises must recognize that the most important step is to “not be a victim of your own success” as developers outstrip the ability of IT to fund and procure more capacity. They look for partners who help them operate a sustainable cloud that can meet all their future needs and reduce the costs of taking risks. An area where this especially critical is IT budgeting and financing.
Enterprises need a technology partner that can help them achieve a balance between the accelerating pace of technological change and the increasing unpredictability of asset acquisition associated with cloud. Especially critical, they need a partner that provides "transition funding options" that make it easier to move from their current IT infrastructure to both internal cloud architectures and externally managed services where appropriate.
For future ready enterprises, finding the right technology partner to create a sustainable cloud not only allows them to get more effective use out of their own assets; it also provides a platform for greater levels of organizational flexibility, availability, and control at the business level. To learn more, visit Future Ready Cloud.
Rick Villars routinely participates in social media where he engages regularly regarding datacenter decisions, emerging technologies, the 3rd platform and business transformation.