Why Cloud Computing Is Essential to Transform

From a business perspective, differentiating business processes and quality customer service are central to overall success. The right blend of cloud, managed services, and traditional privately run datacenters will deliver business and mission value by accelerating speed to market, boosting revenue growth, increasing employee productivity, and expanding the ability to acquire and engage customers. Embracing digital transformation is an economic and business process improvement revolution. It is not based on technology, but rather leverages it to deliver economic and process differentiation.

Cloud computing was quickly adopted by many businesses and organizations because of its ability to deliver value in IT infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or IaaS), application development environments (Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS) and business mobility (Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS). It enables a global scale and standardizes information technology (IT) infrastructure services at an affordable price by using new, converged networks that deliver variable IT capacity pools. The next sections cover each of these models, which can significantly change corporate procurement and acquisition processes, as well as reduce software application support costs, while simultaneously improving business back-end system capabilities. 

Infrastructure traditionally has been the focal point for ensuring which capabilities and organization requirements must be met versus those that were restricted. The emergence of cloud changes this traditional view of infrastructure’s role with commoditization and enabling service consumption through an on-demand, pay-as-you-go model. IaaS service model depends on large scale and the significantly higher degree of automation needed to support significant internal user workloads or those across multiple cloud deployments.

In PaaS, the cloud service consumer does not manage the underlying cloud infrastructure. That is managed and controlled by the CSP. They do, however, have control over the applications and configuration settings for the hosting environment. The PaaS model can support multiple languages and frameworks. This helps the developers code in whichever language they prefer or whatever the design requirements specify. Recently, significant strides and efforts have been taken to ensure that open-source stacks are both supported and utilized, thus reducing lock-in.

Through SaaS, customers can access applications, data, and cloud computing systems from any computer linked to the Internet. A pay-per-use licensing model replaces capital expenditures for software licenses or support. The customer will normally only have access to designated configuration settings. SaaS organizations have potentially limitless possibilities for running programs and applications that may not have been previously practical or feasible. Customers enjoy an overall reduction in the total cost of software ownership; this eliminates the need to purchase application software licenses or support.

The Internet is a rapidly growing market for cloud computing services. It requires the build-out or adoption of complementary wide-area information technology infrastructure and the widespread use of information exchange interface standards that we now refer to as the Internet. IETF sets Internet standards, but standards may also be set in de facto manner if a vendor-specific technical implementation is adopted by large segment of the marketplace. In the end, these were the processes that created the economic revolution that cloud computing represents today.

Learn more about digital transformation innovation: pick up a copy of my new book, Click to Transform - and, when you buy now, get an invitation to join me for an exclusive Q&A on November 20! 

Article generated by AI in cooperation with Leaders Press based on Kevin Jackson’s Click to Transform.