Can Clouds turn Lemons into Butterflies

I was fortunate to be invited to the Cloud 9 conference in London this week. One of the most interesting discussions on stage was the changes CIO's saw in their IT departments as cloud computing was adopted. This got me thinking, can clouds really change lemons into butterflies ? Let me explain.

It was suggested that today the majority of an IT departments resources, people and capital, are dedicated to 'keeping-the-lights-on' operations. Maintaining hardware, servers, disks, data centre networks, supporting desktop applications like e-mail, upgrading windows servers and supporting users with configuration issues.

Activities which enable the business to move forward, change and innovate, are given much less focus than ideal. There's always a conflict between business-as-usual and ''new stuff''. So rolling out CRM, ERP, or the latest business application becomes a slow and painful process, with many learning points as they go. And with each and every additional application delivered the complexity and cost of supporting it, grows. Its a situation many say is unsustainable and cannot scale.

One way to represent that is using a Venn type diagram - which, oh, looks like a lemon.

Cloud computing and SaaS of course moves the operation and support of an application outside the Enterprise. Servers, databases, storage, can all be moved out into the cloud where the operators scale can bring efficiencies in application development and operational platforms.

This gives the Enterprise IT department more resources to focus on deploying the new apps the business has been crying out for and the data to enable them to manage it better: - timely, accurate, relevant data...

The process of deploying new applications can now get the attention it deserves and users the support they need to adapt to new processes. Suddenly IT is an agile and responsive team in the vanguard of change solving business problems, not closeted engineers. A team who can now also drive innovation maybe in the form of new products and services the company can sell, or customer service initiatives.

This transformation means our diagram takes on a new form.

So maybe clouds can really change lemons into butterflies.....