This is a Viewpoint report by CAJFOR on the adoption of cloud services, intended to provide a business orient view on utilising cloud services as a catalyst in your business. Feel free to contact us with your comments and suggestion at ContactUs@cajfor.com
Intrinsic, Real and Digital
Businesses require an Intrinsic, Real or Digital estate to host their business logic that performs business functions that generate revenue. Today, most businesses complement or even totally replace their real estate with a digital estate. We call this digital or digital transformation.
The extent of digital transformation depends on the business logic, the digital appetite of its management team and the expectation of its first level customer base. A University for instance may well have a digital campus equal or greater than its physical campus, and an on-line business such as a retail store may choose to totally replace their physical estate with a digital presence.
Companies that provide a shared digital estate (made up of a shared pool of on-demand computing resources) are termed as Public Cloud Service Providers and there are many such low-cost providers. They differentiate themselves by providing an ever-changing landscape of tools and services to host, manage, integrate and orchestrate company data with its applications.
However not all business operational logic can be digitised or indeed converted into applications (codified business logic) and not all customers want a digital experience (DX/UX) over a physical one. For instance, A cabinet maker may choose to provide on-line expert advice for the assembly of a flat pack, creating a digital arm of its business. A hairdresser on the other hand may not be able to separate the physical from the logical functions of its business and hence does not enjoy this luxury of being digitised. This ability or inability to digitise operational business logic and the experience preference of the first level customer base, also applies to large businesses.
In search of a rewarding user experience
To bring digital models to life, you need Realtime access to data. The further away an application is to the data it needs to access, the more expensive it will be to manage. While the closer an application is to the end user the more convenient and readily accessible it is to the user. Thus, proximity or closeness of the applications (enterprise or cloud native) to the end user, the more enhanced the digital and user experience which is often referred to as the DX/UX experience
A common approach to providing a rewarding DX/UX experience is to store and host enterprise data and applications within an organisation’s internal shared pools of resources or private cloud. While the applications that require mobility and those that are prone to rapid change, their business logic is generally split into micro-services and reside in a public cloud, forming a Private- Public or Hybrid cloud configuration, interconnected via APIs’ and accessed via a browser acting as a universal client. At times compute is best performed at the edge of the network where the data is generated or collected giving us edge computing within a cloud-data or Fog environment.
Based on the three defined deployment and four as-a-service models, enterprise cloud services can have many permutations and combinations to form a Hybrid or Fog cloud configuration.
Cloud as a Catalyst.
Providing cloud services is big business. We have all had various levels of experience in adapting or buying cloud services. In the process many will comment such as; it is back to the good old days when it used to be called bureau services -This is not so, or It is a “cloudy” market and are there dark clouds that can bring storms and damage to a business that misuses cloud services? or Most business travelers are effectively and practically living and operating in the cloud today.
To effectively and efficiently adopt cloud services, we must first have a look at the advent of modern technology. We began to evangelise cloud services in the late nineties soon after the mainstream adaptation of the Internet and Web services. At this time the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) officially ratified cloud as a multi-tenanted, on-demand service accessible over the internet composed of five essential ease-of-consumption characteristics.
We also need to look at cloud services for what it really is, a consumption-based offering made possible by the advancements in affordable connectivity and virtualisation technology. Today VPN technology and a glut of bandwidth (fixed and mobile) make the internet the universal method of connectivity, and with more than 80% of all systems virtualised, Commoditised virtualization and bandwidth are just not enough to sell cloud services.
To satisfy an increasing demand for cheap computing resources and digitisation, Cloud service providers need to offer a leap in technology. Instead cloud offerings are sold as a universal platform that hosts a plethora of AI, orchestration, containerisation and productivity tools that satisfies independent automation, cognition, analytic and collaboration functions.
These independent upsell products are generally vendor lock-in tools loosely coupled to the required cloud services’ and are not an integrated offering. These tools are usually never utilised by the business making them vaporware/shelfware.
To plan where you are heading and effectively utilise cloud services in your business, it is critically to distinguish between the required cloud services and other packaged, modern-day vaporware.
For independent advice on what cloud service is best for you, let us meet with you and discuss where you are at and where you should be heading.
About the Author:
Chris Fosberry is a senior associate at CAJFOR with over 25 years of Industry experience. Chris holds a degree in Computer Science, an MBA in International Business, A member of the Institute of Management Consultants, and a cloud technology evangelist from its mainstream advent in 2008 (APAC director for the Burton Group IT1 services, Now Gartner GTP Services).
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