Effective cloud operations will make or break your initiative s success

CIOs, engaged in cloud initiatives, have identified one of their top goals - a need for a cloud strategy.

The reason; cloud initiatives not only directly impact technology but the effect extends significantly to business processes and organisational resources. A strategy that aligns process, technology and business service delivery is critical to the future returns on the initiative.

During the course of IT’s mere fifty years of evolving operational models nothing has accelerated, and to varying degrees disrupted the norms of a CIO’s domain, like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS etc. Cloud computing changes the IT planning approach, impacts staff, changes costing models, simplifies delivery and visibility of SLAs, and adds new dimensions to operational accountability and governance.

In my CIO days, the move to client server appeared to be technically evolutionary. Cloud, within the context of its potential impact on business is deserving of “business change agent.”

BMC CLM gives organisations an overarching, rational, architectural framework that enables the capabilities required for cloud computing, capabilities like automation of tasks, standardisation, policy enforcement and process definition, to name a few. The net result to an organisation can be lower operating costs and the ability to drive improvements that give organisations the ability to do more with less.

Since cloud is front and centre in IT’s transformation, the ability of IT to have a solution that manages, scales, governs and embraces the operational realities of today and tomorrow is simple and logical.

It is not about which SaaS provider or virtual cloud manager provides features and function. The need of IT management is to have a strategy that will enable and management cloud as the core service delivery model now and in the future.
It is critical to view a cloud initiative as program not a technical project. This program must consider the operational impact to your organisation; to your business partners and must address the impact on people, process and technology.

Your cloud strategy should take on technology rationalisation, resource alignment, and process optimisation. IT needs to communication to all stakeholders the value, impact and vision of the initiative. This is a transformational “moment” driven by the success of you cloud operation. Don’t be left behind and don’t aim short of the runway!