Flexible Sourcing Options for Quicker Business Benefits Creating a flexible sourcing strategy is another important part of establishing a dynamic infrastructure. Many organizations employ a mix of sourcing options to create the most effective solution to meet their needs. Much can be accomplished onsite, with the right tools, technologies and skills. Some functions can be managed remotely. Some functions or business processes may be more effectively outsourced altogether. Flexible sourcing options provide many organizations access to skills and resources that far exceed what they have on their own. It also enables them to refocus their energies on key core areas of the business, thereby allowing management of all important and critical non-core business areas to be outsourced. A rapidly emerging option, cloud computing, opens up entirely new opportunities.
"Cloud computing has become the latest in a series of hot industry terms. It is an example of what is referred to by Gartner as an "emerging phenomenon." Phenomena emerge when conditions are right and multiple factors are in play."
– Source: Gartner "Predicts 2009: Cloud Computing Beckons"./ David Mitchell Smith, Tom Austin, Gene Phifer, Claudio Da Rold, Matthew W. Cain, Yefim Natis / 17 December 2008 Cloud computing provides a means of acquiring computing services without requiring an understanding of the underlying technology. From an organizational perspective, cloud computing delivers services for consumer and business needs in a simplified way, providing unbounded scale and differentiated quality of service to foster rapid innovation and decision-making. It is a service acquisition and delivery model for IT resources and, if properly used within an overall IT strategy, can help improve business performance and control the costs of delivering IT resources to the organization.
"Cloud computing heralds an evolution of business – no less influential than the era of e-business… Virtualization, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they'll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models."
– Source: Gartner "Key Issues for Cloud Computing, 2009"/ David Mitchell Smith, David W. Cearley, Daryl C. Plummer / 3 February 2009 "By 2012, more than 10% of all enterprise content will be managed in the cloud..." – Source: Gartner "Evolution is Key for Content Management"/ Rita Knox, Mark R. Gilbert, White Andrews, Toby Bell / 3 December 2008 A dynamic infrastructure conditions the client environment for a Cloud execution model. The underlying technologies associated with cloud computing can be focused on the creation of a more dynamic infrastructure, as applications and the services they provide are no longer locked to a fixed, underlying infrastructure and can quickly adjust to change. Cloud computing can provide access to needed, standardized IT resources to rapidly deploy new applications, services or computing resources without re-engineering the entire infrastructure.
Gartner points out that "enterprises that transform themselves into true service providers (from an organizational, processes and tools point of view) will be successful in exploiting cloud computing in their environments as part of their overall IT service management strategies..."
– Source: Gartner G00165702 "Observations and Announcements from IBM Pulse 2009". Milind Govekar, Donna Scott, Ed Holub / 6 March 2009 Source: IBM
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