Q & A with TK on “The Cloud”
If you are wondering what role The Cloud will play in your future here are some quick insights from a recent Q&A I did with a large corporate involved in Cloud-based activities.
Also download my latest e-book “Living in The Cloud” from the Delphi website:
Q. What are some key enablers that enterprise technology professionals can use to drive innovation and what role will cloud services play?
A. I think that IT professionals are too often stuck in the past when it comes to realizing just how much they can bring to the table to drive innovation. I grew up in IT and while it was a fund time to be a technologist it was also a time when there were steep walls between technology and business. You know, when I founded Delphi Group two decades ago it was actually a novel concept to talk about bridging IT and business! Today those walls need to come down - and they have in many case, but not enough.
Ideally IT should be the bridge that connects new ideas, new business models, and new products and services to the market. IT should be the enabler of innovation. The key however, is that it must do this not by simply building the bridges, but by identifying the best technologies and the best path to take in using the myriad technologies available to achieve a business objective.
One why to look at this is to think of IT as a portfolio manager. In the world of finance portfolio managers evaluate and navigate immense complexity in financial instruments to achieve the objectives of their clients. The same is true to day of IT, especially with the dawning of cloud computing. In the cloud the varieties of solutions and options are virtually infinite. Making sense of all of this complexity is a task that has direct impact on the ability of an organization to innovate.
Q: What do you see as driving the focus on innovation in the current environment?
A: It’s clear that much of what is currently driving innovation stems from the economic necessity to create growth and employment. Innovation has always been the cornerstone of economic prosperity and that hasn’t changed, if anything it is even more important today give the severity and breadth of the recent economic turmoil around the globe.
But there is more to the innovation story that often gets brushed aside. The increasing availability of a global educated workforce is expanding our capacity to innovate on a scale never imagined. At the same time there are immense global challenges that face all of us. For example, Businesses need to provide goods and services to a burgeoning global population that are ecologically sound and affordable - all the while trying to find ways to do more with less.
Lastly, we need to understand that we are entering a new era of socialization. The generation that is now starting to enter the work force is more connected and collaborative than any of us expected. They are accustomed to using technology as a 24/7 service, always there, always on - they are clearly a generation built to innovate.
Q. What recommendations do you have for companies about using cloud services to drive innovation?
A. The first recommendation is to be open minded - no pun! All too often cloud is simply seen as a way to drive down costs. While that may be the case I’d equate that attitude to choosing to take a plane from Boston to LA simply because the it cost less than the gas to drive! The reason you take the plane is because it allows you to use your time wisely and to focus on where your efforts are best spent, which unless your a teamster will not be behind a wheel for three days. Cloud pays of in ways that you may never have expected. For example, it open up an entirely new universe of technology options, computing power, and reliability that otherwise would not be available at any cost.
Second, think about how you can better focus your IT on the core of your business by using cloud for many non core activities. While, cloud can be used nearer to your core, start first by increasing your ability in IT to focus on what’s of greatest value strategically. Once you have done that your ability to align with the business and your value naturally increases.
Q. Can you share some examples of companies who have used the cloud to gain innovation that might not have been possible before the advent of cloud services?
A. What’s interesting here is that so much of what we are already innovating has been spurred by the cloud. For example, most folks may not think of Facebook or flickr as the cloud but it is! We are relying on the cloud to provide with an amazing number of innovations that we already take for granted in our day to day lives. Think of the iPhone and the number of applications available to download - you could spend days, perhaps weeks just browsing these many apps. All of this is cloud-based innovation.
But here is an even better example that I love to talk about - Starbucks! Starbucks launched a cloud application recently called My Starbucks Idea. IT’s intended to allow customers to engage in the process of innovation with Starbucks. This is an app that probably would have taken an enormous amount of time to build and would likely never have been justified as an experiment - since the ROI wasn’t clear. My Starbucks allows customers to submit, vote, rank, and discuss ideas for new Starbucks innovations - small and large ones. Starbucks has logged nearly 100,000 new ideas and launched several dozen of them.
This sort of approach is what I call an Innovation Zone, and it’s the best way to leverage both the cloud and to create a more innovative organization.
Q. What is it about the cloud that allows new business models to evolve? What is it about cloud services that makes this possible?
A. I believe that 50% of all technology intensive small businesses today would have been unable to weather the recent recession without the cloud. In every case where I have seen the cloud contribute to this sort of business model innovation it because of one basic reason - the cloud allows you to experiment without the risks and repercussions of traditional IT. A great example is Zip Car, which was able to create a fractional ownership model for urbanites through the use of a ubiquitous network of technologies that allow subscribers to locate and reserve cars for use by the hour at a moments notice. The corollary to this is that the cloud allows you to be elastic and to stretch your business as far as you want and then instantly contract it. This fundamentally changes the risk of scale and growth.
Simply put the cloud allows an organization to create a velocity of innovation that matches the demand of the market. There is just no other way to do that.
It goes back to my analogy about the plane versus the cross country road trip. At some point I just don’t have the luxury to decide which is cheaper because my market and my competition just won’t wait!!
Tags: cloud, innovation, innovation zone, koulopoulos
