Cloud Technology and Business Strategies
Li Zhong Zhang · Research Journal of Economics & Business Studies · 2012
In today's business world, everything is becoming mobile, connected, interactive, immediate, and fluid. This is one of the driving forces behind the rise in cloud computing technology. As cloud computing is transforming global IT in the 21st century and creating surprising new opportunities for re-thinking business processes, this paper analyses how cloud technology can provide new levels of collaboration, agility, speed, and cost savings for enterprises of any size and type, and what business strategies should be adopted to utilize the power of cloud technology to enhance knowledge management and business performance. To ensure sustainable cloud market growth and, more importantly, increase the likelihood of cloud initiatives delivering positive return on investment (ROI), enterprises must evolve from ad hoc, disjointed cloud approaches to well-defined, effectively managed cloud procurement. On the other hand, the best cloud solutions can be designed to help enterprises become the builder and broker of services, maintaining control, building value, and leveraging the power of private and public clouds. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes that, as most enterprises are creating a hybrid service portfolio comprising services from many sources, it is critical that business management must align the right model to the right service in order to build, consume, and manage appropriate cloud services in an effective and secure way.