Selling cloud to enterprises
Sandip Mukhopadhyay, Srinivas Rao Pingali, Amitabh Satyam · 2021
Chapter 9 introduces the concepts of cloud computing and the opportunities in selling cloud-based IT solutions to enterprises. Cloud allows CIOs to move away from the method of owning and managing IT investment to the new paradigm of accessing IT resources on payment. Other than the advantage of pay-as-you-go, cloud-based rapid capacity provisioning and de-provisioning allow organisations to focus more on business-critical innovations, without being constrained by in-house IT. This chapter covers the five key characteristics, three service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), and three delivery models (private, public, hybrid) of cloud computing. While there is an increasing tendency towards cloud-based service delivery, cloud may not be recommended in cases such as flat IT capacity growth, high security requirement, and regulatory constraints. IT sellers should focus on the relevant value proposition of the cloud to initiate a discussion with important stakeholders in the customer organisation. Besides providing IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services, IT providers can also provide cloud advisory, application modernisation and migration services, and cloud management and governance services.