Cloud computing is a fresh approach to IT operations. In companies with non-agile IT organizations there is misunderstanding between IT managers and stakeholders. IT finds that money and skill sets are the problems while stakeholders feel that there is a lack of infrastructure and technology to meet the ever increasing needs of companies. The solution is simple; a private cloud that applies virtualization, automation and self service which will help improve business agility.
Business agility is one of the main reasons why enterprises are pursuing private clouds. In a survey done by IDC’s U.S. Private IT Cloud Systems Management in July 2011, 91% of enterprises listed improve business agility as a top goal. In addition to improved business agility, controlling IT capital and operational costs, improving application performance and availability, controlling IT head count and improving IT’s relationship with business were also goals for enterprises.
Because this way of storing information allows users to share and scale IT resources across workloads and user groups, cloud computing helps improve performance and availability of information. By enabling a self-service based system, cloud computing reduces IT operational costs and improves business performance.
Dell is a company that provides cloud computing solutions and allows companies to apply things like software patches, security updates and OS levels through their cloud computing solutions. By using cloud computing, companies can shorten the deployment time from days, weeks, or months to minutes or hours by allowing end users to request resources directly though self-service tools.
Cloud computing can improve business agility in many different industries. For example, healthcare professionals are in the middle of a huge change where the government has required them to update their electronic medical health records (EMR). This change was implemented to decrease the risk of accidental risks and lawsuits though sharing information that is the same and accessible across many different platforms and organizations. With so many hospitals, healthcare institutes and Insurance Companies across the country, important information about patients past medial history can get lost along the way when all of these enterprises are storing information differently. For all of this information to come together on a unified front, an IT department needs to transfer EMR records from paper-based file systems to computerized physicians order entry (CPOE). The healthcare industry as a whole can improve quality care though cloud computing by having the ability to share a patient’s medical record with any clinician, insurance company or hospital in the country.
In other industries besides healthcare like public-sectors, schools and banks, companies are already investing in private cloud solutions. Their current IT solutions that have been designed for physical and virtual resource operations are not capable of handling the real-time, flexible demands like cloud computing.
Self-service provisioning, automation, and workload mobility management are all results of cloud computing. As technologies increase, enterprise customers increase the number of users and services supported by cloud infrastructure and services which is why it’s becoming even more important for the future.
By David Borg
David works with Dell. When he is not working, he enjoys spending time with his children. If you’re looking for more information on Dell virtualization, David recommends you check out this link to find out more.