Today, IT has become a part of the strategic decision-making rather than just supporting the day-to-day business needs. IT plays a vital role for not only maximizing ROI but also helps in realizing the value of technology, and also transforming and evolving businesses. IT should focus on enabling new business opportunities, revenues, and new scenarios for their organization. Bipul Parua, CTO, Knowlartity Communications, opines, "IT can play the role of a catalytic agent across each and every management" function whether it is human resources, marketing, customer service or IT. Marketers can improve their return on investment by filtering channels that are inefficient or provide low returns on investment. Human resource can be optimized by providing them with real-time data and information allowing them to maximize their training. Similarly, customer service can be proactive rather than reactive once they have access to centralized records of customer database.”
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Bipul Parua
CTO
Knowlartity Communications
To maximize ROI, it is also important that IT enables the business to make careful and justified selection of investments in alignment with the strategic business drivers and facilitates tight execution.
IT should also be involved beyond implementing and configuring technology. They should help the users adopt technology and ensure from time to time that technology is being efficiently used to meet the intended purposes. In this way, they can ensure that the technology delivers the value for which it was considered in the first place and, in turn, justify the investment made in technology. For reducing IT cost, Cloud Computing plays an important role. Cloud computing has been called the way of the future. With the rapid development of cloud-computing technologies, technology and applications have become more accessible and more business applications and the entire business functions have moved into the cloud. IDC predicts that, by 2016, line-of-business (LOB) executives will be involved in 80 per cent of all the new IT investments and will function as the lead decision-makers in more than half of those investments.
Cloud computing is helping organizations drive business agility, reduce cost and address the issues of elasticity of demand. Going beyond the realm of virtualization, which helped organizations ensure optimum utilization of infrastructure, Cloud is providing enterprises with the flexibility to size and pay for normal workloads using the infrastructure that they already have. With the flexibility of adopting a private, public or hybrid Cloud model, enterprises now have the choice of balancing their fixed and variable costs on account of infrastructure befitting their business model. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder & CEO, CtrlS, opines, “Cloud and its various flavours, BYOD, Big data are three frontiers, not necessarily new, but are changing the way we do business". Cloud has changed the traditional models of investment in IT and at the same time, has brought about major efficiencies in service delivery.”
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Kshitij Jain
Manager, Technology Marketing
Advaiya
Cloud computing is an intelligent way to cut IT cost
In general, the cost of running an IT system can be divided into two parts: fixed costs and variable costs. The cost of setting up IT systems constitutes a considerable outgo for most businesses starved of funds and it does not get any better with variable costs eating into profits. A smarter way for businesses is migrating to cloud services. Cloud service providers offer a managed service which means businesses don’t have to worry about big upfront investments on technology and leasing out property and can start right away without committing to heavy IT costs. Cloud is about driving new levels of process efficiency, collaboration and insight.
IT generally reduces the cost of doing business. The trick lies in making the wisest decision while opting for the IT-oriented infrastructure and services to cover your needs. The IT market is offering vast services generating enough variety to choose from, but that might very well lead to confusion. Possessing at least some knowledge of IT would lead to having an upper hand in the deal. Kshitij Jain, Manager, Technology Marketing, Advaiya, has shared his views on this. He says, "There are a couple of aspects to this. "Businesses should smartly evaluate the build Vs buy Vs outsource Vs share options related to technology" in order to take the right decisions that will have the most important bearing on the business.”
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Venkatesh Swaminathan
Country Head
The Attachmate Group India
In addition, IT should focus on rationalizing the redundant resources and share and optimize usage of existing capacities between multiple departments, offices, applications, etc. Another important aspect that IT should focus on is having an elastic infrastructure for future needs, i.e. acquire resources to meet demands and then release these resources when demands are met. This can be fulfilled using leveraging the as-a-service models.
The simplest and most visible method to cut down on the cost of IT is to move to an IAAS model, rather than invest CAPEX on your IT. Infrastructure outsourcing reduces the investment, maintenance cost, manpower cost and at the same time increases efficiencies.
Cloud computing can definitely help in maximizing return on investment, while decreasing IT cost, but only if it is planned wisely. Moving to Cloud helps in having a consistent and predictable cost model. Thus, you pay only for the amount of infrastructure or application or service that you use. By adopting Cloud, businesses can also shift some of the risks to the Cloud service provider such as the risk of obsolescence of the current technology. In addition, if your existing infrastructure is Cloud-ready, the time to value to moving to the Cloud is considerably high. There are many other similar benefits.
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Sridhar Pinnapureddy
Founder & CEO
CtrlS
Another aspect to be looked into is how wisely an organization plans for moving to the Cloud. One of the approaches can be – first, assess the current I T infrastructure to determine its readiness for moving to the cloud, and identify the gaps that need to be closed to make the IT infrastructure Cloud-ready.
Further, develop a clear roadmap for moving to the Cloud and define projects to make the infrastructure Cloud-ready and Cloud migration. Identify less critical workloads that can be primary candidates for moving to the Cloud. Moving these to the Cloud first will bear less investment and the ROI can be quickly assessed.
Reducing IT cost is also associated with the use of open-source applications. Venkatesh Swaminathan, Country Head, The Attachmate Group India, opines, “In general, companies are required to be inquisitive to look at things and have a couple of alternatives for the solutions which are running to reduce IT cost. They can work on things like open source. However, "Companies need to decide what applications are required to be used by them" and how to train people for using open-source applications.”
Finally…
At the end, it is true to say that the Cloud industry will continue to see growth and will form the foundation block for driving business agility. As enterprises leverage the capabilities and potential of social media, big data and analytics, and the power of mobility to create disruptive business models, the Cloud will act as a great technology lever and base to drive these business requirements.
satinder@varindia.com
