Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step ...

74 Chapter 4 Making the Business Case for Clouds
manufacturer may need to change in order to drive into new markets but may
not have a culture that can change at the rate required. It lacks the ability to
adapt to change, so no matter what you do to accommodate change through
the use of technology, such as SOA using cloud computing, the company will
not be able to take advantage of it when considering the people issues.
Finally, the relative value of change is the amount of money made as a direct
result of changing the business, such as a retail organization’s ability to
establish a frequent-buyer program to react to changing market expectations
and the resulting increases in revenue from making that change.
These are just some basic guidelines around understanding and defining
the value of agility and reuse as related to leveraging SOA using cloud
computing.
Value of Leveraging Innovative Technology
Finally, we need to discuss the value of leveraging innovative, best-of-breed
technology. This is important because the use of cloud computing could
provide some less tangible benefits, such as the ability to raise more money
and obtain more investors, since many view cloud computing as a more effective
and efficient way to do IT. Thus, just using this technology may increase
the value of the business, at least while people view cloud computing
as a positive.
Putting a dollar amount on innovation is a bit difficult. However, it is the
difference between what the market considers the value of the company when
leveraging cloud computing versus a more traditional computing model. Of
course, many organizations may leverage a bit of both, so you need to grade
on a curve.
Making the Business Case
Instead of just giving you a bunch of high-level concepts that you may or
may not consider helpful, it is a good exercise to actually walk you through
the process of creating a business case for cloud computing. Keep in mind
that you have a unique enterprise, so how you approach creating this business
case is going to need some consideration of the business you are in, the
size of your enterprise, and the people you work with. One size does not fit
all, but there is enough information in the remainder of this chapter to get
most business cases done.