The Word for the Day: VALUE
Carol Blanchar, M.S., CEO, Conexo
Value is just being defined for current Cloud solution vendors and channels. The new technology is a fundamental shift in solution architecture that profoundly changes price-performance and investment decisions for business buyers and consumers. Emerging cloud infrastructure and platform services are increasingly easy to customize and scale for specific markets without repurchase or much delay, and can also be adapted going forward based on experience and business results. However, they do require technical skills and experience with a wide variety of integration, linking, security, testing, monitoring, diagnostics , and vendor coordination.
Based on their trusted relationships and deep knowledge of a target market, channel partners help their customers buy cloud solutions and services, selling and recommending emerging cloud solutions. They also guide solution design and technology development - vendors plan product strategy through broad surveys of channel experience about customer need and market demand.
This is an uncertain business. We are going through a huge transformation in how IT investments are analyzed and budgeted, changing how IT departments and the businesses they serve, purchase technology. At the same time, business IT vendors, partners, distributors, service providers, and resellers are redefining their own roles in sales, delivery, and implementation. Many are moving to increased. ongoing participation in IT operations, administration, and management - business models across the channels at all levels are driving to recurring revenue streams that better map to cloud service costs and value delivery.
Far beyond using just service consumption and cost-of-ownership as a basis for investment decisions, many now believe that pulling IT into better alignment with Line of Business value and metrics makes it an effective business enabler, even adding leverage for increasing business agility and growth. The benefits of cloud infrastructures and platforms, when applied to key business initiatives rather than cost-cutting efforts, offers huge payback on a scale never possible before now.
Value is the only variable in the business model that translates directly into market share growth, profit, or positive cash flow. Most importantly, the entire delivery chain architecture of business IT depends, not on IT department success, but on the end line-of-business success which drives profit and growth back up the chain to the vendors with real dollars – only the end business gets the dollar that buys groceries and makes payroll and pays for services back across the entire delivery chain – sustainable economic growth comes from performance by the last business, on whom all else depends..
Value quantifies what that end business consumer wants to pay good money for. Every player in the IT services delivery chain bears responsibility for defining their own value contribution to end consumer / user success.
The biggest hurdle is the disconnect between business value drivers and the way IT has been managed until now. Business managers and teams still view IT charges as purely overhead administrative cost, a resented burden to be constantly decreased as much as possible, disconnected with their own value proposition and competitive success and business survival. So, an immediate contribution of cloud computing to economic growth is in related conferences, professional organizations forums, sales and solution planning, and shared experiences, as people are gaining clarity and rigor around roles and business models, refining cost and pricing structures, and demanding evidence of real value based on solid business results.
Most important are futures of all the IT technical people who are essential to always-on, high-availability ecosystems. Their ranks are thinning, but they must provide the expert knowledge and skill to realize the potential of emerging cloud-based business and go-to-market models. Cloud services offer new value that justifies the retention and training of in-house and channel staff to match and manage service choices to points of greatest business impact and optimum results. With them, we can deliver the cloud-based information systems that make us all far more valuable!
