When you talk to Enterprise folks or to evangelists from companies currently supporting the enterprise IT, they will be glad to point out to reasons why cloud computing is not a fit in their enterprises. Their usual argument will end like “we may put our test and dev environment on the clouds but not the mission critical ones”. Till today, most of the cloud evangelists will nod their head and move out to the next person who is willing to listen about the cloud. This should change today with IBM taking a leadership position as one of the biggest companies in the world. Their use of cloud computing for mission critical needs gives them an opening to tell all the enterprises
Just Do It
Today IBM announced the launch of the largest private cloud for business analytics in the world, This cloud, made out of more than 100 separate data systems into one, will give their 200K frontline employees the much needed intelligence that was available only to the top people at IBM. Whether it is an employee in IBM’s headquarters or one in Bangalore or, even, one who got struck in Amazon Forest but managed to get data connection somehow, all of them will have the necessary business intelligence needed for their work from anywhere at any situation. The petabyte of data will be made available to all these 200K+ employees thanks to the large private cloud built by IBM.
In the recent IBM Global CIO Study, 83 percent of respondents
identified business intelligence and analytics as the important tools to enhance the competitiveness of their organizations. Using cloud computing to offer these information to all the frontline employees who need it will offer a huge competitive advantage for any organization. IBM clearly understands this and has tapped into the clouds to put the huge amount of information at the fingertips of their employees.
Structured and
unstructured data will available in the cloud and accessible from anywhere to
provide IBM employees and executives with specific insights, like:
• Sales
teams will have deeper insights into a client’s relationship with the whole of
IBM from around the world – not just their region or product group – and
predict which products and services would be of the most value based on this
view.
• Sales
executives may use customizable queries of real time data to understand revenue
opportunities and how many sales in their region are closing to help improve
prediction.
• Product
development teams can analyze sales information, industry trends and customer
perceptions to drive product innovation
• A
manufacturing process engineer can evaluate real-time data on the plant floor
to identify trends and adjust manufacturing processes as needed to improve
yield and reduce shipment delivery times.
With this move, IBM has delivered the message loud and clear. Cloud Computing is ready for mainstream enterprise adoption and any attempts by enterprises to dismiss its readiness for mission critical uses are a good recipe for their own downfall. It is time for enterprises to take a hard look on the advantages offered by Cloud Computing and do what will bring them the competitive advantage in this competitive global marketplace.
In addition to showing the enterprises how they can use cloud computing for business critical needs, IBM is also offering a solution to do the same. They announced the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, a private analytics cloud solution for large enterprises, that will help enterprises gain valuable business intelligence and, also, offer this intelligence to their frontline employees in various parts of the world.
It is a great move on the part of IBM to lead by showing the clients how an organization as large as IBM can tap into cloud computing for their analytics needs. This goes a long way to reassure the customers that they can trust Cloud Computing, in general, and IBM, in particular, for their IT needs. It is a good strategic move on the part of IBM and it also serves as a case study for those interested in exploring the cloud.
