OCTOBER 2018CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8common and long-standing frustration of business leaders with respect to Information Technology (IT) has been the time it took to deliver technology-based solutions, and thereby deliver value to the business. This frustration has been consistent regardless of the industry, geographic region, or size of the organization. While many elements contribute towards the time needed to deliver technology-based solutions, the procurement, configuration and provisioning of computing resources like servers, storage and networking devices was time-consuming. Further, as business needs changed, in response to market demand, it was nearly impossible for IT to scale the technology-based solution in a relatively short timeframe. This lag time was far more than what the business leaders expected to adequately respond to the changing market demands, thus leading to their frustration. From an IT leader perspective, it has been a conundrum--build too much computing capacity in anticipation of increased business demands; the computing cost structure goes up. If the anticipated business demands do not increase as anticipated, you are now saddled with a flawed computing cost structure. Also, if the business demands shrink, the computing cost structure is threatened. This is because the on-premise computing environment is essentially a fixed-cost, capital expense type cost structure. The basic computing environment is required to deliver technology-based solutions, but in of itself it has increasingly become a non-differentiating, utility function. IN MY VIEWSANJAY GUPTA, CTO, U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATIONWhy the Cloud is a Game ChangerA
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