There is a lot of confusion in the business community when it comes down to understanding the nature of information services offered by various hardware and software vendors. For last few years, there has been a lot of buzz around cloud computing and several different flavors have been offered that add to confusion for many. There are various forms of cloud that are being offered in the market including public, a community, private and hybrid cloud solutions.  Additionally, there are other forms based on type of service being offered such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). Then within each of these there are sub categories to add to the confusion. Regardless of the format of the offering the organizations need to first understand what a cloud is and the real reasons to have one and how it can provide their information service needs.

We at AVIGNA describe CLOUD as Consumers Leverage Over Usage Demand. What that really means is that the consumer has the complete leverage over their demand for information services based on their specific usage profile. The services leverage is around any type, any quantity, anytime, anywhere and by anyone who has any need of those services. This sounds very promising but in reality it is very complicated due to the existing business operating models. That is one of the reasons for the existence of a variety of CLOUD flavors. Many businesses struggle to evaluate the associated business risks by moving in this new direction especially when they do not even fully understand existing risks in their current environment. While the new model makes business sense, there is little doubt that this new operating model further complicates risk evaluation and slows down the decision of embracing the cloud.

Organizations can move faster in evaluating cloud opportunities. In their evaluation of the cloud offering decision makers must ask the following three questions. First, is the service being offered Elastic in nature? The consumer should be able to dynamically scale in and scale out the resources as needed. For instance, if they need 1 unit of service on day 1, 10 units on day 2 and 5 units on day 3, the offering should be able to accommodate without any additional time consuming change requests and the consumer should only pay for units they actually consume. Second, is the service Agile in nature? The organization should have the ability to use any portion of the required services from anywhere, anytime and for anyone they choose to select. For example, if an organization wants its timesheet application to be available to all its employees and contractors from any location anytime, then offering should be able to meet the functionality in its simplest form. Third, is the service Secure to use? The organization must be able to ensure the service provides confidentiality and integrity along with availability. For example, the offered service must be able to encrypt customer data and provide mechanisms that ensure data is transmitted between desired systems without any data compromise. In addition to the above three service capabilities, organizations must ensure that the service is Intelligent from a provisioning and operational perspective and provides Economical value to the business.Trust is an important factor that enables quicker adoption of CLOUD services and an important goal must be to reduce Risk for the business when engaging with any new initiative.

AVIGNA is in the business of finding solutions and enabling success for our customers, partners and our organization by providing information technology services that help businesses meet their objectives by offering EASIER CLOUD. Our goal is to help our customers achieve higher value with low risk levels when migrating to any CLOUD operating model. We are able to do that by offering balanced solutions around People, Process and Technology. Our differentiated value ADD proposition to our customers is our Assessment, Design and Delivery methodology around these three success pillars. We believe that in order to achieve the low risk level, businesses must continuously improve their human capital by proactively training, especially around security awareness; optimize their business by improving existing processes, especially around acquisition of services and their delivery; and strengthen information services by embracing innovations in technology, especially those which reduce business risk. AVIGNA takes this unified approach in developing long term partnerships with our vendor partners and customers to make EASIER CLOUD a real outcome.

We look forward to further discussing how EASIER CLOUD can be realized within your organization. Contact us now by email info@avignallc.com .