Page 105 - Cloud Essentials

An important strategic choice for an organization is whether it wants to
run its own cloud. Running your own cloud implies choices for
virtualization technology, a systems management platform, and a skill set for
people, as well as an extensive set of IT service management processes.
Another alternative could be to rely on outsourced applications only. This
may be an appropriate choice for a small business or a department within a
larger organization. Still, a vision has to be developed with respect to SaaS

vendors and the way to select them. The consequence of this choice is that
the number of technical skills required is more limited.
Regardless of the strategic choices made with respect to cloud
computing, the IT department has to learn to work with managing shared
infrastructures, whether private or public, and has to learn to provision

services, rather than servers. There are also likely to be changes in the way
applications are derived from business needs, selected, implemented,
operated, and decommissioned.

Organization Roles and Skills
Depending on the vision and operating model selected, roles and skills
might change. Cloud computing is a developing area. The cloud ecosystem
is evolving and business requirements are changing, and the required roles
and skills will change as well.

An important skill is being able to articulate the business value that
cloud computing can bring, for example, by enabling more

collaborative work processes both inside and outside the organization.
In a cloud-enabled world, there is a greater opportunity to modularize
applications into reusable components and integrate them with other
data sources. This is what is called service-oriented architecture.

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