Page 101 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

JUST O V ER THE HORIZON, PRIV ATE CL OUDS

collects data on whether the customer might expect the type
of goods ordered shipped to that location. These services save
businesses valuable time and labor by performing automati-
cally things that would take well-paid staff members hours of
labor to perform. Another example is online freight handling
services, which can now take your order to ship goods between

two points; consult their own directories of carriers, tolls, and
current energy prices; and deliver a quote in seconds that
proves valid, no matter where in the country you’re seeking to
make a delivery. They will find the lowest-cost carrier with the
attributes that you’re seeking—shipment tracking, confirmed
delivery, reliable on-time delivery—in a manner that surpasses
what your company’s shipping department could do with its

years of experience.
On every front, online information systems are dealing with
masses of information to yield competitive results. To ignore
such services is to put your business in peril, and indeed few
businesses are ignoring them. The next generation may cede
key elements of programmatic control to customers, allowing
them to plug in more variables, change the destination of an
order en route, fulfill other special requirements, and invoke
partnerships and business relationships that work for them,

ratcheting up the value of such services.
The alignment of the internal data center with external
resources will become an increasingly important competitive
factor, and many managers already sense it.
They’ve also seen a precedent. At one time, corporations
built out high-performance proprietary networks to link head-
quarters to manufacturing and divisions at different locations.

81