Page 192 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

MANA GEMENT STRATEGIES F O R THE CL OUD R EV OL UTION

What You Can Do to Get Started:
Social Networking

A more basic example of what will happen on a regular basis
will be workplace social networking, which can shorten lines
of communication and bring together necessary talents in an

organization that often has departmental boundaries keeping
them apart. Social networking is already a fixture at most busi-
nesses in one rudimentary form or another, usually set up by
IT at the direction of the top. It might consist of a company
wiki, where various topics are aired and commented upon.
Social networking is already a consumer phenomenon in the
form of MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It doesn’t require

“the cloud” to be implemented, but it’s more likely to yield a
payoff if it’s available as an employee self-provisioned service.
It’s one thing to have a service set up by a distant boss, and an-
other when you and a freshly minted but geographically dis-
persed team really need one.
It will not be hard for employees to commission a social net-
working site if IT has succeeded in starting a rudimentary cloud
in the data center. Employees in different departments and
locations, responding to some pressing need, could establish a

wiki, where individuals share what they know on a current busi-
ness challenge, comment frequently on developments, estab-
lish a document library, and assemble a database of known
information. One of the main benefits of such a wiki site is that
it allows others in the organization who have knowledge of or
interest in the same topic to search it out and share what they
know. That sounds simple, but in fact all kinds of hierarchical,

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