Page 198 - 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

have approved.” Not all social networking in the business will
meet the Disraeli standard, but much of it does.

Next Steps: Analytics and
Business Intelligence

Another major use of computing power in business that will
be furthered by adoption of the cloud is the use of analytical
systems or business intelligence. When a project’s information
is located on a small set of similar servers, tapping into and
analyzing that information will prove easier than if it is spread
across incompatible systems. When a project’s information is

tied to product sales activity on the company Web site, and
both are powered by the internal cloud, then that informa-
tion can be analyzed and cross-referenced more easily than
when it must be drawn from disparate systems. It has been
nearly impossible to get real-time information on the busi-
ness, even though good historical information is available
through the process of data warehousing. New systems, such
as complex event processing (CEP), can look at events in the
software infrastructure, such as the removal of an item from

inventory (an event in both the physical and digital worlds via
the inventory system). CEP can gain an understanding of how
fast certain events are occurring, the time frames in which
they are occurring, the metrics that should be applied to de-
termine whether they were outside a well-established norm,
and so on. Complex event processing doesn’t require the
cloud, but it is one of those new software capabilities that will

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