Page 219 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

C A L C ULATING THE FUTURE

learning about cloud computing. Many short-staffed firms
might name a computer professional to such a task, but it’s im-
portant that someone with a keen understanding of the busi-
ness be involved as well. Such a person would soon see that
some customer-related business processes can be executed
more effectively in the cloud.

In larger organizations, an IT professional or a small team
of them with a knack for talking to the business analysts and
managers might experiment with sending workloads to the
cloud to learn how it’s done and map out which types of work
might be offloaded there. Beyond that, it would be possible to
build prototype services in the cloud to illustrate what the
company could do for customers if it wished to use the cloud

as more than a laboratory.
An immediate avenue worth exploring would be whether
customer communities might be formed that could provide
valuable feedback to the company. The Web site manager
might argue that his domain is the proper one for such a com-
munity, and in many cases, it would be. But a community that
is functioning in the cloud would have the option for cus-
tomer interactions beyond those on the Web site. It could give
customers “programmatic control” over code options that the

company makes available or accept customer code to see if it
would work with existing services. Software tools could be put
into the hands of customers to make greater use of existing
services or co-build new ones. Trying to do so on servers in-
side the corporate firewall might open up the company to a
security breach. Trying to do so on the Web site might disrupt
the site or bring it down. But doing so in a virtual machine in

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