Cloud computing is a significant trend with the potential to increase agility and lower costs. Today, however, security risks, immature technology, and other concerns prevent widespread enterprise adoption of external clouds.
Although it’s difficult to get a consensus growth figure, most analysts see business intelligence (BI) as a relative bright spot in the IT spending forecast, with a projected growth rate of between 2% and 10% (vs. the 9–12% projected in early 2008).
In tough economic times, businesses have three choices: ignore the situation, accept defeat, or take control. The first two options — doing nothing and riding out the storm or accepting the pounding — can be paralyzing, with devastating consequences. However, by taking control, businesses can stay ahead of competitors, grow market share, and ensure viability in all types of market conditions.
Manufacturers are being pressured by customers, suppliers and competitors to do more, do it better and do it with less. To enter new markets, reduce costs and grow revenue, many manufacturers are embarking on joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and outsourcing to expand their global footprint. As a result, some companies have as many assets in foreign countries as they do in their domestic market. The firms that succeed know that innovations in manufacturing capability and reach must be matched with improvements in business processes. To sustain their competitive advantage and increase value for shareholders, customers, suppliers, partners and employees, manufacturers must stay on top of industry trends.
As telecommunications service providers (SPs) attempt to offset declines in legacy revenues by moving into adjacent segments such as enterprise IT services, they may be overlooking an attractive and underserved market: the small- and medium-sized business (SMB) sector. To date, SPs have focused their efforts in the highly competitive market for enterprise IT services to build critical mass for service offerings.
Private and public clouds evolve the way IT services are delivered to the business. The promise of increased efficiency and agility of enterprise-class applications and services is intriguing, but enterprise customers are struggling with how cloud services can safely add realistic business value. The use of external cloud services challenge security and compliance, as well as service level management, which can involve multiple domains of control. Technology lock-in is an additional concern as various vendors deliver very different cloud computing offerings (and there are others of which you should be aware). The reality is that external cloud services are still working toward enterprise maturity.
The emergence and increasing usage of social media and other Web 2.0 tools has dramatically altered the ways in which companies interact with their customers. For instance, buying advice, product information and technical help is increasingly being disseminated from consumers to other consumers, in some cases without involvement or oversight by the provider. Clearly, this shift presents both opportunities and risks to companies.