Cloud as a growth engine for business

I often look at how – and why – cloud and IT infrastructure matters to our clients. I look at organizations, inclusive of cloud and managed service providers, who rely on our infrastructures to build private and hybrid clouds that will optimize their social, mobile and big data workloads. I have seen, in a very short time frame, the number of client cloud deployments grow exponentially. So what do they need to move forward? How can they move strategically? Where can IBM help leaders innovate?

I reflect on these questions starting with the results – the end benefits that our cloud infrastructure options bring to bear – as many of these technologies have been enhanced as part of our October Launch. For example, IBM solutions for building and managing private/hybrid clouds improve speed and flexibility with shorter deployment times, so clients can easily respond to business opportunities while reducing IT operational costs. That means that with more flexible IBM PureFlex options, an organization can reduce cloud application deployment time by 80% while lowering IT operations cost by 30%.

Further, enhanced private cloud storage solutions like IBM SmartCloud Storage Access, XIV and Storwize, can help organizations to manage infrastructure at scale, with high reliability to optimize utilization, availability and workload execution – enabling continuous access to applications.

And new products like Power Systems Solution Edition for Service Providers are able to drive sales and provide better customer experience by leveraging flexible new business models and advanced IBM technologies based on open standards.

And so I see that determining what cloud infrastructure solution or strategy is most appropriate for a specific client will depend upon their business needs. Why are they looking to cloud? Is it faster time to market or Capex reduction? Is data protection and security paramount? It’s not a one size fits all approach. That’s the only way I know to think about how our cloud technologies enable them to be a more strategic and successful organization.

Cloud is an engine for business. It improves the agility and speed of innovation and the deployment of IT services. It fosters the empowerment of business users and IT professionals. And it greatly improves the economics of IT within the organization itself, in the form of our client’s time, usage and utilization of their existing IT infrastructures. As governments and organizations look to drive efficiencies across their organization, their unique hybrid and private cloud mix strategies and requirements can set the stage for optimizing and enabling business growth.

By: Ron Kline

Link: http://www.smartercomputingblog.com/cloud-infrastructure/cloud-business-growth-engine/