Avoid the dangers of an accidental cloud architecture

It seems the vast majority of Australian businesses are using cloud computing, and the scenario typically goes something like this: the Sales department signs up to a customer relationship management (CRM) application delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS). The cloud approach seems successful so six months later the Marketing department selects a modern marketing solution from a different provider.

At the same time, Human Resources, considering its unique requirements, opts for a cloud-based human capital management (HCM) application from yet another supplier.

All of a sudden there are three departments in the same organisation with three different SaaS applications from three different providers hosted in three different places. This is fine as long as the number of cloud services providers is small and the capabilities operate in relative isolation from one another.

But what happens when the business wants to innovate and adopt customer experience initiatives, multichannel servicing, mobile applications, real-time analytics, activities around governance, risk and compliance (GRC), or establish cross-departmental processes?

These projects require systems that work together so that processes such as serving information to business process workflows or websites or gaining one view of customer information are seamless.

It is often only when integrated information is required that it becomes apparent to the organisation that it has developed fragmented, duplicate and disparate information and IT systems.

On top of that, what they are left with isn’t just an IT headache but a ‘full-on’ business headache, and it becomes an IT and business nightmare to fix.

So how does this happen?

The allure of a cloud application is that it gives immediate access to the features and functionality that the front end of the business wants. The challenge is that these decisions are often made with little involvement from IT.

However, unless planned, the data involved can become more isolated than when it was when stored locally. In fact, the fragmentation in many cases recreates the functional silos that IT departments have spent so much time deconstructing during the past couple of decades.

Only now it is worse because applications are much further apart physically and are wrapped up in strict contracts that govern how information can be accessed.

This means that the ability of an IT department to integrate the new cloud solution with another on-premise or even cloud application, or into an end-to-end business process, maybe severely compromised. That is they have lost the flexibility to change or extend it.

In addition, sending data out to multiple places may have risk implications and creates a split view of business data that impacts processing and analysis.

In short, IT best practices have essentially been bypassed, and at the same time it is the IT department that is left to manage an accidental cloud architecture that was never planned, and to bring it all together after the fact.

But does that mean companies should avoid using cloud applications? Of course not. Cloud computing has many attractive benefits including cost reduction, time efficiencies and simplification. The cloud just needs to be approached systematically, against the view of the organisation’s whole IT infrastructure and business requirements. You want to be more agile in the future, not less.

Organisations need to build a roadmap that looks at what they are trying to achieve and what the gaps are in their portfolio, and where integration between offerings is going to be of greatest benefit. They may find that some components are best acquired ‘as a service’, whereas some are better suited to being ‘on premise’ while others need to be co-located in a purpose-built facility.

It is crucial to spend time working out what cloud services are good for and where they are not. The answer to these questions will be different from one organisation to the next, but building the roadmap ensures the right set of criteria are in place to access cloud services tactically.

Then, IT should look at standardised toolsets that can help manage activities across the cloud as well as on premise. As we know, most companies will end up with a hybrid cloud architecture comprising both public and private elements.

They should also look to modern middleware to get a highly agile use of these cloud services, by being able to integrate on open standards, or utilise pre-integration for things that naturally fit together.

This is in our view a holistic approach - the benefits of this integration activity extend beyond the cloud. They are also a key enabler to helping companies get more from mobile and social initiatives by giving organisations the ability to extend applications, add processes, interfaces and mobile applications that can all be managed with the same rigour and operational models as a large enterprise application.

It is this type of activity that gives companies the potential to extend the application and change those business processes that can set themselves apart from their competitors. This is not something a straight-out-of-the-box cloud solution can do.

By taking this approach, companies will be able to achieve truly integrated and intelligent business systems, gain a quantum leap in agility and acquire the most effective way to leverage new technologies including, cloud, social, mobile, big data and analytics.

Image courtesy George Thomas under CC