Knowledge Byte: Transforming Businesses With Cloud Innovation

The cloud transformation can drive from “right to left” (top-down) or left to right” (bottom-up). This means that cloud computing can be used to change business models disruptively or incrementally in a specific business area.

Top-down transformation concentrates to transform the mission, operating goals, and business performance metrics. On the other hand, bottom-up transformation aims at transforming organizational structures and behaviors, business processes, data and transactions, and the underlying applications and infrastructure.

Cloud computing can be considered in designing the Target Operating Model (TOM) of a business and how cloud services might transform a part or all of the business model, as shown in the following figure.

There can be several examples of cloud solutions that might be used to accelerate the path of transformation. Some of the examples of a cloud solution innovation are:

● Mobile cloud: The use of mobile devices connecting to cloud-hosted services.

● Virtual reality: The use of augmented services that use cloud-hosted data and services to provide new UXs.

● Multimedia rich content delivery: The development of multimedia content streams of music, video, and content.

● BPM: The use of SaaS-based process management solutions hosted in a cloud to automate workflows.

● UX design: The design of customer experience using social media hosted in the cloud.

● Big data analytics and visualization: The use of analytics technology hosted in the cloud to run large scale big data analytics as a service.