Cloud computing holds the potential for extraordinary business outcomes, particularly for those who use it as a means to innovate and adapt to change, said Larry Abramson, Oracle Cloud practice leader at PwC during a presentation Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld. Unfortunately, he noted, those results are not guaranteed unless businesses accompany new technology with new ways of getting their business done.
The question, he said, is “How do we get more than the same business processes we’ve used before, just in new packaging, with a new metaphor?” The availability of software as a service (SaaS) has liberated line of business managers to procure software without help from IT, which can allow them to move faster. But that is not without trade-offs.
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When a pattern of applications being purchased in isolation is given free reign, “before long, you’ve lost completely the ability to gain scale from those investments,” Abramson said. “You need to marry that agility with the right governance.”
Business leaders need to recognize that cloud applications do not exist in isolation and will need to be integrated with other cloud and on-premises applications, he said.
On the other hand, IT leaders who wish to remain employed should not try to block the move to the cloud. According to PwC research, 86% of CEOs are very concerned about technology-enabled disruption to their businesses, and recognize that the cloud is a critical tool for defending their positions. Further, 67% think their IT organizations are either not prepared or only somewhat prepared to transition to a cloud computing paradigm. A CEO who sees leaders bypassing IT to get the benefits of a cloud experience is likely to approve, Abramson said. That means IT leaders need a strategy for coping with distributed procurement of applications.
‘Hybrid All the Time’
Few organizations are making a wholesale transition from on premises to the cloud, Abramson noted. “What we actually see happening is hybrid all the time.”
Oracle is a leader in enabling hybrid cloud scenarios, in large part due to technology meant to facilitate integration of cloud and on-premises technology, Abramson said. A good integration fabric tracks “the many sources and the many possible destinations, and the many relationships between them,” he said.
“You hit the button, and it starts to work—that’s a huge change,” Abramson said. “Application integration from the 1990s didn’t look like this.”
However, you get that benefit only with proper planning, he said. Organizations that simply buy the technology without thinking about how it will affect business processes “will not drive exceptional experience you’re looking for.”
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