Business Intelligence and the Cloud: Strategic Implementation Guide

CHAPTER 5

Cloud Adoption

Are Your Organization and Its Stakeholders Ready to Adopt Cloud Computing?

Specifying the parameters of deployment and service type is clearly the purview of designers and those who specify services. However, before deployment and services are specified, the need must be defined and the effects of the delivery mechanisms must be understood. These are business issues, and the decisions involved must be made in cooperation with managers who must identify the business needs. Decisions about cloud services affect your organization and the linkage between your organization and its stakeholders.

Successful usage of a cloud service requires that you understand its effects on your organization and its stakeholders. In this chapter, the major areas to be considered include the effects on the following:

• Current IT staff
• Current technology
• Internal stakeholders (e.g., managers, users, and other organizational staff)
• External stakeholders (e.g., customers or suppliers)

Table 5.1 The Effects of Using a Cloud Strategy

An overview of these is shown in Table 5.1. Each of these effects will be discussed in turn in this chapter, and the next chapter will be dedicated to a discussion of how service level agreements affect cloud strategies.

REGULATORY INFLUENCE

Before proceeding to the specific issues that affect your organization and its stakeholders, the regulatory influence ...