Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing, + Website

Form Follows Function, IT Follows Form

If businesses have evolved from hierarchy to network and from network to networked, what does it mean for IT? The nature of IT is changing because the nature of business is changing, and these changes are aligned with the inherent characteristics of the cloud.

If the corporation is now a distributed entity, what of its IT? A single company that is the dominant center of its universe, such as Toyota is with its suppliers, could certainly mandate use of a private IT infrastructure. Even major global corporations are willing to support the IT standards of their major customers, the way Walmart suppliers use Walmart Connect.

But for everyone else, the strategic architecture of the firm as a networked entity must be recapitulated by its IT: a distributed, ownerless architecture that can be embodied only by the cloud. Whether the network is a mesh of participants, such as the way that Hollywood producers, directors, actors, and agents come together to make a film, or a linear chain existing as a supply chain network, such a dynamic multi-enterprise organizational architecture must be reflected in a flexible multi-enterprise information architecture.

If the Internet was the enabler of Tapscott’s b-webs, the cloud is the next step. More than just leveraging connectivity to reduce transaction costs—search, contracting, and coordination—the cloud, and its evolution to the Intercloud43, is the IT parallel. In a world where the enterprise was a closed ...