What is Your 2017 Business Strategy?

Mr. Jeffrey Kaplan Talks About The Cloud Channel

By G C Network | October 6, 2011

This afternoon I had a very interesting discussion with Mr. Jeffrey Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace. His firm is focused entirely on the…

The Economic Benefit of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | October 2, 2011

(The following is the Executive Summary of a recent NJVC Executive Whitepaper. The full version is available at NJVC.com ) Cloud computing, as defined by the National Institute of Standards…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies: Part 4 – Cloud Computing for Defense and Intelligence

By G C Network | September 15, 2011

(This is part 4 of the series entitled “Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies”. First published on Forbes.com, this series provides the content of a whitepaper I recently…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies : Part 3 – Cloud Transition Lessons Learned

By G C Network | September 13, 2011

(This is part 3 of the series entitled “Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies”. First published on Forbes.com, this series provides the content of a whitepaper I recently…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies : Part 2 – Challenges of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 9, 2011

(This is part 2 of the series entitled “Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies” that first appeared on Forbes.com. This series provides the content of a whitepaper I…

Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies : Part 1-Introduction

By G C Network | September 8, 2011

(This post first appeared on “Cloud Musings on Forbes”. This series provides the content of a whitepaper I recently authored. A copy of the complete whitepaper is available at NJVC.com…

FedPlatform.org Focuses on a Government PaaS

By G C Network | August 26, 2011

   With GSA now issuing ATOs and Amazon launching it’s own government specific cloud, IaaS for government agencies is now a reality.  This next step in this “Cloud First” march…

On The Frontlines: GovCloud and Cybersecurity

By G C Network | July 28, 2011

My friends at Trezza Media recently published a couple of great online documents on GovCloud and Cyber. Your should especially check out the “Cloud Chopping Made Easy” by David McClure…

GovCloud Is Now For Real !!

By G C Network | July 3, 2011

On Friday July 1, Infrastructure-as-a-Services for the US federal government became a reality with Authority to Operate (ATO) approval for the following vendors: Web Hosting CGI Federal Computer Literacy World…

The Economic Impact of GovCloud

By G C Network | June 26, 2011

What a month! June has really been busy!! Just now getting around to doing a post about CloudExpo 2011 in New York.With over 5000 delegates in attendance, it was just…

Photo credit: Shutterstock


End of year predictions in December are as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise, but a recent video on 2017 Technology Trends helped me really understand how important a digital transformation strategy is to just about any business executive. The CSC Town Hall conversation actually identified some of the specific tasks that today’s corporate executive really need to address in the coming year. To enhance your opportunity for 2017 business success, your action item list should include:

  • Reconfiguring both corporate front and back office operations for digital execution which is expected to reshape organizational structures, employee compensation models and every business’ partner community;
  • Preparing for intelligent machines advisory services to the enterprise that will drastically increase productivity and business competition;
  • Leveraging the industrial internet, aka the Internet of Things, that will use sensor cross connectivity to improve human safety and machine productivity
  • Dealing with radically new and culturally driven business innovations that originate from the East Asian “Sinosphere”
  • Using simplified cloud computing platforms that will drive 80% of all corporate information technology into public cloud platforms by 2020; and
  • Capturing the value proposition of the truly interactive virtual experience and digital interface for enhanced user experience and worker productivity

·  
To survive these imminent changes, corporations must identify new transformational business opportunities within the context of their specific industry vertical and competitive landscape. This requires much improved collaboration between business and technology leaders around developing an explicit linkage between the cloud computing economic model and the relevant business economic model. This linkage will inevitably include the effective use of virtual IT operational models that include dynamic infrastructure provisioning, infrastructure auto-scaling, application microservices and serverless computing. Preparing for these changes may also require a rethinking of your core business because customer experience design may actually drive your business success. Since quality experiences are based on customer empathy, business analytics, and cognitive technology, a successful business strategy may need to blend all of those capabilities. This also means having an ability to engage with both your customers and employees in meaningful ways, no matter where they happen to be.


Your corporate information technology team itself will also need to deal with an extremely rapid shift from technology operations to robust and automated IT service management. The coming transition to a public cloud dominated IT industry landscape also will also demand corporate strategies around:
  • Matching cloud deployment and service model options to organizational risk tolerance;
  • Enhancing organizational expertise on cloud computing through an increased training investment strategy; and
  • Preventing digital operations failures due to an inability to monitor and enforce the necessarily strict IT governance models.

One final thought. Organizational risk tolerance levels may also need some significant recalibration because it only takes one successful “fail-fast” entrepreneur to reshape an entire industry. Chief financial officers and chief risk officers need to take a holistic approach that integrates business risk management and performance management, including compliance where required, as part of the overall business strategy and execution. In addressing this need, external risk management services may be the key to evolving your company from basic compliance and ad-hoc responses, to optimized business risk management, in which the value of risk management far outweighs the costs. 

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit ITBizAdvisor.com.

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2016)

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network