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CW

Whitepaper
Improving business
performance through new
IT service delivery models
Collaborative technology can reshape relationships within organisations,
across supply chains and with customers. This report looks at how
trends such as cloud computing, mobility and collaboration will improve
IT service delivery across all aspects of business operations.
Cloud computing services bought in by companies are estimated to make up over
10% of the spending on external IT services worldwide, according to analyst Gartner.
This illustrates that firms are already looking to the cloud to support new IT service
delivery models like software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Some observers even argue that many firms are
moving to an everything-as-a-service (EaaS) model using the cloud.
The cloud market is evolving rapidly, with 39% of organisations worldwide indicating
they have allocated IT budget to cloud computing as a key initiative for their
organisation, says Gartner analyst Bob Igou. Gartner also found that 46% of firms with
budgets allocated to cloud computing indicated they planned to increase the use of
cloud services from external providers. Igou says these are healthy investment trends
for cloud computing, and indicates a shift in spending from traditional IT assets in the
datacentre, for example, towards assets accessed in the cloud. He says the trends are
good news for IT service providers that have professional services geared to deploying
cloud environments and those that deliver cloud services.
Cloud brokers
As part of the move to the cloud, demand is shifting from traditional proprietary and
highly customised systems to ubiquitous assets that are accessed by customers and
others. But with this trend comes new demands placed on those expected to plan and
deploy these new IT service delivery requirements. Thats why some organisations may
need help in finding the right cloud service or application via the cloud for corporate
users, partners, and customers.
Enter the phenomenon of the cloud broker, a specialist who can find the right service
for firms coming into the cloud for the first time or expanding existing strategies.
Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer says, What sits between you and the cloud will become
a critical success factor in cloud computing as cloud services multiply and expand faster
than the ability of cloud consumers to manage or govern them in use.
He says, The growth of service brokerage businesses will increase the ability of cloud
consumers to use services in a trustworthy manner. And cloud service providers must
begin to partner with cloud brokerages to ensure that they can deliver the services they
promote.
From cost centre to business centric
The cloud is also driving the migration from the IT as a cost centre model to a more
business-centric IT as a service model. This new model of IT creates improved
approaches at each critical layer of a modern IT architecture: infrastructure, applications
and user access.
IT shifts from simply producing IT services, to optimising production and consumption
of those services in ways consistent with business requirements. This changes the role
of IT from a cost centre to a centre of strategic value. A cloud infrastructure using this
principle will lead to technology and services being delivered to corporate users and
customers that they need to do their jobs or complete transactions, for example, rather
than technologies being deployed to support IT itself.
With this model, IT should be able to produce systems that offer self-service, with
policies and contracts aligning resources to business needs. The physical boundaries
that have governed enterprise IT will erode, establishing pools of resources combining
those of the enterprise datacentre with those provided by external or public cloud

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providers. This will be done without compromising security or quality of service. For the
consumer of IT services, the result will be near limitless on-demand resources, with cost
structures and performance levels matched to business priorities.
Unified communications
The service-based nature of the cloud is also seen as a driver for the wider adoption
of unified communications (UC), which cover and combine desk, remote and mobile
working sometimes known as collaboration-as-a-service. With this way of UC
working in the cloud companies can activate employee subscriptions to some or all of
the available services as needed, and pay for the services on a per-user basis. There is
also no need to purchase additional computer hardware and software to do so.
Analyst Frost & Sullivan says the recession has driven the enterprise cloud-based UC
market in Europe. Companies want to use UC to cuts costs and increase productivity,
but they are looking at alternative delivery models in the face of limited capital expenditure
budgets, says the analyst, and this is where the cloud comes in. Frost & Sullivan says the
European cloud-based UC services market was worth a modest 47m (39.3m) in 2009,
but estimates this will reach 1.6bn (1.3m) in 2014, growing at a compound annual
growth rate of 79.3%.
Frost & Sullivan analyst Dorota Oviedo says, The down economy favours operating
expenditure-based solutions, and customers want flexibility as they focus on core
competencies. All this boosts cloud-based UC services adoption.
Cloud opportunities
Other IT service delivery services that can be provided via the cloud include:
n Cloud data storage with data-retention IT consulting services that deliver a flexible
solution for managing and retrieving data over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis.
n Cloud-based on-demand identity and access management services that make it easier
and more cost-effective for enterprise clients to securely extend and manage user access
to cloud-based resources, while maintaining control over policies and governance.
n Security-as-a-service to give companies the ability to quickly and easily add robust
security services and avoid purchasing expensive equipment. Such services enable
customers to quickly and easily secure new locations with the latest security technology.
They can use a centralised management console which supports real-time provisioning
and administration.
n Enterprise mobility-as-a-service which allows on-the-go workers to quickly and
securely access their corporate networks, while making it easier for IT managers to
manage a global mobile workforce. Such an offering may use advanced software and an
intuitive user interface to enable employee laptops, netbooks and smartphones to detect
and connect to the best network service at a given time and place.
Hosted e-mail
While the cloud is being used to support new IT service delivery models, it is also being
used to extend the market for existing hosted services. Take e-mail for instance; after
years of uncertainty, analyst Frost & Sullivan says the North American hosted enterprise
e-mail market has finally taken off. Because businesses perceive e-mail as missioncritical, they were in the past sceptical about e-mail applications residing outside the
enterprise in a third-party datacentre, says the analyst.
However, the entry of large cloud-based providers has lent credibility to the SaaS delivery
model, says Frost & Sullivan. In addition, technology maturity and cost advantages have
helped spur the growth of hosted e-mail services among enterprise users.
Frost & Sullivan says the North American hosted enterprise e-mail market was worth over
$319m (267m) in 2008, but with the help of the cloud it expects it will reach $604m
(506m) by 2015. E-mail is still one of the most critical communication tools available to
business users, says Frost & Sullivan analyst Subha Rama. Though the technology itself
is not new, innovative delivery models using the cloud are evolving rapidly.
Rama says a major driver for this change is cost, closely followed by the growing
complexity of e-mail systems. The analyst says on-premise e-mail platforms are
complicated, expensive, and require a certain level of expertise and investment
capabilities. Increasing e-mail sizes and larger storage requirements have also
contributed to escalating costs. And archiving, compliance and security add layers of
complexity to the e-mail environment.
While established hosted e-mail providers are offering integration capabilities and tools
to differentiate themselves in the market, says Frost & Sullivan, e-mail software suppliers
have launched cloud-compliant e-mail and collaboration products. And pure cloud-based
e-mail providers are leveraging their low-cost delivery model to encourage migration from
on-premise platforms. Enterprises are already experimenting with hybrid e-mail models
to reduce costs. As service providers and application suppliers collaborate to integrate
more applications, this hybrid model would work well even for large organisations, says
Frost & Sullivan.

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