Conclusion & Future Outlook
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The strategic layer refers to a suitable cloud strategy, which is necessary to
successfully implement cloud services into the business environment. Such a cloud
strategy must consist of clearly defined objectives, cloud policies and it must be
closely related to the overarching business strategy. The willingness of the
management is also a key aspect in this context. On the personnel level, there is a
lot of change involved. The role of the IT departments changes, new tasks and
requirements accompany the employment of cloud services, such as for example
data analysis. The “technical-driven” IT is replaced by a “service-oriented” one,
which means that it is crucial for the success of a cloud project to grow in a positive
environment, with employees who are willing to perform this change and are well
prepared for their new role in the IT department.
The technical layer refers to the IT infrastructure itself. Cloud services are mostly
standardized services, thus they also demand a certain degree of standardization
from the company’s internal IT infrastructure. Before employing cloud services in a
business environment it is therefore necessary to analyze the internal structure. If
there are many “island solutions”, meaning different heterogeneous systems, the
potential value derived from cloud services is relatively low, because the company
is not able to unleash the full potential of it. This is because of the fact that cloud
services should seamlessly integrate into an existing architecture or replace it.
Cloud services are solely provisioned through the Internet. Thus a stable and fast
Internet connection is mandatory. Especially companies, which are located in rural
or more remote areas, must take this into consideration. In such areas broadband
Internet is often only provided asynchronously. This means that although a high
download rate is possible, the upload rate is inversely proportional to the download
speed. Hence the overall performance is also a key element of the technical
considerations.
What are potential dangers and pitfalls when using cloud services in a
corporate environment?
