How a Crowded Cloud Creates Many Complexities
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How a Crowded Cloud Creates Many Complexities
A failure to involve the tech department in line-of-business units' cloud app implementation efforts limits the effectiveness of these initiatives. -
Underperforming Partnership
Only 43% of survey respondents say their IT department is taking on a more "modern" approach in enabling business units to succeed, and just 36% say IT better enables business strategic initiatives in working with line-of-business units. -
Ramping Up
48% say the size of their IT team responsible for cloud apps has increased in recent years, while only 8% say it's decreased. -
Isolated Effort
Just 50% say IT collaborates with departments to make joint decisions about cloud systems. -
Valuable Intel
54% say cloud apps help improve the quality of management information within their organization, and 47% say these apps allow teams to prepare this information more rapidly. -
Sales Support
49% say cloud apps increase the quality of their customer service. -
Redundant Resources
40% say their company uses more than four cloud apps at a time. Only 15% say their organization uses a single cloud app. -
Top Issues among Cloud App-Using Companies
Capped/reduced IT budgets: 61%, Slow performance: 50%, App access: 46% -
Best Practices: Get IT Involved
Without IT's input, departments may buy cloud solutions without thinking about how multiple systems will share data, leading to integration and synchronization issues. -
Best Practices: Simplify
Reducing the number of platforms in use translates to less demands upon system back-ends, as well as the skills and resources required to support the platforms. -
Best Practices: Establish End-to-End Process Support
Take advantage of multiple platform/systems data, for example, to provide richer reports. Develop standardized metrics/KPIs for deeper insights about business insights for end users. Identify ways to speed up overall processing for complex workflows.
Organizations are frequently using multiple cloud apps at once, potentially leading to confusion, communications miscues and duplicated work systems, according to a recent survey sponsored by FinancialForce.com and conducted by ThinkJar and Beagle Research Group. The resulting report, titled "The Crowded Cloud: The Impact of Platform on Multi-Vendor Cloud Implementations," indicates that cloud apps are improving the quality of information needed to make strategic decisions, while enabling teams to deliver that information more quickly. They're also enhancing customer service capabilities. However, a failure to involve the tech department into line-of-business units' cloud app implementation efforts limits the effectiveness of these initiatives. To avoid this, IT should work with these units to provide end-to-end process support, helping users minimize workflow complexities while obtaining more meaningful, actionable business reporting. "For a long time, cloud providers have proceeded on the idea that their solutions are self-installable and self-maintainable and to a great extent they are," according to the report. "However, while one system might be capable of being administered without help from outside (a business) department, when multiple systems are used, the level of complexity jumps so that IT is once again responsible for making the trains run on time. Our data shows that the vast majority of cloud adopters have much more than one system, hence many will have integration, synchronization and update issues to deal with." Nearly 150 IT managers, administrators and other tech professionals took part in the research.
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