I'm often taken aback by businesses that are unaware of the influence of cloud computing when it's about to hit them upside the head.
We saw this before, back in the early days of the Web. Some businesses got it and thrived. Others did not, and they had to play catch-up or shut their doors. Indeed, a great business skill is to understand when technology will require you to move in different directions, and cloud computing is another instance of that shift.
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What are they missing? I have a few items for the list.
Reduction in IT overhead creates a price advantage. How can your competition sell its product at the price it does and still make money? Well, instead of putting $50 million a year into IT, the company has cut its costs in half through the use of cloud-based services. Or perhaps it avoided an investment in that new data center. Instead, thanks to the use of the cloud, your competitor passed that savings on as lower prices, which increased sales and led to higher profits.
Better use of business data. The cloud provides the ability to deal with massive amounts of data, a traditionally cost-prohibitive endeavor. Many businesses are taking advantage of the access to information to better determine trends and opportunities they were once blind to. They get better and make smarter allocation of resources by using those newfangled, cloud-based big data systems -- and the ability they provide to turn this new access to business intelligence into profit. If that's your competition, watch out.
Expansion through new IT agility. Businesses looking to expand through acquisition are often blocked by the years it can take to convert existing IT systems. The cloud provides much better agility, including the ability to quickly bring on board infrastructure, applications, and business data. By leveraging this newfound agility, many businesses will find that they can expand much faster -- at less cost and with less risk.
The use of cloud computing becomes a competitive advantage. You need to make sure you see this technology coming, or it could quickly run you over if your competition gets it first.
This article, "3 game-changers in the cloud: Get ready -- or else," originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of David Linthicum's Cloud Computing blog and track the latest developments in cloud computing at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.