Cloud Computing: An Opportunity to Strengthen the CIO-CFO Relationship
Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Lindsey Nelson.
Businesses of every industry and size are facing economic and market changes that often prove difficult – if not impossible – to forecast. This leaves companies vulnerable to fluctuating swings in demand and under- or over-investment in IT. Underestimating demand can lead to missed opportunities, outages, and other major disruptions to your business. Overestimating demand, on the other hand, can result in write-offs for unused capacity and facilities. The inherent flexibility of cloud computing can free CFOs and CIOs from these worries, while providing a more efficient way to manage actual demand.
While the cost benefits of cloud computing are well understood, CFOs and CIOs have had difficulty getting a handle on the greater potential benefit – business agility. Their dialogue is likely to focus on “How much capital and operational expense can we cut with cloud?” and not “How will cloud improve revenue and make us more agile?” This focus on cost savings has shaped the relationship between CFOs and CIOs at many companies…
As customers demand safer and more sustainable products, companies such as SAP are in a position to help companies stay informed about their suppliers’ materials–and those of their suppliers’ suppliers. To that end, SAP today rolls out two new cloud computing solutions that provide manufacturers and their supply chains the ability to manage and track sustainability data. True, the need to stay compliant and out of trouble is one driver. But, as sustainability becomes integrated throughout companies’ DNA, and not just a silo, it will become more important for company employees and their partners to access such information in real time–and avoid any pitfalls that could harm a company’s reputation.
Cyan, a company that has a history making optical packet networking gear as well as software to manage its own boxes and that of other network equipment companies, has hopped on the software-defined networking bandwagon with its Blue Planet controller.
Building an e-commerce platform that integrates cloud computing, social media, mobile devices and hosted applications into a single package is a tall order. But that’s what Cloudcraze, a relatively new application that has just reached version 3.0, promises to do. Here’s a look at the product, and what it says about trends in cloud computing.
Brocade, the switch company, is buying Vyatta, a company that pioneered the idea of open-source routing software, in a bid to compete in the networking world as software-defined networking severs the link between networking software and the box that it sits on.
Newvem is bringing its Amazon Web Services analytics to CIOs and IT managers via a shiny new iOS app that will let CIOs use their beloved iPads and iPhones to keep tabs on Amazon cloud services in use.
AMD has released a new range of Opteron processors, a mix of quad-core, 8-core, 12-core and 16-core parts ranging in clock speeds from 2.3 GHz to 3.5 GHz. According to the data released by AMD, these new processors will offer a 37 percent ‘uplift’ compared to the 6200-series. The processors all feature AMD’s second-generation modular core architecture codenamed "Piledriver" that allows for higher performance, and better price/performance, than the 6200-series.
Red Hat Inc, the No 1 Linux developer in the United States, is considering investing more in its research and development and sales team in China, said the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Whitehurst. In its fiscal year 2012, Red Hat’s revenue exceeded $1 billion. The company wants to reach $3 billion in the next five years. An exhibition focused on the cloud computing industry in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The sector is booming in China. [Photo/China Daily]