A Definitive List of the Business Benefits of Cloud Computing – Part 2

Improves cash flow

The capital investment you put into an on-premise IT infrastructure is normally based on a long-range forecast of what your highest computing demands will be. But what if, as they often do, the estimates turn out to be too high? Then you’ll have to bear with the huge depreciation cost or monthly amortisation of a grossly underutilised asset for the next couple of years.

That’s why a cloud-based IT infrastructure is much better. With its on-demand, utility-based pricing model, cloud solutions provide companies with clearer financial visibility. You spend on something you’ve already fully utilised, not something you only hope to fully utilise in the future.

How exactly does cloud computing’s on-demand, utility-based pricing work? Well, it’s really very similar to the way you pay for electricity. Let me give you an example. In Amazon’s EC2 cloud offering, consumers are billed on what they call a per instance-hour basis.

Meaning, if some of your servers aren’t needed at night and only need to run 10 hours a day, then you can stop those server instances when the day is done. When you receive your bill, ?you’ll be charged the cost of only 10 hours per day x the number of days those servers were operational.

The advantages of OPEX-based IT spending gets even better when we start talking about businesses that experience sudden spikes or seasonal spikes in consumer demand as in the case of retail, marketing, logistics and others. If you’re running any of these businesses and the demand shoots up ?say during the Christmas season, you can readily scale up your servers, memory, storage, and other computing resources to the required capacity. Then when the season ends and demand goes back to normal, you can just as easily release those resources that are no longer needed.

Compare that with a traditional IT infrastructure wherein you’d have to predict the highest possible computing demand for the next Christmas season and then build an infrastructure that can satisfy it. During the high months, your infrastructure may come out fully utilised. But what about the rest of the year after that?

Since cloud services are delivered and consumed on-demand, you’ll have more cash on hand than if you had invested in an on-premise IT infrastructure. That means more money to finance other operating expenses or other endeavors like Business Intelligence and analytics, marketing projects, sales incentives, IT innovations, store or office expansions, and many others.

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Implementing Matrix Management

Matrix management is a culture change. More than the hierarchical structures, lines of responsibilities, modes of communication and channels of decision-making, it is a concept that needs to be planned ahead and managed appropriately over time.

Implementing matrix management to any organization can be confusing. It is essential to ensure that it fits right to your business strategies, skills and competencies. With this, realizing matrix management should not be taken lightly. Careful stages should be considered, instead.

Here are the steps to proper implementation of matrix management:

Consider Your Business Context

You need to evaluate your organisation to analyse what are your development needs with regards to skills, products, services and market environment. This will help you decide on what type of matrix structure you will apply in your organisation. Consider the following questions in building up your context:

What is our strategy?
Where are the demands in our business?
What are the structures that our competitors currently employ?
What are the talents that my people possess?
What are other business organizations doing?

Set Your Implementation Scope

Next, you need to define the parameter and set the scope of your implementation. What area in your business do you think matrix management will successfully work? There are several things that you need to consider in setting your scope. You have to make sure that it works well with your overall business strategies, that it can be excellently communicated and easily understood. Also, you must ensure that you acquire the necessary talents and skills in the business to deliver the new system of responsibilities.

Implement the New Structure

When you have already decided what structure type you will implement, you are ready to give it a go. You will need to establish new communication channels so you can monitor the progress and receive feedback effectively.

Here?s how to apply the matrix structure:

Highlight your development needs
Define roles based on outputs and not inputs
Line up procedures and systems to support the structure and the behaviour that comes with it.
Invest in training and development
Support the key people in the structure by coaching them to better adapt in changes
Communicate regularly
Monitor progress and make necessary adjustments

Review the Matrix Structure, Roles and Responsibilities

Organisations that successfully implement matrix management adapt to the changes in their environment. With this, they do regular evaluations to highlight the need for changes and revisions. The review can either focus on the structure only or to the entire process as a whole. The results can alter the structure, the roles involved and the responsibilities taken.

The process of implementing matrix management follows a step-by step method. Each stage is equally important with the rest. Hence, if you plan to exploit it in your organisation, you have to recognise the purpose of each step and follow it appropriately. Balance is the key. And when you achieve stability in matrix management, amidst the complex changes in the world of business, then your organisational success is just around the corner.

Is Your Project Agile, a Scrum or a Kanban?

Few projects pan out the way we expect when starting out. This is normal in any creative planning phase. We half suspect the ones that follow a straight line are the exceptions to the rule. Urban legend has it; Edison made a thousand prototypes before his first bulb lit up, and then went on to comment, ?genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration?. Later, he added that many of life’s failures are people who did not realise just how close they were to success when they gave up.

So be it to this day, and so be it with project planning too. There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to it. Agile, Scrum and Kanban each have their supporters and places where they do well. Project planning often works best when we use a sequential combination of them, appropriate to what is currently happening on the ground.

Of the three, Agile is by far the most comprehensive. It provides a structure that begins with project vision / conceptualisation, and goes as far as celebration when the job is over, and retrospective discussion afterwards. However, the emphasis on daily planning meetings may dent freethinking, and even smother it.

Scrum on the other hand says ?forget all that bureaucracy?. There is a job to do and today is the day we are going to do it. Although the core Agile teamwork is still there it ignores macro project planning, and could not be bothered with staying in touch with customers. If using Scrum, it is best to give those jobs to someone else.

The joker in the pack is Kanban, It believes that rules are there to substitute for thought, and that true progress only comes from responsible freedom. It belongs in mature organisations that have passed through Scrum and Agile phases and have embarked on a voyage towards perfection.

That said, there can be no substitute for human leadership, especially when defined as the social influence that binds the efforts of others towards a single task.

ISO in Energy management

Every industry has its own set levels of quality that are considered acceptable or desirable. Energy performance like any other field is governed by some set standards. These differ across regions but international standards do exist.

ISO 50001 is the international energy standard applicable to both large and small organisations irrespective of geographical, cultural or social conditions. It outlines the best energy management practices that are considered to be the best by specifying that an organisation must integrate an energy management system and institute an energy policy, objectives, targets, and action plans taking into account legal requirements and information related to significant energy use. The energy standard is applicable to organisations.

What’s the importance of attaining energy certification?

ISO certification in any industry is a demonstration of quality or that a service or product meets the expected service standards. In energy management, ISO certification is a demonstration that an organisation or company has implemented sustainable energy management systems, completed a baseline of energy use and, is committed to continuously improve its energy performance. In addition, ISO certification assists organisations in the following ways:

? Organisations are able to optimise the existing energy-consuming assets

? Offers guidance on bench-marking, measuring, documenting, and reporting energy intensity improvements and their projected impact on reducing GHG emissions

? Creates transparency and facilitates communication on the management of energy resources

? Promotes energy management best practices and reinforces good energy management behaviours

? Assists facilities in evaluating and prioritising the implementation of new energy-efficient technologies

? Provides a framework for promoting energy efficiency throughout the supply chain

? Facilitates energy management improvements in the context of GHG emission reduction projects: The reduction of carbon emissions means therefore an organisation is able to meet government carbon reduction targets by demonstrating environmental credentials. The accruing benefits are many, ranging from increased investor confidence to more tender opportunities

Energy management software plays a vital role in helping organisations comply with energy standards through improved performance across the various functions in an organisation.