'IT is an enabler of business strategy'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Over this series of 12 parts (including this one), we have discussed the cloud, primarily from a cloud ERP point of view.

Starting off with the concepts such as convergence, elasticity, and intermediation, we touched upon subjects, including industry solutions, user tool kits and analytics.

Popular research analysts are of a view that cloud ERP spend could have been as high as 25 to 30 per cent of the total spent on ERP class solutions in the last fiscal. That’s a significant percentage and is likely to increase, as the consumer community articulates policy that will enable the adoption of the cloud within the organization.

The following points will make cloud a compulsion:

1. IT is an enabler of your business strategy, and not the strategy itself.

2. Being a non-core function, it is best expensed out.

3. The elasticity of IT is the key. Just as business enablement through manpower is dependent on the business plan; IT enablement should follow the same logic.

Also read: 'Extension kits increase referencing abilities'

4. Cloud intermediaries will proliferate and multiply in the short run. The importance of fundamental value addition will outstrip benefits of new technologies and proliferating capabilities.

5. The fundamental value addition has only through threads to tread upon, which is linked to IT’s fundamental capacity to handle repetitive tasks and improve connectivity.

6. Conceptual leadership will outstrip feature leadership as the former improves the operating leverage while latter merely fills an evaluation sheet.

7. Conceptual leadership can be achieved by sticking to the fundamentals of the cloud, which is tantamount to fixing the problems IT created in the yesteryears.

8. Perpetuity in the maintenance and value creation akin to the time value of money should be the guiding principle to conceptual leadership.

9. Perpetuity in turn refers to what we said in the first part about having a perspective of things to come, in terms of business lifestyle, work place complexities, business strategy, in that order.

10. Business lifestyle will dictate the device or resources (read intermediaries) that will connect the business user to the cloud

11. Workplace complexity refers to collaboration (at work) at a fundamental level and leadership models that organizations choose to adopt.

12. Business strategy will determine the information processing and channels through a business may desire to reach their consumer community.

13. Concepts should build on the promise of upcoming technologies such as the Grid and Quantum Computing

14. A mere recognition of the changing landscape is insufficient. A will to change it and improving the quality of life will take us forward.

I thank you all for being with us in this series. I hope it proved beneficial. I welcome any feedback that you might like to share.

Shyaam Sunder K is chief knowledge officer at Ramco Systems