Hybrid Cloud Services for Industry-Specific Applications

More IT managers will turn to cloud services to accelerate their responsiveness to business needs. Quicker IT deployments, end-user self-service, and reduced start-up costs equate to faster time-to-market for many organizations. Others will want to take advantage of the ability to pivot more quickly and adapt to market changes.

Beyond the desire for better, faster and cheaper processes, cloud services will enable entirely new business models and associated revenue streams. Acceptance will advance as cloud architectures prove out the opportunities for real business innovation and new functionality.

There is no single journey to cloud adoption, but rather a wide variety of entrance ramps and paths. On the demand side, organizations have different starting points and different objectives. Fortunately, public cloud computing services can unleash an exciting mix of new technologies, architectures, and organizational approaches.

Let’s consider the needs of the evolving media sector. Innovation in business processes already struggle to keep pace with the rapid advancements in technology. While cloud computing promises to unlock new levels of automation, it could also create new opportunities for value-added systems integration and business process transformation.

Media Company Hybrid Cloud Use-Case Scenario

• The media distribution landscape is rapidly changing from silos of video distribution (within pay-TV, broadcast, retail) to multi-channel or digital distribution.
• Content creators perceive several dangers in digital media: piracy, loss of control or direct relationships, and disintermediation.
• Content creators also see an opportunity in real-time media consumption data integrated across distribution channels and devices.

Role for Cloud Technologies

• A cloud-based content registry that manages content access rights across users, content creators, distributors, and devices offers several benefits.
• For end-consumers, the registry enables convenience, personalization, and community (with access to content on multiple devices, and new social experiences).
• Content creators and other providers of the registry can take advantage of new business models based on real-time data, personalization, and user targeting.
• The registry could drive incremental media purchases and greater consumption with protected content assets, enhanced discovery, and more powerful recommendation engines.

Application Considerations

• A content registry requires significant coordination within the media industry (e.g., agreement on common methods for managing digital rights and common limits to each consumption model with rules for content use).
• The rights of both the content creators and the end-consumers must be protected in terms of how their respective data is accessed, protected, and used.

For this scenario to succeed, a wide range of players must work in concert to deliver on the promise of hybrid cloud services. Substantial opportunities for innovation and value creation exist at all levels of the stack, from data center and virtualization design to foundational systems to end-user applications to business processes.

Cloud and Managed Services Spending Forecast

Gartner recently shared their top technology predictions. They said that increased transparency -- and the need to drive business value -- are bringing disruptive change to IT organizations in 2011 and beyond. One of their key findings: cloud computing will enable many organizations to exploit internal capabilities to establish new business service revenue streams.

Other informed industry analysts share a similar point of view.

Businesses are increasingly moving their computing and collaboration applications to the cloud, and their shift in IT spending reflects that change in behavior. A recent market study by In-Stat forecasts cloud computing and managed hosting spending by U.S. businesses will surpass $13 billion in 2014, up from less than 3 billion today.

“Although spending across all sectors and size of business is projected to grow, there are some segments where growth will be staggering,” says Greg Potter, Research Analyst at In-Stat.

Apparently, based on In-Stat’s assessment, the professional services and healthcare verticals will see the largest growth in spending on cloud computing services -- increasing at a rate of over 124 percent between 2010 and 2014.

In-Stat’s market study findings include the following:

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) spending will increase 112 percent between 2010 and 2014.
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) spending will approach $4 billion in 2014.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) spending will increase 113 percent to roughly $460 million in 2014.
• Small office/home office (SOHO) businesses are leading in the adoption of cloud computing services.

Green, Financial Gains from TelePresence

Telepresence video communication systems enable groups of people to meet and collaborate in multiple locations worldwide -- while feeling as if they were all in the same room together. Executives can now equate the full positive impact from several tangible benefits of utilizing telepresence systems, according to the results of a new market study commissioned by the Carbon Disclosure Project.

U.S. and U.K. businesses that substitute some business travel with telepresence meeting services can cut CO2 emissions by nearly 5.5 million metric tons in total -- the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing more than one million passenger vehicles from the road for one year -- and achieve total economy-wide financial benefits of almost $19 billion, by 2020.

Other conclusions of the global market study determined a business with $1 billion or more in annual revenue that utilize four telepresence rooms could:

• Achieve a financial return on investment in as little as 15 months.
• Save nearly 900 business trips in the first year of using telepresence.
• Reduce emissions by 2,271 metric tons over five years -- the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing 434 passenger vehicles from the road for one year.
  

The study also revealed that telepresence solutions can help speed decision-making, improve employee productivity, and provide workers with a better work-life balance.

Modeling the Benefits of Telepresence Applications
The study was produced by Verdantix, who conducted in-depth interviews with executives of 15 Global 500 firms that are early-adopters of telepresence. They used the findings of those interviews to develop a detailed model to calculate the financial return on investment (ROI) and carbon reductions of telepresence.

The model looks at projected telepresence adoption among companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenue and forecasts how the financial and carbon reduction benefits achieved by early adopters of telepresence would translate into economy-wide financial and environmental benefits in the U.S. and U.K. by 2020.

Carbon emission reductions among U.S. companies with annual revenues over $1 billion were forecast at approximately 4.6 million metric tons by 2020 -- the equivalent of removing more than 875,000 passenger vehicles from the road for one year.

Among large U.K companies, carbon emission reductions by 2020 were forecast at approximately 940,000 metric tons -- the equivalent of removing more than 179,000 passenger vehicles from the road for one year.

Total economy wide financial benefits that could be generated by 2020 as a result of large companies using telepresence in place of some business travel were forecast at over $15 billion for the U.S. and almost $4 billion in the U.K.

"Companies that invest in carbon cutting technologies and re-engineer the way they do business will not only be better placed to succeed as we transition to a low-carbon economy but can experience considerable business benefits during this transition," said CDP chief executive officer Paul Dickinson. "Telepresence is a good example of a low-carbon solution that can bring financial savings and increase productivity while reducing emissions."

Study participant Zelda Bentham, senior environment manager of global insurance company Aviva, said, "We compared executives traveling from the nine months prior to telepresence with the nine months following implementation. From an air travel perspective, we observed a 25 percent carbon footprint reduction."