Strategic requirements for including cloud computing for small businesses are not limited to choosing the provider, platform but also calculating the risks. The outsourcing of business activities is a major change in the business processes in this decade and it should be well planned and supported using standardized methods and procedures of decision making. Before a company decides it needs for a cloud solution and request a vendor, many points needs to be clearly defined. The first step in the way to the use of Cloud computing for Small Businesses is to clarify the strategic points. The company needs to develop a realistic idea where the value of the product or service is realized to results.
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Strategic Requirements for Including Cloud computing for Small Businesses
The following questions in the context of Strategic Requirements for Including Cloud computing for Small Businesses :
- If the swap is in line with the business strategy?
- Will it support at the point of concentration on the core business?
- Will it helps to achieve the transparency of costs in the short and long-term financial goals?
- Are safety requirements is supportive of third party applications and data?
- How does the outsourcing of business processes will go on?
- Does the change will give the application the desired competitive advantage?
- Is already a well known service provider offers the necessary services under one roof?
It is a mandatory need to answer these questions which will be analyzed in the second phase of the organizational environment of the company. For this, the information about the performance of each and individual primary and secondary activities of the company are to be recorded and evaluated in the context of an analysis. The aim of the actual analysis is to identify the core competencies of the company and to make use of the services that are eligible for justifying outsourcing, transparently. One should check whether the outsourcing of such areas of the following destinations with cloud technologies is/are available :
- Improving the usability of applications via standardized interfaces
- Simplification of work processes through standardization
- Improving the quality of the results with access to high-quality hardware and software
- Cost reduction through savings in IT sector
- Improving accessibility to customers and suppliers
In the economic literature, it is stated that the company will invest in the areas where it already sees the core competence has minimum growth or existence. Again, the business activities that less known and is dominated by tends to buy must be avoided. By outsourcing ,usually not the core activities in the IT sector demands a specialist, the cloud model should help the company to focus more on their strengths to focus.
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Strategic Requirements for Including Cloud computing for Small Businesses : Organizational Requirements
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According to the strategic considerations, the first phase is to analyze the cloud competence, it goes into the second phase of analysis primarily is to examine the terms and conditions of the company for the use of any cloud technology. At the beginning, this general information about the company is collected, such as the number of sites, the size of the company or existing collaborations with other companies (for medium-sized companies often have very specific production processes). The inclusion of interdependencies in the different areas makes the outsourcing decision. Consequently, for different levels of the company, the company needs to verify the suitability of a company for cloud computing and must be considered individually, depending on which business model to be followed; for the outsourcing of office applications, for example has very different implications than for the others, one example can be the EPP-system.
Strategic Requirements for Including Cloud computing for Small Businesses : Economy
The economy is the most important argument for or against the introduction of a new technology. Therefore, an economic analysis should be carried out for the cloud launch, which allows to estimate the economic potential of cloud deployment. For the analysis of the economics of cloud deployment prospects, the value chain, the use of technology, personnel and corporate strategy are taken into account. It should be noted that costs and benefits are often not due to measurable quantities. Rather, the benefits can only be described by qualitative, non-quantifiable measures and the subjective assessment of the analyst. [50] for decision support, the cost-benefit comparison technique can be used. The following table lists the most common measurement criteria of cloud computing to be associated costs or the benefits.
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Depending on the individual and the probability of weighting of each factor, the comparison will show the tendency for or against the cloud model adaptation :
| Classification | Usage | Costs |
|---|---|---|
| Direct (= internal) | Billing according to consumption | Terms costs |
| Indirect (= external) | Environmentally friendly due to less power consumption | Travel expenses to the third project |
| Tangible (directly measurable) | Savings in software licenses, electricity, personal savings, lower investment costs for hardware and software necessary for building rents and taxes for the home office. | Migration costs, travel expenses, costs of internal project staff, training costs, loss of production, process re-engineering costs, SLA costs (reliability and availability), costs due to incompatibility, additional costs for in-house developments. |
| Intangible (not directly measurable) | Higher employee productivity, global reach, greater flexibility, better working conditions, reduction in downtime. | Opportunity costs, management costs through the misuse of data, employee dissatisfaction |
| Primary | Process orientation, lower operating costs, improvement of quality through SLAs | Monitoring and control of costs, transactional costs |
| Secondary | Reduction / avoidance of internal helpdesk, shrinking of IT – landscape | Damage from loss of data |
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