Member Article

The benefit of hindsight – if only you knew the business benefits of true cloud computing

According to Mick Keeble, head of managed services at Perfect Image, so many businesses review their IT systems and infrastructure with the benefit of hindsight, wishing they’d been better informed to make smarter purchasing decisions. Here, he discusses the friction between business needs and IT needs, and explains the win-win solution for next the time you’re reviewing your IT systems.

Imagine a toy retailer. The IT manager is informed by his managing director that they are expecting to see increased website visits, as the latest ‘must-have’ Christmas toy for kids is being released to the market over the coming days. To help meet this demand, the IT manager is instructed to buy in an extra server to ensure that the website does not crash and can sufficiently cope with the increased visitor numbers.

The IT manager willingly does as he is requested and purchases the additional server. As expected, the toy retailer does see an increase in traffic to the website once the new product is launched. However, once the initial flurry dies down, the demands on the availability of its IT goes back to normal. The IT guy is now stuck with a server that is redundant – it isn’t being used because it doesn’t need to be used – and has cost him a small fortune in the process.

In this scenario, you can see the friction between the IT needs and the business needs. The IT team needed a flexible solution that could scale up to alleviate the pressures of the increased web traffic, but that could then be dialled back down when normal levels resumed. The managing director knew there was a business need – he needed the toy retailer to be front and centre when the new Christmas toy launched to ensure KPIs and business targets were met.

The problem is, the additional server wasn’t the required win-win solution and instead meant the IT team’s budget took a big hit with limited long-term ROI. Yes, the new server no doubt provided a short term boost in the sales when the new toy was launched and therefore you could argue achieved ROI. However, over the lifespan of the piece of the equipment, the cost per use ratio is so high, that actually, it wasn’t a very wise investment at all.

We might ponder, that if the IT manager had known about the business benefits of true cloud computing with Amazon Web Services (AWS), he’d have known there was no need to purchase an additional server, and could have used AWS to scale up the toy retailer’s computing power to meet the predicted increased availability demand in an educated and informed way. In addition, through capacity planning services with AWS, the IT manager could have also foresighted exactly how much additional IT power he would need to keep his systems running and the checkout till ringing during the business’ busiest time of the year. It’s a win-win situation for both the IT and the business needs.

While the toy retailer is just a hypothetical situation, it’s something we see time and time again at Perfect Image. Many of the people we speak with mutter ‘if we only knew…’. It’s true the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing – if the IT manager at the toy retailer had known about the scalability of AWS and the forward-planning it allows, he’d have saved a small fortune while reaping the business benefits of a much more effective IT solution.

Don’t end up wishing you’d had the benefit of hindsight too. For a win-win IT solution that is robust, fit for purpose and delivers real business benefits no matter your sector or service, visit: www.perfect-image.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Perfect Image .