K--Service Delivery and the Cloud
All Eyes Are on Los Angeles as City Deploys Cloud-Based E-MailThe Los Angeles Information Technology Agency made a procurement that will replace the city's aging email system with a new Web-based enterprise solution. At the core, there are two simple goals: improve service and save money.
SERVICE DELIVERY FRAMEWORKWith the growth of Web services and Enterprise SOA investments, new trends and delivery models are emerging for extending and trading services outside traditional ownership and provisioning boundaries. Key examples of on demand service provisioning include: software-as-a-service, business process outsourcing, service marketplaces, B2B integration platforms and gateways, multi-enterprise platforms, and digital and telecommunications content value-chains. These developments are setting the stage for the next service-oriented revolution, namely the Internet of Services, through which an Internet-scale infrastructure is envisaged to create a level playing field for supply and demand of services. The Internet of Services will provide a highly-distributed, multi-layer IT infrastructure that is capable of supporting flexible ways in which services are exposed, repurposed, hosted, channeled and interacted with.
Government Assess Benefits of Cloud Computing ProvidersDespite growing mandates for government agencies at all levels to adopt cloud computing, many agencies understandably question the benefits and weigh the security risks of making a move to this newest brand of outsourcing. A historical perspective can help shed light on the pros and cons of making such a decision.
CLOUD COMPUTING PRIME TIMEEven though the technology faces several significant challenges, many vendors and industry observers predict a bright future for cloud computing.
Cloud Computing PaybackToday, organizations of all sizes are investigating cloud computing and the benefits it can bring to their company. Given the numerous claims of savings and productivity improvements, it can become difficult to understand exactly how these benefits might apply to your particular IT environment. The representations of savings in this guide are based on a 2009 Cloud Computing ROI study conducted by IBM Research.
The Politics of Private Cloud ComputingWhen it comes to private cloud computing these days, there’s a lot of bluster in the air. In fact, it seems like every time you turn around there is yet another vendor announcing yet another turnkey computing solution specifically designed for private cloud computing requirements.$
Security of Cloud Computing UsersA Study of Practitioners in the US & Europe.
The purpose of the study is to learn from IT and IT security practitioners in the US and Europe the current state of cloud computing security in their organizations and the most significant changes anticipated by respondents as computing resources migrate from on-premise to the cloud. As organizations grapple with how to create a secure cloud computing environment, we believe the findings from this study can provide guidance on how to address business and technology risks exacerbated by cloud computing. Specifically, in this study cloud computing users evaluate security technologies and control practices they believe are best deployed either on-premise or in the cloud. We also asked cloud computing users to rate the types of sensitive or confidential information too risky to be moved to the cloud.#
Six questions every government executive should ask about cloud computing,0As with most technologies, the significance of cloud computing will differ widely from industry to industry. Accenture has identified six key questions government decision makers should ask about this still-new phenomenon. By focusing on these questions, government executives can narrow their inquiries and start to identify opportunities and risks that will impact their own organizations.34
ENTER THE CLOUD MODELOrganizations of all sizes are considering the cloud paradigm as an option for managing their security and archiving capabilities. The cloud model can be much less expensive than its on-premise alternative and provide more predictable costs of ownership. Further, organizations that use the right cloud-based solution can achieve better reliability, better threat detection, and more robust archiving capabilities. Organizations that manage both security and archiving in a coordinated fashion can realize even more benefits, such as easier policy management and more efficient deployment of future services.
New Cloud BurstWith IBM's new CloudBurst offering, cloud infrastructures have become easier to deploy, manage and leverage for business value than ever before. IBM CloudBurst™ represents a new approach to private clouds, a solution through which common IT challenges and complexities can more easily be controlled or diminished
Southwest One: Case study in innovation collaborationthree public-sector entities in the UK took an unprecedented step toward the governance model of the future: innovative collaboration. Acting alone, none of the three entities— Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council, and Avon and Somerset Police — could afford or produce the results they desired within their existing capacities. So they joined forces with IBM to leverage their respective resources and strengths toward a common purpose. The result is Southwest One, a 10-year joint venture to transform both frontline services and back-office operations of the three entities.
Transformation goals include improved service delivery, greater efficiencies, lower costs and access to advanced technologies.
EU Multi-channel Delivery Strategies and Sustainable Business Models for Public Services addressing Socially disadvantaged GThis Study identifies how multichannel access to inclusive e-government services could contribute to delivering sustainable outcomes for socially excluded groups. The key outcomes from the study show that inclusion is not achieved simply by giving people access to public services though a wide range of electronic channels such as computers, mobile phones, digital interactive TV, or public kiosks. They also show that sustainable delivery of services to socially excluded people is not simply a matter of electronic services in conjunction with non-electronic channels. Rather, the outcomes show a variety of partnerships and operational models that include people as active participants in problem solving assisted in ways that suit their needs
Dynamic InfrastructuresWith technology so pervasive, the world is getting smarter and more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, creating new opportunities at both a societal and organizational level. By harnessing the increasingly digitized world, we can help solve intractable social problems, bring organizations closer to customers, and vastly shrink decision windows that help executives drive better business outcomes. A shared, integrated and highly available infrastructure can address today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities. It can also help organizations prepare for the new risks posed by an even more connected and collaborative world. As part of IBM’s strategy for creating a dynamic infrastructure, our unique approach can help to enable visibility, control and automation across all business and IT assets through integrated service management initiatives, to optimize the IT infrastructure through virtualization and energy efficiency initiatives to achieve more with less, to address the complexity of managing data growth through information infrastructure initiatives, to leverage flexible delivery choices, including cloud computing, that match your business needs, to manage and mitigate risks with an integrated risk management strategy.
Blurring the Line Between Public and Private CloudsThe thinking behind hosted private clouds goes like this: You still access resources and applications from the public cloud provider, but you do so on a dedicated infrastructure. In that way, you maintain your own network continuity, provide your own security, and basically use it as a remote extension of your own enterprise. Hence, the public private cloud
Digital Britain recommends 'G Cloud' for government ITThe newly published Digital Britain report has advocated that more government IT applications be moved to cloud computing. In its chapter eight section on procurement, the report says that cloud computing — in which a third party takes responsibility for the technical management of IT functions — can work as a shared service for public bodies. It can provide an 'on demand' service and give organizations plenty of flexibility in their demand for and spending on IT. The report proposes the creation of a 'G Cloud' for government business applications, to run alongside the Public Service Network. It says this could be used for functions such as server and storage virtualization, and systems-management automation
Shared Services in Public Sector : Commercial models – enabling sharingThe Shared Services agenda is now well established in the public sector, with the majority of public sector organisations considering, planning, implementing or having recently implemented Shared Services in one form or another. The focus to date has been on the back office and the Finance, HR, Procurement and Estates functions in particular, although in the future, more front-office functions are likely to follow.
Eight ways that cloud computing will change businessWhen a major change arrives on the IT scene it’s not always clear what the implications will be, if any, and so for large organizations a risk-managed wait-and-see attitude tends to prevail. Occasionally however some shifts offer cost savings, improvements to operations, or ways to tackle business problems that offer significant strategic advantage. The larger the benefit in one or more of these areas, then the more strategic the advance is and the greater potential it will impact the bottom line. Cloud computing is quickly beginning to shape up as one of these major changes and the hundreds of thousands of business customers of cloud offerings from Amazon (Amazon Web Services), Sales force (Force.com), and Google (many offerings, including Google App Engine), including a growing number of Fortune 500 companies, is showing both considerable interest and momentum in the space.
Capturing the cloud: Understanding cloud computing and related technologiesLooking back to our recent technological past, it’s clear that the cloud computing movement has been coming in the time since distributed computing and its related technologies (like grid computing and SOA) gained widespread adoption. Cloud computing is now here, but many still have questions about this new technology. Part 1 of this article series discusses cloud computing in general, then dissects the layers of the cloud, presents the different cloud types, along with their benefits and drawbacks, and explains why this movement is important for enterprise developers.
What the Enterprise Needs to Know about Cloud ComputingCloud computing is heralded as the next big thing in enterprise IT. While corporate data centers and on-premise software are not going away anytime soon, “the clouds” will likely have a growing impact on enterprise IT and business activities in many large organizations. CIOs and other business leaders must look beyond the hype to see what opportunities and challenges lie in the cloud—and how this approach can be used to further the organization’s strategy to achieve high performance.
UK cabinet office - Service Design and Delivery GuideReflecting recent developments in the public service reform agenda, public service providers have requested additional guidance in the areas of : Take-up of e-services, Efficiency savings, Design of high quality public services, The Service Design and Delivery Guide provides assistance to those facing the challenge of electronically enabling public services. The assistance is made up of principles, guidance, tools and checklists that can help them succeed.