As the CIO, you may be asking your organization to take on something new, such as cloud-based computing.
Written about amply throughout the blogosphere, the cloud appears to have nearly everyone smitten, including, perhaps, your IT compatriots at other firms.
Sure, there’s hype, but mostly, this adoration makes sense to me. Cloud has a great story, whatever its inevitable drawbacks. There’s the promise of running necessary utility operations, such as encrypted data storage, at a lower cost, for example. There’s the promise of “slicing and dicing,” via services, various specific capabilities for better application design.
More importantly for the purposes of this blog entry, looking at sourcing assets this way forces you to evaluate what you have and why you have it. (Even projects such as server consolidation aren’t quite as illustrative, technologists have told me.)
In the mode of IT-related soul searching, you might also be considering adopting lighter software with a smaller footprint. When the app is deployed this way a main appeal is centralized management, with little client-side baggage—and less drag on performance. Again, given facts of IT life such as sunset application support, this is a great story that makes sense to explore.
Lean BPM and efficiency
I’ve got another method with a good story for your consideration. It’s called lean BPM and it’s also gathering momentum. Part deep technical analysis, part philosophical pondering, it is said to do the hard work of gutting the unnecessary out of process. It can make the process easier to manage. Lean also promises to shape business workflows in ways that are truly customer-, and personnel- friendly.
