Bala Iyer

 

On the opportunity side, we talked about the obvious ones like cost reduction and depending on specialists for services. I speculated that this technology could lead to more modular enterprises that could innovate to exploit market opportunities. Such innovation could take place internally or in concert with partners. Take the case of Google. Their infrastructure allows them to launch and test new products (like Google Finance) that are built on top of pre-existing ones. Innovation can also happen with partners. Mashups are a good example of this. Companies can allow third parties to access their applications through well defined APIs and be part of co-innovation networks. Since access to APIs is under the provider's control, they keep the option to exercise decision rights as and when they choose.

 

Many risk factors were also identified. One such risk was a dependency based one. Many cloud based services are provided by an ecosystem of vendors. With white labeled services being offered, sometimes the actual service providers are not clearly identified. This is both a good and bad thing. It is good because value added services can be provided on top of pre-existing ones. The bad news could arise from being exposed to the service provider's reliability and security flaws. Panelists talked about making this transparent via audits of dependencies and reading underlying contracts. Protection of IP rights and privacy laws was also a big one. We discussed safe harbour compliance and EU regulations. IP laws pertaining to the country hosting the data was also a risk factor.

 

An issue to address in greater depth during future sessions was the decision processing around adopting a cloud strategy. How do you decide if it is the right technology for you to adopt now?

 

Overall, good session. Please send us your feedback and suggestions.