Strategy , competitive advantage and financial impact are key ingredients for companies when trying to understand Business Transformation to the Cloud. So what does it mean to your company now and into the future. It's not just about technology but more about strategy, competitive advantage and financial impact providing a framework for C Level Executives to understand the benefits of Business Transformation to the Cloud. I have broken this down into 6 logical building blocks.

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What is business transformation to the Cloud ?
Strategy, competitive advantage and financial impact are key ingredients for companies when trying to under-stand
Business Transformation to the Cloud as it’s not just about technology but providing a framework for C
Level Executives to understand what is Business Transformation to the Cloud what does it mean to your com-pany
now and into the future ?
I have broken down Business Transformation to the Cloud into 6 building blocks below.
People and Organization - which needs to be addressed via maturity capability assessment plus key C Level
Executives need to be educated to make the right decisions at the right time.
Process - by optimizing processes with Cloud Solutions to improve key business processes to maintain competi-tive
advantage and market share.
Methodology - by providing a key governance roadmap to get there.
Tools - with supporting solutions to enable the key building blocks above.
Technology - being technology agnostic is key as we see more hybrid deployments with integration becoming
the number one question for stakeholders moving to a new sustainable business as usual.
Data - start eliminating barriers quickly, informed decision processing – with in-memory predictive analyt-ics.
Bottom line improvement - enablement to deliver because it had the tools needed to make faster, more agile
decisions.
The cloud space has its own momentum beyond what any one company can control. A major shift in market
share is happening now and if most companies do not adopt a cloud strategy they will not exist in ten years or
would have lost a significant market share as this is needed for them to remain competitive or they will be ac-quired
by companies that have.

2. Companies need to have their cloud solutions advance their competitiveness and profitability in a measurable
way, not just at the departmental level, but especially at the enterprise level.
1According to Gartner, "The use of cloud computing is growing, and by 2016 this growth will increase to be-come
the bulk of new IT spend. ... 2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to
hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017."
In whatever forms it takes at each company, cloud growth will largely be driven by the business, not Information
Technology. IT won't push back on cloud computing in 2016 as much as it did in 2008, the push will still come
mainly from those in the business who seek more cost-effective ways to provide IT services, decrease time to
market, and increase agility which enables ultimate competitive advantage.
Here's how cloud is changing the way we do business - something unheard of previously in the tech-nology
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space:
Every company is now an IT company:
Non-IT companies are becoming cloud providers, supporting processes - many of them potentially revenue-generating
- for outside users. They may not call themselves "cloud companies," but that's what they're doing. In
the IT world, cloud is blurring the lines between the vendors who provided technology products and services,
and the customers that consumed them. Companies that have built and maintain their own private clouds are
extending these services to partners and customers. Many already do - consider the fact that Amazon was an
online retailer that began to offer its excess capacity to outside companies.
“Loosely coupled corporations” or Hybrid Deployments:
The term “loosely coupled” came into vogue with service-oriented architecture a few years ago, meaning an entity
or system stands fine on its own, but can be dynamically linked to other systems to complete new processes.
Cloud computing is paving the way for the loosely coupled company – which may be an entity that exists purely
1 By 2016, most new IT spending will be in the cloud. David Linthicum, InfoWorld

3. as an aggregation of third-party services, provided on an on-demand basis to meet customer demands.
"Extremely lightweight businesses":
Why invest tens of thousands of dollars in servers and software when everything you need is right in the cloud ?
The availability of cheap cloud computing may be laying the groundwork for a new generation of XLBs, or "ex-tremely
lightweight businesses." This applies to departments of larger organizations as well being able to design
new products without waiting for approval from corporate finance and IT. The distribution model is changing
rapidly with companies as companies move to the cloud in a quicker time to market with a much lower barrier to
entry giving them far better ROI and giving them a new competitive not forgetting a fraction of the original cost
on going cost of ownership.
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The problem that needs to be solved
Companies realize they are at more risk than ever before, and that the best way to mitigate their strategic risks is
to embrace the cloud in some — or most — of their organizational design.
This risk is real and pervasive. Businesses,
public and private, don’t survive as long as
they used to. Members of the S&P 500
Index are leaving at faster and faster rates,
indicating they are returning less total return
to shareholders, as a result of increasing
competition from new entrants, value
propositions that no longer fit customer
demand, and an inability to shift their
business model to compensate.
According to a recent reporting by 2The Economist Intelligence Unit, Nearly 90 percent of executives believe that
organizational agility is critical for business success. “To be competitive, companies may find themselves in a
Houdini-like twist. How can they respond quickly and nimbly to the changing environment without getting
caught in knots? In today’s knowledge age, the ability to transform information into insight in response to market
movements is core to sustainability. Companies must think of ways to make their processes more flexible.”1
2 2 How business can survive and thrive in turbulent times: A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
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4. Nevertheless, more than a quarter of the executives surveyed by The Economist Intelligence Unit believe they
are at a competitive disadvantage because they are not agile enough to anticipate fundamental marketplace shifts.
Nimble business transformation in the cloud: A competitive, even disruptive capability
Examples of business transformation to the cloud show the strategic value to existing and new companies in
capturing market share, building brands, and transforming models and customer experiences.
Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar business model for DVD and video rentals began to erode as Netflix deployed
customer analytics, large online catalogs, and outsourced high-end logistics to deliver more choice and better
recommendations to the market. Using the cloud, Netflix eliminated significant capital expenditures, improved
the customer experience, and ultimately established an entirely new platform for delivering DVDs via mail and
streaming content to at lower cost of ownership.3
Walmart is predicted to lose 10% to 30% market share to Amazon.com in the next ten years due to Amazon's
strong cloud-based online catalog and order fulfillment systems, which lower the costs of adding, managing, and
delivering a staggeringly large product offering. Walmart has an online presence, but it is behind the curve in
terms of customer habits, brand loyalty, and reach.
Oracle recently signed a nine year partnership with salesforce.com, bringing together a top on-premise services
company with deep database legacy with a company that arguably created the market for software as a service, in
which on-premise solutions are replaced with browser-delivered productivity applications. The motivation for
this partnership is in part a game of catch-up: Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who had previously written off software as
a service and Salesforce, and who wasn’t even clear on what the opportunity in the cloud represented. 4
The magazine, books, and even venerated encyclopedia brands all are reeling from cloud publishing. From
crowdsourced content on Yelp and Wikipedia to zero inventory publishing with CreateSpace and Vook, old
brands like Newseek, World Book, and Encyclopedia Britanica's business models have been broken.
3Blockbuster Video-Rental Chain Will Shut All U.S. Stores By Alex Barinka - Nov 6, 2013 1:17 PM PT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/blockbuster-video-rental-chain-will-shut-remaining-u-s-stores.html
4 As recently as 2009, Ellison was one of the industry's biggest cloud-bashers, questioning what the cloud really was,” reports Andreas
Zilch. Once a Basher, Now a Believer: Oracle Chief Larry Ellison has Come Full Circle on Cloud Computing. http://www.experton-group.
com/research/monthly-news-international/news/article/once-a-basher-now-a-believer-oracle-chief-larry-ellison-has-
come-full-circle-on-cloud-computing.html
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Impact on C Level stakeholders
C Level stakeholders want a stronger business that they own and control. Unfortunately, business
transformation offerings from big consulting firms often emphasize only tactical cost savings (carving out a
business function to external providers and/or transferring IT to the cloud), or reduced head count. Their offer
of outsourced business transformation depletes most firms of internal competence that drives innovation. Such
approaches also focus on the cost side of the equation, something that any company can do:
C Level stakeholders want true ownership of their resources and make their own business transformation to the
cloud, and beyond that to a seamless new sustainable business as usual through leveraging easy adoptable SaaS
(Software as a Service) Technology.
Integrating existing IT investments while moving them steadily towards their objectives that define a new
business as usual. The SaaS Technology is a cost-effective “consultingware” for companies to ensure their
transformation plan can be well-defined, transparent, manageable through metrics, and -- most importantly --
successfully adopted by every employee in their company.
The win/win
Customers seeking “transformation” normally seek a better run organization with stronger financials, improved
business processes which includes higher profits. Higher profits, being a function of lower cost basis and/or
higher revenues, and potentially a function of changing one’s sector focus, require complex changes to people
and processes, but often simply a change in technology is a good start. By moving to the cloud with a new best
of breed in a hybrid manner with the solution that enable seamless business transformation and integration they
can push the frontier out to give them an innovative competitive advantage.