Modern innovations in networking technology, virtualization, Big Data processing, storage, and analysis, along with cloud computing, are giving new shape to the information technology realm of today and the future.
Organizations have, for many years, effectively sourced a number of non-core business functions to outside service providers.
Marketing, accounting, customer service, sales and administrative staffing are just a few examples of such outsourcing; today, organizations can also get computing services on demand in virtually any location, and tailor those services to their specific needs. Such “micro outsourcing” can apply to functions such as processing, storage, software, security, and support.
Organizations that opt to utilize cloud services may choose to go “all the way” on the cloud, or only source some business functions such as marketing and sales funnels, tech support, or customer relationship management, to name a just a few, while keeping others in-house with on-premise solutions.
Given the cost of ownership implications of on-premise solutions for information technology and organizational processes, in conjunction with Big Data and its impact on everything from marketing to disaster response, it’s almost impossible for organizations to avoid sourcing at least some portion of business functionality to cloud-based solutions.
