How Cloud Computing Is Changing Management

How Cloud Computing Is Changing Management

Cloud computing is transforming how goods are designed, allowing for greater collaboration between corporate IT and other business departments such as sales, finance, and forecasting. It also encourages increased customer contact, even to the point of jointly inventing products with their customers. New means of building and deploying software, in particular, will stimulate new kinds of fast-acting organizational architectures. "Cloud-native" software emphasizes ease of use and low-impact changes to any specific software application's components. Massive programs are broken down into a collection of "microservices" that can be changed without affecting the software in use.
The opportunities provided by new technologies frequently spawn management theories and practices. Interchangeable parts, for example, sparked ideas about how to organize assembly lines and logistics. Mainframe computers enable the area of Operations Research to perform complicated calculations. Client-server technology spawned enterprise resource planning systems, which required system-wide visibility to manage business processes (BPM).
As a result, it's critical to consider how the most transformative information technology of our time, cloud computing, will affect management. What does it enable us to accomplish differently, and how will this impact our future operations?
History reveals that the primary way information technology affects management is through changes in data collecting: Operations Research's large-scale investigation revealed tedious data collection around a few measures, which was then translated to punch cards. Similarly, BPM remembered the interactions of several stakeholders throughout the product development process, including the supply chain and final assembly.

How organizations are changing

Information moves quickly in both directions between computing systems while using the cloud. As a result, features such as virtualization, scaling up or down to handle larger workloads, and automated security patching across hundreds of machines have become much more versatile. This will almost certainly imply a more flexible work structure in the interest of products and services that can adjust to meet client needs. Rapid data gathering and analysis, followed by over-the-air adjustments to product software, are significant features of the new system.
Changes in product design, greater collaboration between the corporate IT department and other business divisions, such as sales, finance, and forecasting, and more customer involvement, even to the point of jointly inventing products with their customers, are all likely outcomes of the transition to the cloud. New means of building and deploying software, in particular, will stimulate new kinds of fast-acting organizational architectures. And hearing from organizations that are already aggressively adopting these changes is the greatest way to predict how they will happen.
“It’s already reshaping organizations by transforming IT from a cost center to something with a seat at the table in a variety of meetings,” Chris Jackson, head of cloud platforms at Pearson, a global learning company, said. For example, assume Pearson is considering launching a new online learning course. Participates in early product design meetings, in this case, offering advice on how to collect user interaction data and how and how often to change a system. Previously, a job like his was only concerned with things that happened later in the process, such as launching and maintaining software.
Many people still think of public cloud computing, which firms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and my employer, Google Cloud, as a less expensive and more effective means to store and process data. Although the cost is reduced, it is still an expense, much like older computers.

How it affects product design and customer experience

However, as cloud technology advances, it will become easier for businesses to develop cloud-based products and services and model new products and marketing campaigns as cloud-based software prototypes. The cloud is also a shared storehouse for gathering and processing new data and a hub for artificial intelligence activities such as image and speech recognition.
Startups increasingly conceive their goods and services as software-centric entities from which data is regularly derived, and the evidence is already there. Changes and improvements become a part of the routine. As processes grow more iterative, organizational functions get more muddled.
Uber, the ride-hailing service, has emphasized the importance of its hybrid cloud strategy in ensuring continuous uptime and an inextricable link between product development and deployment. Uber, for example, can use a combination of mobile software, large-scale data analysis, mapping, and social networking to create a virtual fleet of taxis from private cars.
With industrial products, a similar dynamic of redefined procedures and ongoing iteration is occurring. Based in New York, Oden Technologies creates factory sensor systems that allow for continuous, exact monitoring of extensive and complicated processes.
A recent effort entailed developing a tablet-based system for performing difficult real-time calculations. Thanks to rapid testing and direct communication with the customer regarding demands and specifications during design and construction, the product, which would normally take six months to a year to build, was completed in ten weeks. In effect, the basic design and prototype evolved into the product over time, with the client participating in the process.

What else needs to change?

It should come as no surprise that management theory and applied technology are inextricably linked. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” observed William Hewlett, one of Silicon Valley’s founding fathers. But, unfortunately, it appears that the inverse is also true — what and how you measure something has an impact on how it is managed.
How soon will cloud computing have the same impact on management as a mainframe or client-server computing? In recent research, Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, and Chad Syverson revealed that substantial technological advancements could lag productivity benefits for years, if not decades. The most convincing argument for this is that for technology to have a full impact, an ecosystem of additional changes and new thinking about how we should utilize it must emerge.
According to Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, software-based breakthroughs like AI and cloud-style software will find a place faster than many of the earlier chapters. For one thing, because they are less expensive, they may be swiftly embraced by startups who are not burdened by historical costs and processes. And, unlike hardware-based advancements, this time’s effect will come from software – specifically, what happens when teams across the organization use cloud-native software to produce goods and services.
“We can replicate procedures more quickly with the cloud,” he remarked. “However, it must update three things before you can fully benefit: organizational innovation, trained human capital, and societal structures that support new technologies, such as infrastructure and legislation.” “The main concern currently,” he continued, “is that key new technologies are moving forward, and people aren’t thinking about the larger ramifications.

The shift to "cloud-native" organizations

The way software is designed for cloud computing could be just as crucial as the cloud’s physical infrastructure (which is millions of computer servers dispersed around the globe, connected by high-speed fiber-optic lines.)
“Cloud-native” software emphasizes ease of use and low-impact changes to any specific software application’s components. Massive programs are broken down into a collection of “microservices” that can be changed without affecting the software in use.
Traditional complicated software frequently includes a chain of dependencies with other lines of code, necessitating large rewrites for even minor modifications. For example, consider how a plant’s roots can spread out over a large area and mix with various sources. The dependencies are addressed by orchestrating microservices into highly portable pieces known as containers.
This means that an application may be deployed and managed globally from a single location with minimal effort. For example, Kubernetes, the most popular open-source software for managing container usage, was created by Google to operate the company’s many global applications and easily change products and deliver software fixes at the largest scale imaginable.
On its in-house version of Kubernetes, Google today operates around 2 billion containers per week. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, including Google Cloud, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and Amazon, manages open-source Kubernetes.
Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, has designed and released an investor research application utilizing Kubernetes in 100 days, roughly the time it would take to procure computer equipment on the cloud software it uses.
Kubernetes, according to project leader Michael Francis, encourages collaboration. “I witnessed junior developers directly interacting with top managers, asking what they needed,” he said. “The feedback is coming in at a much faster rate.” Furthermore, taking on a huge project is less intimidating since we can transparently oversee the dozens of procedures required in a large software project and concerns promptly rectified.
Kubernetes is successful in part because it adheres to a bigger ethos in cloud computing: adaptability. The cloud’s computer server virtualization allows for more workloads per system, and data can “burst” onto other devices, even in far-flung locales. For security or resource optimization, data and work can also be divided into smaller components and disseminated. In addition, IT investment shifts from a fixed capital commitment to a more flexible operating expense as consumers of public clouds often rent computation rather than purchasing hardware.
In addition, the program is meant to monitor student interactions to ensure that they are learning. This will also necessitate more collaboration between product managers, software engineers, and IT executives like Mr. Jackson, who are in charge of resource allocation.
He refers to it as a “redistribution of accountability” within the organization, with “the notion of what IT is when it becomes a value enabler” altering. He claims that the new method of distributing software allows him visibility into where and how it is used and information on future expenditures. As a result, his work shifts from capital expenditure to operating expense, becoming a growth collaborator.
He wrote, “We become what we witness.” “We shape our tools, and then we shape our tools.” After five decades, we have a wealth of IT knowledge and consider how new technology may impact our businesses. Every component of a company will become more responsive as our systems and people improve their ability to react to changing markets.
Fixed-job responsibilities, like software engineering or financial planning, may expand to include domain expertise, be shared in collaborative teams, and be assembled and disassembled at different stages of a product’s life cycle. In addition, companies may form deeper partnerships to satisfy a new market need by using each other’s comparative advantage. To construct an organization that is hopefully even more adaptable than the cloud computing IT tool it houses, managers will need to focus more than ever on abilities like teamwork, empathy, learning, and novel rewards.