Architecting the Cloud: Design Decisions for Cloud Computing Service Models (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS)

Chapter 15

Assessing the Organizational Impact of the Cloud Model

People don’t hate change, they hate the way you’re trying to change them.

—Michael T. Kanazawa, transformation change expert

If we look back at the evolution of technology from the mainframe days, to the birth of the personal computer to the Internet age, and now the cloud, the one thing that is constant about these transitions is that they all bring a tremendous amount of change. Along with the change in technology, come changes in how businesses operate. Each transition altered the operating model of businesses. In the mainframe days, software was primarily used to support internal business functions like payroll, accounting, manufacturing, and the like. Consumers did not interface with systems, they interfaced with people like bank tellers, cashiers, insurance agents, pharmacists, travel agents, and so forth. Business and IT alignment was much easier back then because IT’s sole purpose was to build applications for the business.

The PC era created a new operating model where software vendors would package and ship software to customers, who would install and manage the software within their own enterprises. This new operating model required organizational changes in order for companies to support software that was running at customer sites. New support organizations were formed, new sales processes were created, and new software requirements were prioritized to deal with software running at client sites. Pricing ...