62 Cloud Computing
SaaS over the traditional hosting environment are that cloud computing is
an I-1.0 response to a business need to find a reasonable substitute for using
expensive out-sourced data centers. Also, SaaS is a “pay as you go” model
that evolved as an alternative to using classical (more expensive) software
licensing solutions.
The cloud evolved from the roots of managed service provider environ-
ments and data centers and is a critical element of next-generation data cen-
ters when compared to the MSPs they evolved from. Today, customers no
longer care where the data is physically stored or where servers are physically
located, as they will only use and pay for them when they need them. What
drives customer decision making today is lower cost, higher performance
and productivity, and currency of solutions.
3.3 The Cloud Data Center
Unlike the MSP or hosting model, the cloud can offer customers the flexi-
bility to specify the exact amount of computing power, data, or applications
they need to satisfy their business requirements. Because customers don’t
need to invest capital to have these services, what we have today is a reliable
and cost-effective alternative to what has been available in the past. Today,
customers are able to connect to the cloud without installing software or
buying specific hardware. A big reason for their desire to use the cloud is the
availability of collaborative services.
Collaboration is the opiate of the masses
in “cloud land.”
3.4 Collaboration
Collaboration is a very natural experience that humans have been engaging
in for thousands of years. Up until the 1970s, most businesses embraced
collaboration through a management style called “management by walking
around.” This was facilitated by corporate styles in which people tended to
be working together in the same place. In the 1960s and 1970s the “head
office/branch office” model emerged as companies grew in size. These intro-
duced time and distance into business processes, but the productivity gap
was minimized because branch offices tended to be autonomous and people
could still easily connect with one another.
Since then, the workforce has become increasingly distributed. This
has accelerated as globalization has taken hold. In the last 30 years, tools
such as voice mail and email have tried to close the gap by facilitating
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Collaboration 63
communications in real and nonreal (sometimes, even unreal) time. How-
ever, an increasing remote workforce coupled with the variable nature of a
team (including contractors, suppliers, and customers) has meant that the
productivity gap is also quickly growing. Distance and time slow down
decision making and have the adverse effect of impeding innovation.
Existing technology models are failing to keep up. Part of this failure has
been introduced by the rapidly evolving workspace.
When we talk about the workspace, we talk about the wide variety of
tools and systems that people need to do their jobs. It is the range of devices
from mobile phones to IP phones, laptop computers, and even job-specific
tools such as inventory scanners or process controllers. It is about the oper-
ating systems that power those tools. And it’s about accessibility, as work-
spaces constantly change—from the home to the car, from the car to the
office or to the factory floor, even to the hotel room.
Intelligent networks are used to unify not only the elements of the
workspace, but also to unify workspaces among groups of users. People need
to connect, communicate, and collaborate to ensure that everyone can be
included in decision making. Only architectures that embrace the ever-
changing workspace can enable collaboration, and only the network can
ensure that the collaboration experience is universally available to all. The
role of the network has been critical in driving productivity innovations. In
fact, the network has fueled each of the IT-driven productivity shifts over
the last 30 years.
While IBM, Microsoft, and Apple were making computing power avail-
able to all, it wasn’t until the emergence of the IP network that people could
connect easily from one machine and person to another. This network gave
rise to both the Internet and to IP telephony. IP telephony dramatically
changed the economics of communications, making corporate globalization
financially feasible. IP telephony gave rise to unified communications and
the ability to blend together many forms of communications including text,
video, and voice. And while unified communications have enabled business
transformation, it is collaboration that will close the productivity gap by
overcoming the barriers of distance and time, speeding up business, and
accelerating innovations by enabling the inclusion of people, anywhere.
Today’s leading-edge collaboration portfolio solutions, FaceBook and
Google, capture the best of two very different worlds, offering speed, ubiq-
uity, and flexibility. Cloud-based solutions offer widely adopted standards
used by legions of developers. It is where innovation happens rapidly and on
Chap3.fm Page 63 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:25 AM
64 Cloud Computing
a large scale. Most applications are offered as subscription services, available
on demand and hosted in distant data centers in “the cloud.” The enterprise
world offers certainty of availability, security, reliability, and manageability.
The enterprise experience is all about consistency. It also carries with it the
legacy of proprietary toolsets and slower innovation cycles. It is a world that,
for reasons of compliance, is usually hosted on-premises under tight con-
trols and purchased through a capital budget. A portfolio of products can be
built to enable the best of two worlds, the speed and flexibility of the con-
sumer world and the certainty of the enterprise world.
Collaboration is not just about technology. Collaboration is the plat-
form for business, but to achieve it, customers must focus on three impor-
tant areas. First, customers need to develop a corporate culture that is
inclusive and fosters collaboration. Second, business processes need to be
adapted and modified to relax command and control and embrace boards
and councils to set business priorities and make decisions. Finally, custom-
ers need to leverage technologies that can help overcome the barriers of dis-
tance and time and changing workforces.
If collaboration is the platform for business, the network is the platform
for collaboration. Unlike vendor-specific collaboration suites, the next-gen-
eration portfolio is designed to ensure that all collaboration applications
operate better. Whether it is WaaS (Wide-Area Application Service) opti-
mizing application performance, or connecting Microsoft Office Commu-
nicator to the corporate voice network, the foundation ensures the delivery
of the collaborative experience by enabling people and systems to connect
securely and reliably. On top of the network connections, three solutions are
deployed to support and enable the collaborative experience. These solu-
tions are unified communications that enable people to communicate,
video that adds context to communications, and Web 2.0 applications that
deliver an open model to unify communications capabilities with existing
infrastructure and business applications.
Unified communications enable people to communicate across the
intelligent network. It incorporates best-of-breed applications such as IP
telephony, contact centers, conferencing, and unified messaging. Video adds
context to communication so that people can communicate more clearly
and more quickly. The intelligent network assures that video can be avail-
able and useful from mobile devices and at the desktop. Web 2.0 applica-
tions provide rich collaboration applications to enable the rapid
development and deployment of third-party solutions that integrate
Chap3.fm Page 64 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:25 AM
Collaboration 65
network services, communications, and video capabilities with business
applications and infrastructure.
Customers should be able to choose to deploy applications depending
on their business need rather than because of a technological limitation.
Increasingly, customers can deploy applications on demand or on-premises.
Partners also manage customer-provided equipment as well as hosted sys-
tems. With the intelligent network as the platform, customers can also
choose to deploy some applications on demand, with others on-premises,
and be assured that they will interoperate.
3.4.1 Why Collaboration?
Several evolutionary forces are leading companies and organizations to col-
laborate. The global nature of the workforce and business opportunities has
created global projects with teams that are increasingly decentralized.
Knowledge workers, vendors, and clients are increasingly global in nature.
The global scope of business has resulted in global competition, a need for
innovation, and a demand for greatly shortened development cycles on a
scale unknown to previous generations. Competition is driving innovation
cycles faster than ever to maximize time to market and achieve cost savings
through economies of scale. This demand for a greatly reduced innovation
cycle has also driven the need for industry-wide initiatives and multiparty
global collaboration. Perhaps John Chambers, CEO and chairman of Cisco
Systems, put it best in a 2007 blog post:
Collaboration is the future. It is about what we can do together.
And collaboration within and between firms worldwide is acceler-
ating. It is enabled by technology and a change in behavior. Global,
cross-functional teams create a virtual boundary-free workspace,
collaborating across time zones to capture new opportunities cre-
ated with customers and suppliers around the world. Investments
in unified communications help people work together more effi-
ciently. In particular, collaborative, information search and com-
munications technologies fuel productivity by giving employees
ready access to relevant information. Companies are flatter and
more decentralized.
6
6. John Chambers, “Ushering in a New Era of Collaboration,” http://blogs.cisco.com/collabo-
ration/2007/10, 10 Oct 2007, retrieved 8 Feb 2009.
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66 Cloud Computing
Collaboration solutions can help you address your business impera-
tives. Collaboration can save you money to invest in the future by allowing
you to intelligently reduce costs to fund investments for improvement and
focus on profitability and capital efficiency without reducing the bottom
line. It can also help you unlock employee potential by providing them a
vehicle by which they can work harder, smarter, and faster, ultimately doing
more with less by leveraging their collaborative network. With it you can
drive true customer intimacy by allowing your customers to be involved in
your decision process and truly embrace your ideas, personalize and custom-
ize your solutions to match customer needs, empower your customers to get
answers quickly and easily, all without dedicating more resources. Even fur-
ther, it can give you the opportunity to be much closer to key customers to
ensure that they are getting the best service possible.
Collaboration gives you the ability to distance yourself from competi-
tors because you now have a cost-effective, efficient, and timely way to make
your partners an integral part of your business processes; make better use of
your ecosystem to drive deeper and faster innovation and productivity; and
collaborate with partners to generate a higher quality and quantity of leads.
Ultimately, what all of these things point to is a transition to a borderless
enterprise where your business is inclusive of your entire ecosystem, so it is
no longer constrained by distance, time, or other inefficiencies of business
processes. Currently there is a major inflection point that is changing the
way we work, the way our employees work, the way our partners work, and
the way our customers work. There is a tremendous opportunity for busi-
nesses to move with unprecedented speed and alter the economics of their
market. Depending on a number of variables in the industry you’re in, and
how big your organization is, there are trends that are affecting businesses in
any combination of the points made above.
Collaboration isn’t just about being able to communicate better. It is
ultimately about enabling multiple organizations and individuals working
together to achieve a common goal. It depends heavily on effective commu-
nication, the wisdom of crowds, the open exchange and analysis of ideas,
and the execution of those ideas. In a business context, execution means
business processes, and the better you are able to collaborate on those pro-
cesses, the better you will be able to generate stronger business results and
break away from your competitors.
These trends are creating some pretty heavy demands on businesses and
organizations. From stock prices to job uncertainty to supplier viability, the
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