Care of flickr.com – Adam Grabek
Say that you’re sure that, yes, cloud computing is the best way for your company to go. Yet you still have to convince the C-level management about your cause—particularly the Chief Financial Officer.
According to Gartner, the CFO authorizes 26% of IT investments. A further 42% of IT organizations report to the CFO.
If it’s the CFO’s ears you need to turn, here are some reasons you can use to get them on board for the cloud:
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The Cloud Does Away With Capital Expense.
Care of flickr.com – Chris Potter
Since your CFO holds the company’s purse strings, you must use some hard data to illustrate that moving your company processes to the cloud ultimately improves your bottom line.
If you want to create a convincing argument for the cloud, emphasize this point. This is the most important—though not the only—factor for CFOs.
You will want to show through hard numbers exactly how cloud computing can lower both capital and operational expenses. In terms of capital expense, the cloud lets enterprises leverage on pre-existing IT equipment, infrastructure, and personnel.
This eliminates the need to shell out money for space, computers, servers, and administrators. Instead, the company simply rents the infrastructure.
Even so, you still save money!
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The Cloud Can Also Reduce Operational Expense.
Care of flickr.com – 401(K) 2012
OPEX includes running your IT infrastructure and paying professionals to maintain the entire system for you. Routinely maintaining, patching, and upgrading your machines, as well as having an IT team do these tasks, racks up an enormous bill.
In a cloud infrastructure, everything is centrally updated and maintained. You no longer have to spend time and money for these tasks.
With cloud computing’s flexible pay-as-you-go system, you only pay for the services you use. In some cases, cloud providers even lower their monthly services thanks to economies of scale!
So it is relatively easy to show a cost comparison between in-premise and cloud infrastructure. To help you along, you may also use a cost calculator to come up with a report.
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The Cloud Facilitates Faster Time to Market.
As strategies go, speed is king. Victory usually goes to the fastest one on the battlefield.
Because the cloud lets you provision your resources as you need them, you save a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent patching or upgrading equipment. That means faster time to market for your products.
From the strategic point of view, this translates to more accurate business decisions. You get feedback from your target market sooner, and steer your company as needed to take advantage of trends and demands.
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Leverage on new technologies.
As mentioned, the cloud is centrally updated and maintained. It takes care of applying the latest software updates or security patches while you handle your more critical tasks.
And if new cloud applications and technologies become available–or more advanced– you can automatically avail of them as well. You do not have to pay for research and development to obtain them.
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Meet Demand Spikes with Ease.
Care of flickr.com — NEC Corp.
A fast-growing business can easily be the victim of its own success. It will be a challenge to meet a sudden surge in market demand, and if you can’t do so you can be sure another enterprise will.
How do you meet the infrastructure requirements for these sudden spikes? Simply rent what you need from the cloud, on demand.
Whether you require a website for video streaming, additional workstations for your employees, additional data storage, additional computing power, or a full-on data center, you can provision that from the cloud in a matter of moments.
And once the demand tapers down, you no longer need to worry about what to do with idle infrastructure. You can scale it back down and cut your costs.
This makes the cloud the best answer to date for business agility.
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Experiment and Research at Low Cost.
When your high-value staff has their hands full fixing every little problem with your infrastructure, they have very little time to do activities that drive your business.
They may no longer have time to search for solutions that can give their company an edge against their competition. Research and experimentation takes a back seat.
But the cloud changes the game by making it quicker and cheaper to provision infrastructure for tests and experiments. Low costs means low risk, and encourages your people to come up with creative and strategic solutions that can put your ROI into overdrive.
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Keep up with the Other Companies Technologically.
Practically everyone else is on the cloud in one form or another–and for good reason!
The cloud has recreated work policies. Colleagues may now collaborate online by accessing their data and working from anywhere they can get an internet connection. They may even choose which device they want to use to access projects.
As it stands, most early adopters of the cloud have moved on to determining a broader cloud strategy, namely engaging a market that is already familiar with cloud technology and uses it accordingly.
Given that it is the CFO who invests in technology, it is their responsibility to act so that the company doesn’t get left behind technologically. If your company doesn’t leverage on new technology, you can be sure your competition will.
Sometimes, moving into the cloud is a matter of business survival, as in the case of Nicole McNeill, CFO of and VP of Corporate Services, Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC). This is how their company cut their IT costs and their business cycle by 50%.
Care of flickr.com – Adam Grabek
On a final note, remember to include both the risk and the reward in your presentation. The cloud has a great many benefits and it’s easy to emphasize them, but you must also cite the risks involved with migration—time, costs, downtime for critical tasks, and perhaps culture shock.
Never assume that your CFO will take a rosy report at face value, as they will also do their own research and will find yours wanting if it isn’t balanced.
If you are assessing a possible move into the cloud, you don’t have to do it alone. A skilled cloud professional can help you make a convincing pitch. Contact our AWS cloud experts at PolarSeven today.
The post 7 Reasons That Can Convince your CFO to Invest in the Cloud appeared first on PolarSeven Cloud Consulting.