You can only manage what you can measure – cloud is impacting everything that we do

The distance between the engineer and the end user of a product can be dramatically reduced – thanks to cloud. The result is unmatched speed of innovation, greater simplicity, and reduced time to value. The cloud has enabled businesses, whether they are using public, private, or hybrid solutions, with the simplification of processes and time to value that trumps any other technology.

But for cloud, there are new rules of the game. There is no lock-in any more – cloud contracts provide customers with flexibility to adapt their usage of the solution. As a result of this, providers must find ways to ensure the solution is consumed and business benefits are obtained. Otherwise, customers will decide not to renew, or to reduce their footprint. Cloud is about usage and consumption; there is no shelfware in the cloud.

Therefore, consumption and respective benefits need to be measurable, because we can only manage what we can measure, and metrics provide proof of value for all stakeholders.

You can use cloud performance metrics to optimize your business operations in numerous ways:

Optimize the business

In a cloud economy, there are substantial benefits beyond software, supporting optimization of consumption and usage as an industry best-practice.

Cloud solutions do increase closeness to end-users by providing targeted, consumption-based advice on how to run business processes better with the respective solution. And by measuring success, they ensure motivation for improved and extended usage.

Optimize the solutions

Consumption goes beyond pure usage measurement. The question is not only whether the solution or its parts are used, but also how effectively they are used to optimize business outcomes.

For this, we do not only need measurement and KPIs on usage and business results, but also contextual information that views each process as part of a holistic endeavor. 

This end-to-end visibility enables us to optimize the best-run business and benchmark it against industry best-practices.

Optimize the usage

In a cloud economy, the optimization of solutions is not achievable by adding more features and functions. Measurement allows focus on the key use cases and detects the value achieved. It also enables course corrections along the way. Simplifying existing processes and behaviors is only possible if we can prove the impact.

Comparing against industry best-practices can help the clients and also engage the ecosystem, enabling partners to identify white spaces and additional offerings, following the paradigm of “everything-as-a-service."

Let me know your thoughts, and follow me on Twitter @SDenecken to see this journey unfold.