Talk to John Mason, IBM General Manager, midmarket, and he describes cloud computing “as really leveling the playing field like we’ve never seen in modern history,” for small and midsized businesses.
Businesses of all sizes are using cloud for some similar reasons—to save money, to gain access to computing power and to relieve some of the burden on their staff.
Why cloud?As Mason sees it, IBM can now be even more relevant to small and midsized businesses, working with them to take advantage of technology and solutions that were once the domain of larger companies.
Cloud is making a difference for IBM clients such as nViso—a midsized business that helps retail clients analyze customer behavior for deeper insights. The need for scalability to make sure response-rate resources are available to meet demand is common in the social media environment, and it’s one of the reasons nViso chose IBM SmartCloud Enterprise as the platform for its API. “Having IBM as a partner brings greater security to the provisioning of services,” says Tim Llewellynn, CEO of nViso.
Today, the use of cloud computing is evolving beyond cost containment. Mason sees it as a shift to using the cloud to support systems of engagement—those front-office applications that often directly touch the customer and typically involve line of business executives.
Mason believes there are five top reasons small and midsized businesses should consider cloud now.
1. Cloud offers better insight
Fifty-four percent of leading organizations are using analytics to derive insights from big data, in turn helping them target customers and product opportunities more effectively; cloud provides greater flexibility and access to leading-edge analysis tools.
Cloud also helps organizations share data across applications, enabling insights to be developed from disparate data points—linking mobile accesses to a business’ web site with a local sales promotion to drive purchases, for example.
“The real challenge for the midmarket,” says Mason, “is figuring out how to get closer to the customer and be more relevant, more targeted—big data and analytics delivered in the cloud can do that with huge efficiencies for small and midsized companies.”
2. Cloud helps collaboration
Cloud allows work to be accessed from multiple devices and from anywhere, which in turn makes it much easier for teams to collaborate on shared data.
There’s also a perception that cloud divides IT and line of business into dueling camps. Mason says that cloud is actually bringing lines of business into closer collaboration with the CIO. “IT will have a point of view of how will [the cloud solution] integrate into our existing systems, what might some of the security concerns be—it’s not all driven by line of business.”
3. Cloud can drive better engagement
Using cloud to quickly and efficiently improve systems of engagement can mean forging a tighter link with the customer.
For example, if a sales executive wanted to trigger event-based communications based on customer actions, such as mobile device location or social media participation, she could do so by tapping into an existing cloud-based solution for sales and commerce—without a lengthy IT deployment, and possibly without any involvement from IT at all.
“Back-office optimizations and cost efficiencies are almost reaching their point of diminishing returns,” Mason says. “It’s more of the outbound, outward-facing connection points and optimizing that experience, primarily for the customer, to drive top line growth, rather than efficiency in the back office, which has been the emphasis of IT for the last couple of decades.”
4. Cloud is speed
Fifty-two percent of leading organizations are turning to cloud to drive more rapid innovation in products and services. No more waiting to make the cut on the IT department’s long list of priorities.
“We’re seeing solutions that line of business decision-makers can quickly implement and see value from,” says Mason. “[Cloud] is shortening the decision from recognizing a need to implementing a solution to that need; it’s short-circuiting many of the traditional elements of ‘how do I solve this problem.’”
5. Cloud benefits are measurable and you pay as you grow
From efficiency gains to improved employee mobility, leading organizations are able to measure significant benefits from their cloud investments, and can pace their investments so they avoid a big up-front capital expense and pay monthly as the business scales.
Mason says that cloud “removes a lot of the barriers of upfront capital investments—if you can pay for something as a service, as needed, by the hour or by the month, it negates the lack of in-house technology expertise and needing to buy, install and maintain technology on your own premises.”
Leveling the playing field—cloud, mobile and data
We asked John to describe some of the IBM investment decisions that really demonstrate the commitment to the plight of the start-up, the small and the midsize enterprises. Mason points to IBM’s 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer and the $1.2 billion investment in 2014 to expand its global cloud footprint.
“This was a huge indicator to me of IBM’s commitment to bring the benefits of cloud solutions to companies of all sizes,” says Mason. “Over the past year, we’ve seen that investment grow with additional data centers coming online around the world, and most recently, an agreement with Intel to bring new security features to the cloud.”
IBM SoftLayer gives clients the ability to choose a cloud environment and location that best suits their business needs. Mason says that, “the simplicity, flexibility and security of the SoftLayer offering is exactly what midmarket clients in particular are seeking.”
Looking to other playing field levelers, Mason first cites the IBM agreement with Apple as a way to help companies of all sizes take advantage of mobile solutions for their business. And then with a twinkle in his eye he added Watson Analytics to his list--the newly announced natural language-based cognitive service for data driven decisions. “It will give SMB clients instant access to the most powerful predictive and visual analytic tools available – and a freemium version will shortly be available for any business professional, regardless of a company’s size or location.”
“Where previously larger companies had an advantage, today it’s not really the case anymore,” says Mason. “You can argue that small and midsized companies don’t have the legacy technology to deal with and can move faster, be more nimble and more in tune with their customers.”
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