In part 2, we discussed some of the initiatives to abstract the enterprise and create a virtual enterprise presence in the cloud.  In part 3, we will take a look at Business and Technology Integration Transformation Initiatives to support the Next Generation Enterprise Transformation and Dynamic Innovation.  What are those initiatives?  Lets take a look.

Business and Technology Integration Transformation Initiatives

1. Business process management (BPM)
2. Services oriented architecture (SOA)
3. Information Technology Service Management (ITSM / ITIL)

1. Business process management (BPM) is a holistic management approach focused on organizational alignment with client needs promoting business effectiveness and efficiency, with underlying technological integration, and flexibility, to optimize your processes.  The BPMS tools you use to do this should support your processes, not the other way around (don’t change the process to fit the tool).

In the cloud space, Salesforce.com provides a visual process manager for integrating with the Force.com SOA development platform.  There are many vendors providing such tools which I discussed in this blog entry.

This will provide real-time operations transparency to increase enterprise responsiveness through application integration, thereby enabling organizations to better serve its customers.

2. SOA – Services Oriented Architecture (architecture to accommodate change) can be thought of as the enterprise’s nervous system to adapting enterprise software to business process optimization, and create speed, agility, and flexibility.  This gives you the ability to extend your current service assets, and integrate them with cloud services.

By following the flexible design principles of SOA, you can provide a loosely integrated suite of services that can be used across multiple business domains.  The more change your enterprise will undergo, the better prepared it is with SOA, as it provides a good foundation for business process management.

By integrating and orchestrating BPM and SOA (web services (SOAP, REST)), your enterprise becomes more resilient and responsive to the changing needs of your market, and better serves your customers.

Now that we’ve spoken of business management processes, and a services architecture to support adaptation to continuous change, we can turn our attention to IT management and governance.

3. Information Technology Service Management (ITSM / ITIL) discipline helps address some of the governance and SLA challenges encountered with SOA, and provides a foundation upon which SOA can derive greater efficiency, and effectiveness, for your enterprise, while maintaining a focus on the customer perspective, and being technologically transparent to your customers.

A hybrid cloud computing model will require a decoupling of business processes from your enterprise applications to integrate with that of the cloud services provider, and this will involve SOA and BPM transformational change.

Those enterprises that have undertaken such initiatives are ahead of the game by combining SOA and BPM, abstracting their business processes, (facilitating integration with 3rd parties), and focusing on a service orientation.

This places them in a better position to integrate with partners, customers and suppliers regardless of the technologies or clouds the partners choose to adopt.

Cultural Workforce Transformation Initiatives

Finally, there is a need to change the workforce, and company culture, along with the enterprise, in order to ensure success.

There are many cultural obstacles to consider, some of which I covered in, “The Cloud’s Cultural Obstacles“.

There is also a radical shift in the way we will work, communicate, and collaborate using unified communications, and collaboration tools.  We covered some of those changes in, “Telepresence, The Face of the Cloud“.

Given the technological trends in, “5 Trends to Watch in 2010 and Beyond“, that will change the way we work, workforce education will be paramount to fully leverage innovation in the next generation enterprise.

The good news is that the tools are relatively easy to use (compared to legacy enterprise tools), and the next generation of workers are big fans of this work style as evidenced by their adoption of Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Skype, and other communications and collaboration tools at their disposal.

The challenge will be to convert your existing workforce to adopt these tools, understand the transformation to innovation, and be willing participants in the cultural transition to enterprise 2.0.

What is your strategic plan to adapt your enterprise for the future of unified, integrated, enterprise cloud computing, communications, and collaboration?

I’d love to hear it.  Perhaps we can learn from one another.

I wish you the best of luck in your journey towards an Innovative Enterprise with a Cloud Computing business and service model

-Tune The Future-