Werner Vogel, CTO of Amazon, recently shared his thoughts on choosing the right metrics for cloud computing and how to account for the return on agility. According to his post, “the return on agility delivers business value by allowing you [to] adapt rapidly, while remaining focused on your core competencies rather than distracted by operating IT infrastructure.”
In response, Ryan Shriver of ‘The Virtualization Practice’ proffered his own take on the rising importance of business agility. The current trend in the IT world, as I understand it, is that the return on agility (i.e. time to market and flexibility to change) is more important than reducing costs. IT is no longer relegated to just providing services, it is becoming a force to an organization with its value-add capabilities.
Shriver poses that business leaders want to see a positive return on investment (obviously) but this can’t be done without properly measuring the return on agility. The real question at this point is, what are these metrics? How can you accurately measure return on agility? To start, there are 3 main areas that should be considered.
- Time to market – How quickly can your product move through the application lifecycle and provide a return on investment?
- Issue responsiveness – How quickly can you recognize and respond to problems that arise?
- Flexibility – Do you have a flexible infrastructure that enables a quick response to changing conditions?
One solution that will enable simple measurement of all these metrics is the Nolio continuous application delivery platform which speeds time to market and makes enterprise operations cloud ready. The Nolio solution is designed around the specific requirements of enterprise application releases and deployments. This design includes unique capabilities, specifically engineered to enable reuse, segregation of duties, collaboration and zero touch deployment processes for any enterprise application across its lifecycle.
Click here to read Werner Vogel’s original article ‘Total Cost of Ownership and the Return on Agility’
Click here to read Ryan Shriver’s article ‘Return on Agility and the Cloud’
Click here to learn how Nolio Application Release Operations can make your business more agile