Cloud and social commerce

PA’s Alastair McAulay, IT specialist, has been interviewed as part of September’s FT Connected Business Podcast. In the podcast, Alastair provides details of the latest developments in cloud and the guidance provided in a joint report compiled by the National Computing Centre and PA Consulting Group.

Alastair outlines how cloud is increasingly attractive in the current difficult business climate because the flexibility it offers means "you buy what you need when you need it,” so companies can “constantly adjust supply to meet demand.”

He goes on to explain why PA and the NCC have drawn up their report on cloud computing, underlining that it is still early days for cloud and therefore there is a need to provide a frame of reference about developments and good practice. In particular, there is a need for companies to understand that, although cloud can seem simple on the surface there are significant complexities when using the service.

Alastair concludes by advising businesses thinking about using cloud services to ensure they look at the time horizon and understand that the service they need today may be very different from what they need in two years time. For the IT department, he advises them to think about the retained organisation and understand that they will still need to be involved in service provision. However, this should mean those IT organisations that get this right will be more professional, think harder about their role and be sharper in their approach.

You can listen to the full podcast here. Alastair’s interview starts six minutes into the recording.

For more information on how PA can help your organisation with its cloud services, click here for more information.