While I'm as excited about the potential that clouds may provide, I'm concerned that it may be one more thing encouraging us to take our eye off what really matters --- your customers. The attraction of 'cloud computing' may be driven -- at least in part -- by a desire to take runaway complexity and place it in someone else's hands.
The importance of understanding your business process dependencies is likely to increase as we seek cloud computing, regardless of whether it is public, private or a hybrid approach.
One of the things I like about the Outside-In approach and/or the Customer Expectation Management Method, is how we can establish business process dependencies based on how they serve external customers. I think this is useful in may ways.
Level 1 processes --- those that encapsulate the entire customer experience --- provide a basis for establishing priority, uniformity of purpose and innovation. They are key to achieving and maintaining an 'outside-in' focus.
Level 2 processes --- those that have at least one Moment of Truth (direct customer interaction) but do not encapsulate the entire customer experience --- support Level 1 processes. Similarly, Level 3 processes -- which do not have any Moments of Truth but do link to at least one Level 2 process --- are supportive of Level 2 processes.
Many in the IT world are discussing this concept of dependency management. In fact, I like to mention this quote in many of my ITIL classes:
"The central challenge of IT governance is the simple dependency: application depends on database, database depends on server, server depends on switch, application depends on application and so forth. IT organizations deal with this critical data on a daily basis and treat it shamefully - essentially as a disposable commodity."
Architecture & Governance Magazine - Volume 1, Issue 1
The Last Word: Dependency Management: A Fundamental Challenge of IT Governance
By Charlie Betz, Author and Enterprise Architect
This quote could easily apply to the business as well.
Failure to understand and document critical business process dependencies, and how they serve the customer, is a fundamental business responsibility. Unfortunately, businesses are just as likely to treat this dependency data as shamefully as IT treats technical dependency information.
It is also just as common for business units to define processes from a functional, internal perspective. But external customers do not want to see 'business units' any more than than the business wants to deal with individual technology domains.
In fact, if business process dependencies are not understood based on how they serve external customers all the efforts IT makes on the business' behalf can in vain. It is not enough to know which applications may be suitable for cloud computing based on their characteristics, business process dependencies must be understood as well.
Proper design, ongoing governance, and managing IT for value depend on understanding customers and markets --- with or without 'clouds'. An outside-in understanding of business process dependencies is essential to this effort.