Cloud computing delivers CTRM performance, accessibility and security, and can change your business today

Just as oil enabled many of the advances and conveniences that have made modern life, so too, cloud computing’s impact will reach deeper into every organization than just the IT infrastructure. The ubiquitous goal to get systems into the “the cloud” is colored by the perspective from which it is stated. To the IT team, this often means an evolution and transition from owned data centers to owned and shared network and server infrastructure. To application developers, it means an opportunity to finally begin to realize the dream of true shared services and more easily-consumable software. But the real value may actually come from those that don’t yet internalize a value to the cloud: the business.

To the business, the cloud should represent the horizon more so than a particular location. A horizon of possibilities as they are released from the bounds and constraints of an infrastructure that is difficult to provision, must be consumed in large bites, and tweaked and managed by specialized experts. Cloud computing breaks each of these pieces into as small and consumable bites as the business might like to consume and allows for a virtual symphony of flavors to the mix of capability and services they need to build their most effective, efficient, and intelligent business process.

Moving to the cloud is often viewed as an end within itself, but today’s intelligent organization — those who value data analysis to make decisions and migrate their business processes to take advantage of market opportunities — view the move to the cloud as just the first step.

The CTRM / ETRM market has been slow to recognize the benefits of the cloud beyond optimizing the cost of infrastructure. More than most other packages, the immediate benefits often outweigh even the extreme bonus situation companies find themselves in from an infrastructure perspective. Here are a few key benefits to consider:

• Performance — CTRM by its nature is spiky in its performance requirements and benefits greatly from increasingly fast performance during the periods of the highest volume. Cloud enables a step change in the system performance and the opportunity to tune the application and its environment.

• Accessibility — Cloud also brings a higher level of accessibility to an application that is great in the hands of a few and even better in the hands of many across your organization.

• Reliability – For a system that is central to the operations and strategy of most organizations, Cloud delivers a new level of reliability.  Delivering analysis in time and consistently inspires the confidence of the decision makers and allows a higher order of intelligence across the organization.
• Security — In a world where security and auditability is increasing in importance daily, cloud computing delivers on the capabilities and processes necessary to anticipate and address 21st century threats to data and information.

There is a new world for our application developers and our system implementers in the CTRM world. Those who take advantage of it will see a new acceleration of their satisfaction in their CTRM usage. Those who don’t will be stuck in a different kind of cloud — a dust cloud.

To learn more about moving your CTRM system to the cloud and transforming your business, contact us at 833-282-7333 or by email at sales@valucreed.com today to get started.

About Value Creed

Value Creed, LLC, founded in 2016, is a managed services firm headquartered in Dallas, TX, specializing in commodity trading and risk management technology and business process optimization. The firm offers expert-driven managed services, business process outsourcing, cloud enablement, and CTRM complimentary technologies to help CTRM customers achieve optimal value in their software investment. For more information, visit www.valuecreed.com

When considering a CTRM upgrade for your company, there’s a significant struggle to figure out exactly what you need. How much is too much?  Of course, there’s the pent-up demand for increased capability that wasn’t achieved with the previous upgrade or implementation. But there’s also a need to mitigate the risk associated with old hardware, dated network equipment, or outdated versions of operating software. Attempting to stitch all these priorities together leads to an ever-growing list of upgrade priorities, costs, and expectations. However, one capability can check many of these needs off the list — the cloud.

The cloud offers companies an opportunity to significantly boost their horsepower, lower their infrastructure and operating costs and pave the way for increased performance and enhanced reliability.

During a standard CTRM upgrade, the refresh of hardware, re-sizing based on new needs, usage or technology and the desire to take advantage of new infrastructure technologies are all on the table. With the cloud, the upgrade process is no longer burdened by the up front cost of physical equipment and thus, companies are free to expand capability and reap rewards across the areas of cost, performance and reliability. In considering coupling a move to the cloud with a CTRM upgrade, there are 4 key benefits to consider:

1. Cloud performance: Because of functions inherent to cloud technology, such as dynamic provisioning, centralized management, and elastic resourcing, performance on an enterprise application such as your CTRM solution can be optimized above what is possible with static provisioned, dedicated hardware. A move to the cloud also guarantees strong performance over time, unlike dedicated servers, which tend to lose speed and functionality with age.  Cloud servers are always the latest technology and increasing processor throughput can be done without interrupting ongoing workflows.
2. Resource provisioning: With dedicated infrastructure, the first ‘trip to the well’ typically involves procuring a maximized system that can handle the growth and performance needs for the forthcoming 3-5 years. With cloud dynamic provisioning, infrastructure and sizing are configured to the specific time, size, and level of business needed at the moment. Thanks to cloud computing’s enormous flexibility, these decisions are dynamic and can easily be changed as needed. Long-term, this approach can lead to not only significant cost savings but also to handling the peaks and valleys of growth in real time without any wasted resources or lags in response time.
3. Leverage talent: Because cloud talent is consumable in the same bite size pieces as software or workflow capabilities, there is no need to commit full-time resources in each of the infrastructure and application disciplines of hardware, network, database, and development.  Expertise-based managed services vendors can provide the type of on-demand support that will handle your initial CTRM in the cloud needs and also optimize your spend for ongoing support. This frees up company personnel to dive deeper into mission critical responsibilities and allows you to leverage your in-house talent on the highest value tasks.
4. Shorten time-to-value: Shortening, or virtually eliminating, the procurement and provisioning cycle will have remarkable effects on reducing time-to-value and cut weeks or months off of the calendar time needed for your CTRM upgrade project. Through cloud computing, your company can provision and spin up an additional testing environment for a particular user group or new development environment. This allows for additional customization of critical pieces for functionality or isolated testing of particularly complex workflows. All of these factors contribute to shortening agile cycles and generally keeping projects on track and value-realized.

There is no absolute answer to how much is too much for an upgrade but a move to the cloud is an option that can shorten upgrade projects and result in lower operating cost, higher performance and increased reliability from your CTRM system. Every company is different, with varying needs, challenges, and limitations, but when it comes to striking extras from the list, the move to the cloud should be considered a ‘must have’. Using an upgrade as a catalyst to move to the cloud isn’t just a strong business move; it truly positions your company and your system to handle the next wave of challenges, whatever they may be.

To learn more about moving your CTRM system to the cloud and transforming your business, contact us at 833-282-7333 or by email at sales@valucreed.com today to get started.

About Value Creed

Value Creed, LLC, founded in 2016, is a managed services firm headquartered in Dallas, TX, specializing in commodity trading and risk management technology and business process optimization. The firm offers expert-driven managed services, business process outsourcing, cloud enablement, and CTRM complimentary technologies to help CTRM customers achieve optimal value in their software investment. For more information, visit www.valuecreed.com