First knowing what is a cloud?

In a sentence, Cloud can transform how your business consumes and manages IT Business

Services, empowering you to operate Faster, Better, and Smarter.

Businesses today expect more from IT. This expectation is much higher than ever as workers

become aware of what is possible today just in the Cloud consumer market. Business users want

the same capabilities in their workplace.

50% of business leaders say that their IT department is unable to

respond to rapidly meet changes in demand.

SOURCE: HP INTERNAL RESEARCH

A six week time frame to spin up a single virtual server with the quagmire of change requests,

firewall policies, approvals, funding requests, business cases et al when compared to a five

minute process with a credit card on a public Cloud provider was to the average developer a “no

brainer”.

The consumption model for technology has changed so profoundly because of Cloud; businesses

now expect to consume services, not technologies.

For business, the challenge now is how to become more agile, cost effective, and responsive in

their capability to satisfy this demand, while at the same time ensuring the highest levels of

quality, security, and oversight.

Businesses which are not able to make this transition are rapidly being left behind by their

competitors who have already been able to achieve these outcomes to support their users.

For IT, the challenge now is how to quickly develop the capability to satisfy an ever increasing

demand for highly distributed applications, services and resources, while maintaining quality and

oversight.

71% of CIOs would increase IT investment

if it meant better time to market.

SOURCE: HP INTERNAL RESEARCH

Manual approaches and siloed management tools don't offer the flexibility and compliance

required to meet this complexity.

Cloud is designed to provide solutions to these challenges.

Why be FASTER, BETTER, SMARTER?

• Demand for IT Business Services is growing exponentially. Not only in number, but also in

variety. The ability to deliver on this growth is sometimes called Agility.

• Users are bypassing their organisations IT in favour of public Cloud Services, creating a

high risk shadow IT. This is primarily due to in-house IT not being Agile enough to satisfy

users.

• Users are fed up with the slow response from their own internal IT organisations when

they knew very well that Cloud Services would give them instant delivery of platforms for

their use.

“... Developers are bypassing IT and putting applications onto

public Clouds at a rate 5x greater than IT thinks …”

SOURCE: ENTERPRISE & SMB SOFTWARE SURVEY, NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE, Q4 2008

• Businesses now expect to consume services, not technologies.

• Traditionally, IT has been occupied with maintaining not only the Business Service

software, but all layers of the compute environment underpinning this service. This has

carried with it an immense burden of skills and cost.

• A world of new business opportunities is made possible by any organization that becomes

involved with providing Cloud Services.

Just how much Faster and Better and Smarter do you need to be? Listed below are some sample

statistics for social media sites. The only way these “web scale” volumes can be achieved is

through the adoption of technology architectures made possible with Cloud.

Every 60 seconds there are:

• 6,944,444 Facebook messages

• 347,222 tweets

• 3,472 Pinterest pins

• 38,194 Instagram Photos posted

• 23,148 apps downloaded

• 400,710 ads requested

• 208,333 minutes of Angry Birds played

SOURCE: www.jeffbullas.com

Australian Public Cloud market to hit $3.2 billion this year:

Gartner predicts growth in excess of 23% for Cloud Services

SOURCE: GARTNER

HTTP://WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM.AU/ARTICLE/455597/AUSTRALIAN_PUBLIC_CLOUD_MARKET_HIT_3_2_BILLION_YEAR_GAR

TNER

It may appear overly subtle to look at Cloud purely from a delivery versus consumer perspective,

but IT departments who focus only on the delivery aspects will miss the boat altogether.

7 Copyright 2014 Stratospheric P/L

What Benefits will Cloud Provide

Cloud Services have brought about and enabled a paradigm shift to those businesses which

adopt them. Some of these key enablers and benefits are:

• Cloud Services change how technology is consumed. They allow your business to make

use of complex software platforms, without needing any expertise in managing or

administering these platforms. The Cloud Service Provider will maintain the solution,

which you consume through the network.

• Cloud Services remove current inhibitors & unleash power of innovation, allowing your

business to pursue new business opportunities, such as trialling new ideas to reach and

interact with customers over the Internet;

• Reducing upfront costs of capital expenditure of computer equipment and related

expenses such as a physical data centre and support staff, while reducing the associated

financial risk to the business by replacing upfront costs with reasonably predictable

operational expenditure, and only paying for the amount of computing processing and

data storage that is actually used;

“By 2016, the analyst firm predicts that public cloud spending in

Australia will reach US$5.2 billion”

SOURCE: GARTNER

HTTP://WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM.AU/ARTICLE/455597/AUSTRALIAN_PUBLIC_CLOUD_MARKET_HIT_3_2_BILLION_YEAR_GAR

TNER

• Potentially reducing ongoing costs due to the use of infrastructure and technical

specialists that are typically shared among many customers to achieve economies of

scale

• Potentially improving business continuity and the availability of computing infrastructure,

where the infrastructure can rapidly and flexibly scale to meet peaks and troughs in

usage demand, and with the computing infrastructure typically located in multiple

physical locations for improved disaster recovery; and,

• Potentially reducing carbon footprint due to the more efficient use of computer hardware

requiring less electricity and less air conditioning.

• Cloud Services are delivered using smart automation. This changes the delivery times for

new services from weeks, to minutes.

• Cloud Services allow your business to embrace a Bring Your Own Device or a Mobile

Strategy. This is because the requirement for every PC being the same in order to run

complex fat clients disappears with Cloud Services. Software Cloud Services are generally

consumed through a web browser.

Cloud Services deliver a reduction in the cost of running IT. The table below shows the cost of IT

as a percentage of revenue for various business verticals. Both Average and Best in Class figures

are shown.

How would the bottom line in your business benefit from becoming best in class rather than

being average?

Copyright 2014 Stratospheric P/L 8

Cost of IT vs Revenue Average (%) Best in Class (%)

Financial 6.30 2.80

Telecom 5.25 3.25

High Tech 4.00 1.75

Manufacturing 2.00 1.15

Retail 2.00 0.50

SOURCE: HP TECH AT WORK - CLOUD - DELIVER THE OUTCOMES

HTTP://H20427.WWW2.HP.COM/CAMPAIGN/TECHATWORK/AU/EN/TAW11POST/PDF/3.%20CLOUD%20-

%20DELIVER%20THE%20OUTCOMES.PDF

Purpose Of  Inventory Management

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT must tie together the following objectives ,to ensure that there is continuity between functions :

• Company’s Strategic Goals

• Sales Forecasting

• Sales & Operations Planning
• Production & Materials Requirement Planning.

Inventory Management must be designed to meet the dictates of market place and support the company’s Strategic Plan . The many changes in the market demand , new opportunities due to worldwide marketing , global sourcing of materials and new manufacturing technology means many companies need to change their Inventory Management approach and change the process for Inventory Control .

Inventory Management system provides information to efficiently manage the flow of materials , effectively utilize people and equipment , coordinate internal activities and communicate with customers . Inventory Management does not make decisions or manage operations, they provide the information to managers who make more accurate and timely decisions to manage their operations.

INVENTORY is defined as the blocked Working Capital of an organization in the form of materials . As this is the blocked Working Capital of organization, ideally it should be zero. But we are maintaining Inventory . This Inventory is maintained to take care of fluctuations in demand and lead time. In some cases it is maintained to take care of increasing price tendency of commodities or rebate in bulk buying.

Traditional Supply Chain solutions such as Materials Requirement Planning , Inventory Control , typically focuses on implementing more rapid and efficient systems to reduce the cost of communicating information between and across the Inventory links in the SCM.COM focuses in optimizing the total investment of materials cost and workload for every Inventory item throughout the chain from procurement of raw materials to finished goods Inventory . Optimization means providing a balance of supply to meet the demand at a minimum total cost , Inventory level and workload to meet customers service goal for each items in the link of Inventory Chain .

It is strategic in the sense that top management sets goals . These include deployment strategies ( Push versus Pull ) , control policies , the determination of the optimal levels of order quantities and reorder points and setting safety stock levels . These levels are critical , since they are primary determinants of customer service levels.

Keeping in view all concerns , the latest concept of Vendor Managed Inventory is used to optimize the Inventory . We are entering into Vendor Managed Inventory , Annual Rate Contracts with manufacturers or their authorized dealers , who maintain Inventory on our behalf and supply the items as and when required .

VMI reduces stock-outs and optimize inventory in supply chain . Some features of VMI include :
• Shortening of Supply Chain
• Centralized Forecasting
• Frequent communication of inventory, stock-outs and planned promotions
• Trucks are filled in a prioritized order , e.g. items that are expected to stock out have top priority then items that are furthest below targeted stock levels then advance shipments of promotional items

Despite the many changes that companies go through, the basic principles of Inventory Management and Inventory Control remain the same. Some of the new approaches and techniques are wrapped in new terminology, but the underlying principles for accomplishing good Inventory Management and Inventory activities have not changed.

The Inventory Management system and the Inventory Control Process provides information to efficiently manage the flow of materials, effectively utilize people and equipment, coordinate internal activities, and communicate with customers. Inventory Management and the activities of Inventory Control do not make decisions or manage operations; they provide the information to Managers who make more accurate and timely decisions to manage their operations.

The basic building blocks for the Inventory Management system and Inventory Control activities are:

Sales Forecasting or Demand Management
Sales and Operations Planning
Production Planning
Material Requirements Planning
Inventory Reduction

The emphases on each area will vary depending on the company and how it operates, and what requirements are placed on it due to market demands. Each of the areas above will need to be addressed in some form or another to have a successful program of Inventory Management and Inventory Control.

Inventory is usually a distributor’s largest asset. But many distributors aren’t satisfied with the contribution inventory makes towards the overall success of their business:

• The wrong quantities of the wrong items are often found on warehouse shelves. Even though there maybe a lot of surplus inventory and dead stock in their warehouse(s), backorders and customer lost sales are common. The material a distributor has committed to stock isn’t available when customers request it.
• Computer inventory records are not accurate. Inventory balance information in the distributor’s expensive computer system does not accurately reflect what is available for sale in the warehouse.
• The return on investment is not satisfactory. The company’s profits, considering its substantial investment in inventory, is far less than what could be earned if the money were invested elsewhere