Thread: Should Business Processes be moved to the Cloud? could you share your views?

I think you should first make clear what you mean by business processes before considering this.

IMHO a business process is a process in a Business like the process of making ie pencils.
In this You also may think of administrative processes like order administration and logistics.
Think of the Input, Process, Output chain of events. These are meant to add value to the Input so a company can make profit.

these processes involve people and tools performing roles. These tools You may see and IT solutions like a CRM system or Stock databases.
You will never be able to move people to the Cloud !!!!
The IT solutions involved may be moved to the Cloud. But if you need or want to do this depends on the business involved.
Larger Companies may already have lots of IT solutions available on all their locations but on central places managed. They made, if you like to say so, their own cloud.
They will certainly not move those solutions outside their organization if it doesn't save loads of money.

Bevort is correct that you do not move business processes to the cloud -- the closest analogy is outsourcing. If a business process is not a core competency, and can be better (cheaper, more efficient, higher quality) by someone else it should be outsourced. To some extent, the Cloud follows the same model. Providing the right level of processing power, infrastructure, etc. and managing an application are often business processes or capabilities that can be better managed outside.

There is another element of moving to the Cloud and that is being able to tap into data models and service constructs within an ecosystem including your customers, suppliers and competitors. If this structures are being managed by all involved, the cost of the maintenance is cheaper, and the benefits gained, from the ability to have more structured communication between entities is higher.

Having said all of that, the application areas I see more likely to move to the cloud are general IT services such as email, sales and marketing (which is by definition reaching out to others outside the company), recruiting (but not other aspects of HR), and potentially supply chain (for 3PL, third party manufacturing and supplier management areas).