Skip to content


Areas for Study

Lian-James focuses on cloud computing infrastructure in its widest sense – anything that is a contributor in delivering a service from service providers of all types to service consumers.

There are currently three broad themes of focus for Lian-James in its analysis objectives.

Collective Capitalism
`Capitalism’ has, as one of its underlying drivers, the need for competition in the marketplace. The trouble with that notion in much of the real world, however, is that no one company has all the resources – be they financial, technical, experiential or human – to take on most business projects. So in practice collaboration, co-operation, convergence and other processes are essential parts of the business mix. This is certainly true of large projects, but applies equally to some of the smallest as well. At all levels the business `collective’ is the vehicle through which these projects are addressed and completed, with the goal of capitalism – profits – duly realised. Cloud infrastructures provide the perfect platform, tools and breeding ground for collectives of all types.

Business Assurance
This is often understood to be another term for the general area of business continuity: reactive tools and processes such as Disaster Recovery that aim to ensure the business processes do not grind to a halt – with the business itself rapidly following suit. Cloud infrastructures give businesses the tools and environment in which they can start to think proactively about the wider issues of Business Assurance – assuring that it not only stays in business, but also exploits the potential of the services and resources deliverable through the cloud to build better, bigger businesses. Capabilities such as increased operational flexibility, business agility and, above all, dynamic, bidirectional service scalability are tools that can help every business assure better reaction to market changes and the opportunity to grow proactively.

Standards and Interoperability
These are the key to commoditising the technology underpinning cloud infrastructures, so all developments here have the potential for significant impact. The wider, and arguably more important impact is the way commoditization has at last stopped technology being `the story’ and allowed the way technology can be utilised to build powerful new business tools and services to come through. This in turn has allowed business users to conceptualise what they want to achieve purely in business terms, without having to translate that into techno-babble so that vendors might understand.

The current areas Lian-James is studying.



css.php