A reputable candy company is facing major challenges. The consulting firm suggested that the company should rejuvenate its brand by creating new designer chocolates and by opening new specialty shops in upscale shopping areas.To support the new venture, minimally, the shops will need POS (point of sales, registers), store management system (staffing, sales, inventory, etc), and perhaps some basic CRM (customer relationship management), reward/promotion campaign management and so on. These are all new to the company. Either Raymond would develop these proprietary applications, or if there is SaaS that meets the requirements, then Raymond could subscribe to them. In either case, these applications will need to integrate the newly completed system that Raymond spent $5 million and two years of his time in.

How would you use cloud computing to support the new venture while mitigating the risks, e.g. minimize new investment that will make the financial statements attractive? Remember, Raymond spent $5 million already as capital investment and he is holding a bunch of new servers and applications.