From the Enterprise perspective, now has never been a better time to invest in cloud services. Enterprises are broadly adopting all types of cloud services at multiple levels in the organization. Initial predictions were for the enterprise to favor private and community clouds over public services, but the hottest trends in Cloud adoption has been Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud-based business applications which are projected to grow from $13.4 billion in 2011 to $32.2 billion in 2016, a 19.1% five-year CAGR! The rapid adoption of SaaS applications of all flavors by the enterprise has been a surprise to many, but the vastly reduced costs due to the pay as you go pricing models, and high degree of service delivery flexibility has overcome any perceptions of needing to trade price for reduced feature sets. Unsurprisingly, the most often added cloud-based application services are Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM), with Web Conferencing, teaming platforms and social software suites nipping at their heels.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) continues to appeal to companies that want to replace in-house and traditional data center models for the cloud hardware abstraction approach. Gartner is predicting Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), cloud management & security devices, and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) are growing from $7.6B in 2011 to $35.5B in 2016, a CAGR of 36%. A word of warning for companies that think just because the Amazon cloud is easy to use, it is easy to build and manage. Building a private cloud still requires a degree of expertise that few enterprises have in-house. In the next year or so expect more companies to see the value of using the services of cloud consultants to avoid painful and expensive mistakes when building private clouds; or alternatively using emerging enterprise focused public cloud services such as Bluelock or Terremark.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) which still does not quite know what it wants to be when it grows up, is lagging with only about $1B in revenue in 2012, but as the market matures, expect to see rapid uptake as companies recognize the value of standardized tools that can ease the pain of Cloud application deployments. Some of the newer PaaS tools like the ServiceMesh Agility Platform combine the features of a SDLC workflow engine, production support and orchestration across different cloud platforms.

New Cloud Technology Directions

Ultimately, innovation is the marriage of technology and organization change. The dilemma is how to pull innovation into IT core functionality without disrupting the flow of new ideas, when the modern enterprise understanding of IT is focused on operational excellence and cost control. The CIO should be leading the cultural change to the new flat organization by leveraging cloud and mobile application in new and interesting ways. The trick is to create tools for people to quickly test and validate their ideas so they can implement new ideas that work within the enterprise framework. Cloud tools can be used to deliver on that promise, but is the enterprise up to that challenge?

This is not the first time wrenching technology innovation has changed how companies do business, and it certainly will not be the last. Companies able to use disruptive technologies, such as cloud computing, effectively will leave companies who do not have that ability in the dust. By recognizing the seeds of change and embracing them, the smart company can leverage cloud services by using the efficiencies of pooled IT resources at the same time allowing greater flexibility to meet the challenges of the global economy. This combination of combining commodity utilities with innovation allows companies to compete effectively using the efficiency and flexibility strategies simultaneously.

Challenges, Always Challenges…

Consumers intuitively get cloud and have been more than willing to embrace it warts and all as it has matured. They are highly price sensitive and will easily sacrifice features in exchange for low cost. On the other side of the market spectrum, the more conservative enterprise market is still struggling with the basic model. Some companies worry that the emerging cloud companies are too small to do business with, while others are concerned with how to incorporate new technologies into existing technology portfolio investments. To address their concerns, at the same time as Cloud technology continues to mature and standards develop , innovation around service delivery and breakthroughs in storage technologies are making it ever more enterprise ready. The pace of cloud vendor consolidation has already picked up as the traditional enterprise vendors such as HP and IBM has rushed to add enterprise ready cloud services to their portfolios. This should alleviate the fears of even the most technology adverse companies.

A final word for any remaining cloud technology skeptics, as with any innovative force, the cloud is just a tool to drive change, not an embodiment of change itself. Enterprise cloud consulting leaders, have firsthand experience with how companies willing to ride the Cloud revolution will not only survive in today’s hyper-competitive world, but thrive. I cannot wait to see where the next wave takes us!

About the Author
Beth Cohen, Beth Cohen is a senior cloud architect for Cloud Technology Partners, Inc., focused on delivering solutions to help enterprises leverage the efficiencies of cloud architectures and technologies. Previously, Ms. Cohen was the director of engineering IT for BBN Corporation, where she was involved with the initial development of the Internet, working on some of the hottest networking and web technology protocols in their infancy.

Making employees buy their own IT tools sounds like a crazy idea.  Thirty years ago, IT systems were so expensive that most access was through a dumb terminal, which was essentially nothing more than a session screen that allowed you to type in commands that were sent to the computer.   The computer was of course housed in some data center attended by tens of administrators day and night.  Then the PC – remember it is not called the Personal Computer for nothing — revolution of the 1990’s shifted the paradigm again, so that each user had their own software on their own system.  The corporate systems were still accessed through special terminal emulation software, but Microsoft got fat on selling millions of Windows and Office licenses to their enterprise customers.

Over the past 40 years nobody has questioned the wisdom of having a company purchase and control the hardware and software that employees use to do their jobs.  The wide availability and acceptance of consumer devices is opening up the opportunity of resetting the equation again.  It is not only possible, but there are many benefits from taking this approach.  There are precedents in the construction industry.  Most construction workers are expected to bring their own tools.  It makes perfect sense when working with dangerous equipment.  You want to be completely comfortable with the tools so you can focus on doing your job well.  This even extends into the engineering and architectural professions; I have a complete set of drafting tools from my years as a Registered Architect.

From the enterprise perspective, support costs can be substantially reduced.  Keeping track of thousands of devices is a known exercise in futility.  A major broadcasting organization finally paid for an inventory of their workers’ systems a few years ago and found an extra 3000 undocumented systems in the organization.  Another company had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about employee owned devices and now has to semi-support about 11,000 of them.

From the employees’ perspective, using a single device that is used for both home and work, means eliminating nerd belt syndrome – two or more devices hanging from their waist or taking up space in carrying bags.  There is nothing worse than hearing a ring from one of the devices and trying to figure out which one needs to be answered!

Rather than attempting to halt the demand, the smarter path is to embrace BYOD’s by providing a safe and secure framework for their use.  This framework should have two complementary components: a BYOD policy and the technology framework and administration software to enforce it.  An official corporate BYOD policy would not be dissimilar to the corporate security policy.  To make it easier, some companies just incorporate their BYOD device policies directly into their standard security policy that all employees are expected to adhere to.  The key to successful enforcement is the implementation of the proper MDM software.

About the Author

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc.  Transforming Businesses with Cloud Solutions

It is official.  Cloud computing is finally mainstream enough to earn its own NIST definition.  On the surface it is simple enough; by NIST standards the definition is pretty short – only 2 pages.  It has five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service.  The three service models are well-known: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and the four deployment models are public, private, community and hybrid.

None of this should be news to anyone who has been following the cloud for a few years.  What I find interesting is how IT operations-centric this perspective seems.  From the vendor messages at VMWorld last summer, the MIT CIO Symposium in May, and the most recent Boston CloudCamp,  you would think that Cloud Computing is primarily a new way of building IT infrastructure to run IT operations more efficiently.  Certainly, if you listen to the big consulting company of your choice, all you need to do to achieve your IT operations cost reduction goals, is sign a multi-million dollar deal and they will sell you a shiny new private cloud data center.  I will grant that it does achieve that goal (with a few asterisks of course), but if it was just a way to manage IT operations better, faster and cheaper, Cloud computing would not be all that exciting.

In my mind, Cloud computing and its companion technologies, mobile access and social networking tools are really a new paradigm of delivering IT tools and services to the enterprise.  Cloud shifts the focus away from essentially boring operations and systems by turning them into utilities.  Once the operations layer is abstracted away, users can focus on services, the essence of what we use computers for, to build better tools.  Yes, we have all heard that before.  Some of the older folks might even say Cloud is the new timeshare, but it is far more than that if we can push past the old way of thinking about the enterprise.

To really take advantage of the Cloud, take a look at what is happening in the consumer cloud space.  While some corporations are still dipping their toes in the water, some really exciting mass market tools and services are emerging.  Gmail, Skype and Flikr have become the new de facto standards for social communications, while Facebook and Linkedin are giant real-time experiments in the power of social networking writ very large.  Love it or hate it, Groupon and its ilk are bringing sophisticated mass customization marketing techniques and tools to small businesses.  Groupon would not even been able to exist if it were not for the Cloud.  It leverages the Cloud infrastructure to build out its systems, taps into its markets using the techniques of the social media pioneers, and delivers its services through mobile devices.  Clearly it is working in the consumer space.

These new architectures can translate back into the more cautious enterprise by using a combination of risk analysis and Agile methodologies.  You can can use them to rapidly create test cases within the enterprise setting to quickly determine if a feature is useful or desirable.  Some very successful companies have taken this new approach to heart.  Not surprisingly, Google uses it to build new tools, but long before the Internet, Capital One successfully used these methods to bring credit services to the masses, reaping huge profits along the way.  The good news is that the techniques are sophisticated, but they are not out of reach of any enterprise willing to shake off the status quo, build a culture that encourages lateral thinking, and truly rewards bold achievement.

About the Author

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services into the cloud the right way, the first time!

Forrester forecasts the SaaS global market will grow from $25.5 billion in 2011 to $159.3 billion in 2020.  With those numbers, there is no question that SaaS applications in the enterprise are here to stay.  The plethora of new SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings can be extremely tempting to business managers who are told they can have a functioning system in just a few days, not the three months that IT is promising.  Of course the reality is quite different, but the biggest challenge is that since business unit decision makers, not technology leaders, are bringing these applications into the enterprise, they do not have a clear understanding of where they fit in the enterprise big picture.  It is not uncommon to find an enterprise that already has a well established and functioning corporate CRM system, has two, three or more rogue SaaS CRM applications lurking out in different marketing or sales departments throughout the organization.

Handled correctly within the IT framework, SaaS applications can significantly increase agility and competitiveness.  However, like any powerful tool, handled incorrectly they can be a ticking time bomb.    While there is nothing inherently wrong with having SaaS applications out at the edges of the organization, having multiple stealth application outside of the control of IT is at the very least inefficient and at the worse represent a serious threat to the security of the organization as a whole.  The main issues boil down to the usual suspects:  business, technical, operational and security (which includes data integrity).  The following are some of the common problems encountered with “ad hoc” SaaS implementations:

• Technical Issues
  • One off” data models that are inconsistent with enterprise standards
  • Poor or missing integration with existing enterprise applications
• Business Issues
  • Contract issues related to SaaS applications that didn’t deliver the promised functionality
  • Poor performance and SLA issues related to up-time, data loss, or service requests
  • Vendor lock in, application, data and/or contract
• Operational Issues
  • Lack of appropriate DR/BC functionality
  • Unclear ownership of support or lack of internal, third party and vendor support services
• Security Issues
  • Privacy, Security problems, access management, information security, and compliance
  • Unclear or missing Identity Access Management (IAM) – No SSO strategy or federated ID management system in place

The headaches caused by these rogue applications can be endless, but the trick is to first learn what the scope of the problem is.  Once it is clear how many SaaS applications are out there, the next step is to spend some time to understand what is driving the business units to install them in the first place.  In some ways that is half the battle, because once that has been determined, then the final step is to develop a SaaS governance process to allow business units to leverage the value of the SaaS approach, but also maintain the integration and oversight that staying under the IT organizational umbrella brings.

About the Author

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services into the cloud the right way, the first time!

Andy Oram’s recent article on Open Source software and cloud architectures, Reaching the pinnacle: truly open web services and clouds, sparked my thinking on how the enterprise view of cloud architectures might be somewhat different.  While much of the public cloud infrastructure is built using Open Source platforms, recent trends show enterprises are embracing a private cloud model built on proprietary systems, such as VMWare, Azure and IBM Cloud.  Certainly the private cloud vendors are encouraging this trend, but is this a temporary aberration on the road to cloud Nirvana or a different animal entirely?

Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift that has been going on for a few years.  IT systems are no longer represent a competitive advantage for a company — that is something to be horded, treasured and developed – but are seen more like something that resembles a toaster, or a better analogy, a phone system.  It is expected it to work flawlessly for a reasonable cost, and everybody needs to have it to function as a business.  At the consumer end — which is where cloud computing started, see my previous blog post, Looking for Business Innovation in all the Right Places, for a better perspective on my thoughts, people don’t care how it works, they want it to be cheap and always available. If you look at Cloud Computing from that perspective, using Open Source has a clear advantage over a proprietary system.

Gmail and Facebook, as Andy notes, are perfect examples of this phenomenon.  These systems are built on Open Source, not because it is better, but because it is cheaper.  One thing that people often overlook, is that Open Source is not free, far from it, just cheaper if you can live with its idiosyncrasies and lack of a company to blame if something goes wrong.  Clearly larger companies with the technical resources can use that to their advantage to build software on the cloud more cheaply.  I would argue that unlike the expected effect of democratizing software availability, Open Source actual has the opposite effect.  Amazon and Google and other large Cloud vendors can take advantage of the Open Source community and resources, while smaller companies are stuck with using more expensive and less flexible commercial products, or they are purchasing downstream services from Amazon and Google.  To drive home my point, ask yourself, who is supporting the Open Source projects and how are they actually getting paid for?

Where does that leave Open Source?  To my mind, it is an enabling technology, pure and simple.  It serves the cloud providers purposes.  If it were cheaper and more useful to build something proprietary they would do it in a minute.  In fact, Google Chrome and the iPhone OS is the latest in the long history of proprietary software that gets turned into de facto standards over time.  As a business strategy it carries higher risk, but far greater payoff.  That is why both Apple and Microsoft have stuck with their proprietary software strategy for so long.  The cloud providers are using Open Source simply because it is not what keeps potential competitors out of the business.  The high cost of building and maintaining data centers is their real strategic advantage.  Why do you think IBM, HP and other old-line high end service providers are jumping on the private cloud bandwagon?  They already have the infrastructure in place, so they are able to take advantage of their relations with the large corporations to build private clouds for their customers.

About the Author

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services into the cloud the right way, the first time!

Previously I touched on the nature of the IT manager’s role and how it is changing in this new world of sophisticated service delivery, the virtual IT organization, global right sourcing, and a plethora of emerging on-line business models and IT services.  How is it possible for an IT manager to maintain currency in technology while building business skills that can be applied to delivering better IT services to their organization?  To achieve business excellence, what is needed is a different understanding of the both role of IT within the organization and how IT has transformed business in general.

Once IT is a commodity as an IT manager, keeping up on the latest technical skills is like chasing rainbows – there is no pot of gold, just more rainbows.  Despite what Nicholas Carr said in 2003 about IT not mattering anymore, in fact most people agree that it matters a great deal.  However, why and how it matters has changed.  Since IT is no longer a competitive advantage, but a requirement for any successful business, it is vital that IT managers gain understanding and skills in the fundamental business processes of their market segment or industry.  In my thinking, this needs to take precedence over technical skills.  Ironically, in many ways we are moving away from the IT specialist roles of the past 20 years and back towards industry subject matter experts who have enough IT knowledge to apply it in creative ways.  The combination of an expertise in a specific vertical industry and a general technical understanding is far more desirable to industry hiring managers than a deep proficiency in IT skills.  This works because in a labor market where general IT technical skills are easily obtained for relatively little money from a worldwide labor market and the majority of IT systems and services are commodities in the cloud, the real value comes from a deep understanding of how to apply IT to business problems.  Leave the deep technical projects to the IT specialists and outsourcers, but use business skills to apply IT to solve business problems and advance organizational objectives.

The best way to gain those skills is to concentrate on learning business skills.  What people often forget is the business skills are not just what you learn in school, although taking business classes in finance, project management and/or business processes will certainly help.  The more important business skills that must truly be learned on the job are the so called soft skills, such as project management, organization and general management, sales and leadership.  With this combination, an IT manager will be able to stay competitive in the new business world order.

About the Author

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services into the cloud the right way, the first time!

Question: As businesses become increasingly sophisticated, how can IT knowledge workers gain the business knowledge to remain competitive?

Part one was a discussion of the reasons why IT knowledge workers need to understand the businesses they deliver services it, we will now dive into how the CIO, as the person who has the best understanding of the business challenges in an organization can drive that change in attitude.  Most change occurs from the top down, which means that CIO’s, must lead the shift in perspective from technology to business in their organizations.

To get started, create a vision for the future where IT professionals are champions for applying technology in your business.  This image serves as a vivid picture of a positive future where the IT department and all IT professionals enjoy a strong reputation for helping the organization use technology to serve its customers significantly better than the competition.  This is not just your ideal but the vision for all IT professionals.  This will create a common purpose and an emotional connection of each IT professional in your organization.

If the reputation of your IT organization is not strong, convince an influential business colleague to partner with you to enhance IT’s value through their increased business knowledge.  The success of this partnership will encourage other business leaders to work more closely with IT for mutual benefit for everyone.  Hold a meeting to unveil your vision for the future and brainstorm ideas to bring it about with the entire IT department AND your influential business colleague.  You and your business colleague must be prepared to answer questions about this vision and your joint commitment to make it happen.  You will want all employees to contribute ideas during the brainstorming session, so invite a good facilitator to help  get everyone contributing to the discussion.  Use your training department’s expertise and knowledge of techniques for accelerating learning and knowledge transfer.  Remember to consider all ideas and get the employees to decide which are best to move ahead.  Produce a “roadmap” of activities and intentional actions to increase business knowledge in an aggressive but achievable timeframe.  This will reinforce your commitment AND show everyone the path forward.

One CIO who I know created an “academy” to change the mindset of his department and increase the value to his $2 billion business services company.  He partnered with his training department to develop a four month program for all IT personnel and used training, mentoring, role-playing and roundtable discussion to foster learning and skill development.

There are myriad ways to enhance business knowledge.  The key is to stimulate the desire in each IT practitioner to do so AND implement a predictable plan that employees can trust to occur.  Do not forget to incorporate incentives (recognition and rewards) for expanding business knowledge.   Remember, you need a climate of trust within the IT department and beyond IT to achieve success.  To quote Peter Drucker from his from his book Management Challenges for the 21st Century (HarperCollins, 1999): “Organizations are no longer built on force but on trust.  The existence of trust between people does not necessarily mean that they like one another. It means that they understand one another.”  Work with your IT professionals to strengthen their understanding of their business colleagues and increase IT’s value to your company.

About the Author

Robert Johnson, Director of Product Marketing at Atrion Networking Corporation where he’s responsible for market analysis, developing new products and co-leading the company’s managed services business line. Robert is a veteran of the IT industry having held executive strategy and marketing positions with CGI Inc., Deloitte Consulting and Digital Equipment Corp.

Companies are increasingly using information technology to sell more products, grow their business and improve their bottom line.  For example, online banking gives customers more convenient access to their accounts while lowering costs for retail banks.  Retail banking is now a 24x7x365 business.  Retailers use technology to track store inventory, monitor daily sales and manage their workforce, all of which has increased sales per square foot.  However, when retail store personnel are unable to access the systems, sales grind to a halt.  This increased dependence on technology has upped the ante for the IT department.

In this new highly competitive business environment, IT must be both user centric and be able to keep systems running smoothly around the clock.   In order to effectively support users and remain competitive, IT personnel need to increase their business knowledge for the following reasons:

• Technology is fused with business processes – For example, a retail clerk uses a store inventory system to search for a customer requested item
• The IT department must empower people so that they can be as productive as possible
• IT workers must champion technologies that open new markets, increase “wallet share” with existing customers, and improve customer service

When these three points are applied, everyone wins – - customers, suppliers, shareholders, and employees.  IT workers typically are the rare individuals in an organization that can really make technology “sing and dance.” Unfortunately, few IT workers have sufficient business knowledge to help users get the most out of the technology to achieve the outstanding business results they are looking for.

Perspective is the secret sauce that is missing from IT workers ability to boost their business knowledge.  Traditionally, IT professionals have pursued and been rewarded for increasing technical their knowledge, not their business acumen.  Moreover, many IT practitioners are technology elitists who do not appreciate why their business colleagues do not “understand  IT”.  While IT is the steward of technology, it is the responsibility of IT workers to convey to their companies how to best leverage that expensive IT systems investment.   In today’s world, technology is fused with business so it is time for all IT professionals to step up to the plate and “understand business”.  The next installment will discuss how IT leaders can drive that needed change in perspective within their organization.

About the Author

Robert Johnson, Director of Product Marketing at Atrion Networking Corporation where he’s responsible for market analysis, developing new products and co-leading the company’s managed services business line. Robert is a veteran of the IT industry having held executive strategy and marketing positions with CGI Inc., Deloitte Consulting and Digital Equipment Corp.

The pervasiveness of the Internet has put IT executives in a bind.  Nowadays, organizations rely so heavily on IT to run their businesses that users have become IT’s top priority.  IT is expected to deliver high availability and predictable performance for key user applications — the always on imperative.

Yet, many IT departments lack sufficient resources – skilled personnel, streamlined processes and effective technology – to keep IT operations running smoothly when needed.  Moreover, existing applications were often designed and deployed from IT’s perspective, not the business, or users’.  For example, IT generally concentrates on analyzing technical specifications, defining IT acceptance testing, and managing project deliverables.  User requirements get little attention which often leads to poor user adoption, negating the expected project ROI.

This technical mindset of designing, deploying and managing IT systems is no longer sustainable.  Application development needs to be prioritized for business requirements, user needs and business value.  The deployment phase should be concerned with user acceptance, training and usage, first.  Incorporating metrics for business impact (e.g. application availability & performance for the users; user adoption rates; and productivity gains) ensure that these goals are met.  Operations must concentrate on high availability and performance.  A through awareness and visibility into the applications and all other elements that must function optimally will make certain critical business services are enabled properly.

Adopting the following five tenets will deliver “always on” applications and lead to high availability and predictable performance of key applications for users:

• Design with the end in mind – Meet the objective of high availability and performance over the entire multi-year usage period
• Follow the money – Stay focused on financial and business benefits of IT systems instead of technical benefits
• Focus on user experience – Shift perspective from technology performance to user productivity
• Break the silos – Create cross functional teams to achieve high collaboration between IT and users
• Manage from the business process perspective – Monitor critical applications down through underlying equipment to understand business impact of all system components. This will hasten problem resolution and reduce unplanned downtime.

About the Author

Robert Johnson, Director of Product Marketing, Atrion Networking Corporation

With the heightened interest in how to respond to the H1N1 pandemic, every organization should be considering how to manage production support operations in the face of high absenteeism rates that could exceed 30%. Because the illness often hits suddenly, staff members could be sick or home caring for a family member and unable to work. Temporarily losing key individuals, such as system administrators and DBAs, can be traumatic without proper planning and redundancy. A good response plan should focus on assuring that necessary skill sets are available when needed. The following suggested approach is a good start towards making sure you are covered:

• Identify the critical functions and performance timeframe. This information may have already been gathered as part of a business impact analysis. If not, draw up a simple list of the functions or tasks and how time critical they are.
• List the skills and knowledge required to perform critical functions and the staff that possesses them. These might include UNIX administration or knowledge of a custom finance application. Management and the operational staff will know.
• Identify the primary and secondary staff members who can provide backup for each task or skill. In particular, identify critical skills that are possessed by only one staff member. Gaps such as these are the biggest risks.
• Develop a plan for backfilling those critical skills. This may include documenting procedures and training other staff members or locating an outside resource to provide the skill on a temporary basis.
• Practice running operations using backup staff and documentation. This validates the ability of the backup staff to perform the tasks and also provides on-the-job training and job enrichment opportunities
• Plan for working at home (WAH). In many organizations, technical staff members are already required to be available 7×24, so the mechanisms are in place.
• Develop a contingency plan for reducing workload when absenteeism is high. Discuss with senior management the possibility of performing only minimal system changes and delaying major deployments to reduce risk and maintain system stability. Given the possible business implications of such a plan, buy-in from all stakeholders is essential. Define conditions and triggers for putting the plan in action.

Having to deliver services without a full staff is a situation that every organization encounters sooner or later. It can be triggered by events other than a flu pandemic. Preparing for it will make your organization more resilient and provide unexpected benefits.

About the Author

John McWilliams, JH McWilliams & Associates, Business Continuity Consultants