Cloud Computing is here, and it is somewhat of a revolution. It brings many benefits to our organizations – the obvious economic, but it also frees us up to focus on core business, as defined today. If managing infrastructure isn’t our core activity, then let’s not do it, right?

All the in-crowd on the web are buzzing about Cloud Computing. 2009 is hailed as the year of the Cloud, as recession bites forcing IT leaders to source infrastructure services from remote vendors and reducing expense and capital requirements. Here are two informative examples on bmighty which talks a lot about Cloud:

http://www.bmighty.com/blog/main/archives/2009/01/cloud_computing_1.html

http://www.bmighty.com/blog/main/archives/2008/12/7_reasons_cloud.html

It sounds like a dream state, don’t it?

Well not if we consider the long-term implications. By sourcing infrastructure from the cloud, you’re really taking, or forcing, a commodity approach . To gain economies of scale (the economies you’re looking for and demand) vendors have to commoditize the infrastructure, in other words, make the service standard and equal across their customers (notwithstanding any standard variations or special amendments that come at a price.)

Essentially, we’re giving up our intimacy with the operations and mechanics of the infrastructure – it becomes a black box to us. What happens is that we lose the knowledge and wisdom on how to build and maintain the infrastructure ourselves.

Who cares? I get it cheaper… and I need cheap right now!

Yes, we’re all thinking that way right now. Right Now . But what about After? Once the recession ends and growth is a word we can begin to use again, what is the landscape then?

We don’t get our toys back, that’s for sure! You know as I do, things move on and the compound of many small innovations results in big change. We lost the intimacy now, we lose it forever. And even if we could muster our own internal revival of building and maintaining the infrastructure, it’s very doubtful we could do it as economically, so the CFO wouldn’t back our caper.

Pah! So What? You might say…. but just consider the possibility that your management of infrastructure, your innovations using it, and how you blend infrastructure into product development and operations actually creates a unique business proposition – lose it and weep. Or perhaps retaining control means you retain independence, and you’ve developed kick-ass negotiation skills with vendors – do you want to dilute these skills. Or lets say that your organization is rapidly growing into new territories that vendors can’t/won’t provide the same level of support – is that likely?

In revolutions, heads roll . Heed my warning that Cloud Computing is very likely a one-way road over the Sahara Desert…

Once you source from the cloud, you will never regain it as a core competence.

I am not against Cloud, if you were wondering. In fact I think it is essential for the future of IT and business. It’s not viable to run activities as crafts and cottage industries anymore. Business must be lean and stitch its organization together from the very best of experts and services.

I could draw analogies to the outsourcing of manufacturing to China. The West outsourced… gave China the knowledge (designs, tools, etc)… and then surprise surprise – a shift in Chinese Foriegn Policy and they’re poised to become the dominant power and economy on this planet!

Foot Note: Eric Brown, fellow blogger, often reports interesting stories like this one about Cloud Computing. If you haven’t subscribed to his RSS Feed , do it today!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

The Industrialization of IT is one of my current favorite topics as I think we are at a turning point of the whole industry. But one of the biggest implications of this change is that it will reshape the workforce towards blue-collar working.

Industrialization of the IT department and the services it provides is a good thing for business. It’s good because business can get on with business stuff without being impeded by constant failures in the IT stack, including (and most importantly in) it’s processes and people. So industrialization brings a new age of robustness, dependability and professionalism.

But what else does it bring?

As far back as the sixties, Peter F. Drucker described the essential differences between factory workers and executives. The key differences are that…

…factory workers have their worked prescribed to them, their inputs and outputs are well defined and measurable, they are not required to make decisions, and they tend to work to rule. Whereas…

… executives are knowledge workers who have a vague brief but create their own work, are required to work with loosely defined input and the knowledge of others, produce ideas or knowledge for others to work with, their output is very loosely defined, and are required to work outside of a conventional work pattern.

Factory workers and IT Ops professionals will become more alike over time – the industrialization of IT will create a sub-class of blue-collar IT workers. The reason for this is that industrialization will bring in highly repeatable, mature processes that demand rigor to its application and there will be a very low tolerance for deviation. In the workforce, this will require total compliance to procedure and work patterns. It will require a worker’s productivity to be measurable. But it won’t require workers to make decisions.

What’s more, IT Ops workers will work to rule: 9 to 5 (or whatever the shift is). This isn’t because they are lazy. Workers who cannot differentiate themselves from their peers do not go above and beyond the call of duty except under extreme circumstances because there is no meritocracy. Actually, this organizational design depends on that point. Everyone must take the same amount of input, and produce the same output at the same quality for industrialization to take effect. So you won’t expect super-hero efforts from these folks!

So over time, the current workforce of highly-skilled, highly-educated, diversely applied professionals will move on or out of these roles into management positions or analyst roles who design processes, to be replaced by cheaper, less diversely-skilled workers. This will create a significant global opportunities for work in IT jobs, as the entry-level will be lower. Outsource vendors, of course, will take advantage.

It’s important for me to stress though that the quality and cost of IT services provided by IT Ops functions will improve. I’m not suggesting that organizations will employ a rabble – but they will employ the right kind of person for the right job. You don’t need bright stars capable of many great things working in a rigid job. They will be the new managers and the people who design how the work should get done. Organizations will still need top notch IT professionals working out how best to solve common issues and opportunities and make the solutions scalable, repeatable and commercial.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Cloud Computing, where the architecture of your technology estate is based upon the integration of third-party technologies and services, is gaining momentum in the industry.

It’s a natural extension of outsourcing where an organization uses technology within it’s own physical boundary (i.e. its data-center) but the technology is owned and operated by the vendor. The reason why organization’s take this up is because they believe that it has economical benefits, and the reason for this is that the technology is ‘metered’, i.e. used on-demand. It also means your organization doesn’t have to hold assets and worry about capital. You just pay for what you use. It’s also based around the service catalog so it integrates with the philosophy of ITIL too. Cool.

Maybe not-so-cool. One of the big downside is data-protection. With this model, it’s really tough to keep control of your data. Not only is this a risk from the perspective that third-parties can access it and potentially use for reasons outside of your knowledge and control, it does create a headache with regulation. Currently, protection is on contractual grounds. But is this enough? Security standards haven’t kept up with this trend and in my experience, they are woefully out of date.

So the question is if you can really afford the cloud if you can’t prevent unauthorized access to your data – which will be far more expensive to your business in terms of regulatory breach or reputational damage in the long-run. The panacea is to separate the application and technology from the data.

There are vendors who have clocked this and are developing products to capture the market against the conceptual solution. One vendor is Vormetric who offer a product suite that secures the data separately from the security of data access. The principle is that your cloud-computing partners can supply and manage the application yet the data is secured and encrypted so that only your employees can use it. Now this is cool.

But it won’t just be about encrypting data thank-you-very-much. I expect IT organizations will have to take a serious look at their software methodologies and development life-cycle to ensure the concept beds in. It needs to be principle-based and considered at the start of a development, not bolted onto the end. The Vormetric product, however, does allow you to leverage off existing applications and infrastructure.

The other issue with cloud computing is with version control. Well, version control if implicit in its model but it is all or nothing. You can’t give some people one version of a service and others a different version easily, or at least meet cloud computing’s economic objectives. However one benefit is that security patches are deployed to everyone once in this model. You shouldn’t find rogue PCs with insecure versions of software lying around, undiscovered.

Cloud computing will come of age when the traditional model of information security changes. As IT professionals and leaders, it makes sense to push beyond and within boundaries in your organization. Don’t let the trend take hold before you have the capability to support it! Or else you really can’t afford it.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

I found an interesting article on mashable.com where the blocking of content is discussed. With the rise of cloud computing and increasing number of teleworkers, IT leaders might be putting their business at risk if they are not in control of their ISPs, who may act on their own discretion to block connectivity.

The link: http://mashable.com/2008/07/11/take-back-the-internet/

IT Leaders must take this into account by reviewing their current terms with their ISPs before it gets too late!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.