In a recent posting, David Linthicum discusses how a Gartner survey reports CIOs are saying more now than ever that cloud is a top priority. He continues to say these same CIOs are at risk if they’re not moving their organizations toward Cloud Computing. As he says “No surprise there.”
CIOs - Either figure out a way to leverage cloud technology, or get into real estate
I think that there are several thoughts worth digging into a little more:
- The average CIO’s IT organization is under a full-frontal assault by public cloud technologies which show users that a highly agile IT organization is not only possible, but it’s happening right now.
- Even if a business is not investigating or actively using public cloud, internal users still understand how quickly they should be able to get new resources delivered.
- Groups that already have either public cloud deployments, or public cloud/other internal deployments, the IT organization’s ability to rapidly deliver new resources is key. Over time, those organizations will look more like broker/providers as they gain significant agility from structural changes, and will be able to support both public and private deployments based on what’s best for the requested workload.
- Any realistic cloud deployment plan has to include updates to process and procedures—i.e. you have to modify the organizational structure to be successful.
It’s great that CIOs are (again) making a verbal commitment to investigate and implement cloud technologies, but as Linthicum says, “I suspect some CIOs did not respond to the Gartner survey honestly and will continue to kick plans to develop a cloud strategy further down the road.”
So how do you even get started? My recommendation to CIOs: Start by identifying some low-hanging fruit. Deploy a Cloud Management Platform technology that enables cloud services such as IaaS and PaaS using your existing technology pool. Then, pick a particularly savvy part of your user base, and push them into a IaaS/PaaS model using a modicum of surplus resources and this new technology. As you work out the kinks, expand the project to cover more groups and workloads. It’s a winning model, and I believe that many of these groups will find it considerably easier implement or expand cloud implementations and projects.
In the end, Dave’s got it right… Cloud might seem difficult, but I’m guessing that the real estate market is tougher.
