Archive for the ‘cloud computing’ Category

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CIOs Are Learning That Clouds Aren’t Free

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
Image Credit It Turns Out That Both Public And Private Clouds Have A Cost

It Turns Out That Both Public And Private Clouds Have A Cost

CIOs are currently being faced with making a decision that will impact their IT departments for years to come: should they move their IT operations into the cloud and if so, should it be a public cloud or a private cloud? There are a number of technical issues that can help drive this decision; however, the one factor that too many CIOs overlook is cost…

The Difference Between Public & Private Clouds

I thought that the whole “cloud” thing was supposed to make IT simpler – why are CIOs now being faced with a decision? It turns out that all clouds are not created the same – there are two very different types of clouds.

Public clouds are what is getting all of the press right now. Cloud providers such as Amazon, IBM, Salesforce.com, etc. are offering IT shops a new way of doing business. Companies that move their applications off of their internal IT infrastructure and onto a 3ed party’s boxes will see significant cost savings. No longer will they have to worry about paying for (or supporting) hardware, software or IT staff.

It turns out that there is another way to go about using clouds: private clouds. If the company invests in building out its internal server farm then it can take advantage of all that cloud computing offers: fast application setup, the ability to scale both up an down as conditions require, and an internal pay-as-you-go way of tracking costs.

The concept of private clouds is still relatively new. However, it is catching on fast. The folks over at Gartner are forecasting that through 2012 the top 1,000 global companies will end up spending more on developing their own private clouds than they will spend on buying public cloud services.

What’s Cost Got To Do With It?

You might think that CIOs are going to have to knuckle down and so some serious technical investigations in order to determine if public or private clouds are the right solution for their company. You’d be half-right.

Certainly there is a technical side to this important decision. However, there is a much bigger question that needs to be answered first: how much is all of this going to cost?

All things being equal, it turns out that using a private cloud to serve as your IT infrastructure will provide you with about 60%-80% of the savings that your company can get if you went with using a public cloud. This should make making your decision easier, right?

As with all things in life, nothing is ever that easy. It turns out which type of cloud your company should go with may depend on how far along you are with your internal server virtualization program. A company that has already virtualized most of their servers won’t see very much of a savings by moving their IT operations into a public cloud. However, a company that has barely started to virtualize their servers could see a significant savings and would avoid the cost and effort of building their own private cloud.

In the end, it comes down to doing a careful ROI analysis for the company. CIOs need to understand that the decision to change over to using a cloud based IT infrastructure involves more than just technical decision making.

What All Of This Means For You

It’s all too easy for CIOs to get caught up in what everyone is talking about when it comes to cloud-based computing. However, it turns out that there is another decision that needs to be made regarding clouds: should I go public or should I go private? It turns out that on top of all of the technical issues that need to be considered, there is a very big financial one that may be even more important.

The choice between using a public cloud or building your own private cloud comes down to a question of costs. Companies that have already heavily invested in virtualizing their servers won’t see much of a benefit to moving into a public cloud. Likewise, companies that have not yet made the move to virtualized servers may want to bypass building their own private cloud and instead use public cloud resources.

CIOs are responsible for making the best decisions for their IT departments. What makes the job of being a CIO so challenging is clearly shown in the current era of moving to cloud computing. Technical IT knowledge is required in order to decide what type of cloud a company should choose to use, but business savvy is also required. Now that you know what to look for, go out there and choose the right cloud for your company.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Do you think a company should complete a server virtualization project or just start to use a public cloud instead?

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P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Companies are all asking themselves one question: what’s it going to take to be successful? It turns out that a lot of the techniques that worked in the past won’t work anymore – lowering prices, etc. Going forward, the only thing that a modern company can complete on is their business processes. It turns out that the CIO plays a very big role in making a company’s processes the best that they can be…

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Let’s Go Shopping: What A CIO Needs From Cloud Computing

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Image CreditWhat Should A CIO Look For In A Cloud?

What Should A CIO Look For In A Cloud?

Ok, admit it – cloud computing is here to stay. If you haven’t already signed up for a cloud then you will be doing so shortly. However, before you start writing the check, you really should know what you are buying. Everyone likes to talk about how good / bad cloud computing is; however, before now nobody has ever taken the time to talk about what you should be looking for when you go cloud shopping…

What Makes A Cloud A Cloud

At a high level, I suspect that we all understand what cloud computing is: somebody else maintains a collection of generic servers that you can pay to use as needed. Sure sounds simple enough – it’s just basically IT outsourcing taken to its logical extreme. However, there’s more to it than just that.

Dave Durkee has taken a look at cloud computing and he has identified what he calls the seven essential characteristics that make up cloud computing:

  • Access on-demand: one of the key features of cloud computing is that it provides a company with more and more computing power as their needs increase.

  • Grow / Shrink: unlike the days in which a company would purchase a server, install it, and then live with it forever, cloud computing allows companies to both add and shed computing power on an as-needed basis. .

  • Pay-As-You-Grow: cloud computing allows a company to match its IT expenses more closely to its actual needs. Just like a gas, water, or electric utility, cloud computing is a subscription service that you get charged for based on how much you’ve used. .

  • Lots Of Connections: although not discussed as much as it should, running your applications in the cloud assumes that you have reliable high-speed access to other servers and storage in the same cloud that you are using as well as high-speed access to the Internet. .

  • Economies Of Scale: since a cloud provider is not only servicing your company, but also other companies at the same time, they should be able to buy in bulk and therefore keep costs lower than you would be able to do on your own. .

  • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: when you use the cloud, you really don’t know where your data or applications physically are. Despite not knowing this, the cloud provider can be expected to provide you with some level of service level agreement. .

  • Dating, Not Marriage: just because you pick a particular cloud provider, doesn’t mean that you have to stick with them forever. Instead, you should imagine a future where you move from cloud to cloud based on business needs. .

Service Models & Things That Impact Price

The next thing that a CIO needs to understand when they go cloud shopping is just exactly what type of service model they are interested in. All clouds are not created equal.

Currently there are three different flavors of clouds for CIOs to choose from:

  1. IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service – this is a bare-bones cloud offering. You get an OS on a server with some storage and connectivity. That’s it – you need to provide everything else. .

  2. PaaS: Platform as a Service – this is one step up from IaaS. Instead of a raw server, this time out you’re purchasing a complete development environment. This means that you’ll get the server, OS, and some set of applications such as LAMP [Linux (operating system), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (database software) and Perl/PHP/Python] .

  3. SaaS: Software as a Service – this is the most sophisticated cloud offering currently available. Instead of worrying about servers or development stacks, you purchase access to an application that runs within the cloud. Salesforce.com is a great example of SaaS. .

What All Of This Means For You

CIOs know that moving into a cloud is no longer an “if”, but rather a “when”. This means that they need to spend some time to learn what they need to look for when they go cloud shopping.

CIOs need to ensure that clouds that they are considering have a set of basic characteristics. These include on-demand access, elasticity, pay-per-use, connectivity, etc. CIOs will need to decide which of the three basic cloud service models will best meet the needs of their IT department.

All clouds are not created the same. Every CIO will eventually find himself / herself shopping for a cloud. Using the guidelines that we’ve discussed, CIOs can compare and contrast clouds so that they can end up selecting the cloud that works best for their company…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that a CIO should select two separate clouds to use at the same time?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.
P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

No matter if you are already a CIO or simply hope to become one someday, you are going to want to become a success. Just because you are the CIO, does not guarantee that you’ll be a success – it seems to take something else, something extra. It turns out that social signals are what determines how successful a CIO will be. Do you know what signals you are sending out?

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Posted in cloud computing | 4 Comments »

Do CIOs (and CEOs) Have Their Heads Stuck In The Cloud?

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Image CreditSome CIOs Think That They Know How To Reach The Cloud, But Do They Really?

Some CIOs Think That They Know How To Reach The Cloud, But Do They Really?

Ok, enough of this cloud stuff already! The field of IT is just like every other field out there and we have our own share of trendy topics – cloud computing sure seems to the one that we’re dealing with right now. With all of the magazine articles on clouds and conferences going on, you’d think that every CIO and CEO has a good understanding of just exactly what a cloud is. Well, you’d be wrong…

Everybody Thinks That Clouds Are Important

In order to be a successful CIO, you’re going to have to have the support of the rest of your firm’s Senior Management. I guess one good thing is that it’s become clear that firm’s senior management have been reading the headlines and actually recognize the term “cloud computing”. Mark McDonald over at Gartner has been asking around to find out just how deep this knowledge goes.

Back in 2009 (was it really that long ago?) only about 5% of a firm’s senior management recognized the term. That’s popped up to 37% these days (remember that not everyone works in IT!)

To take this one step further, they also appear to know that cloud computing is important. Those senior managers now list cloud computing as being one of their top 5 IT priorities.

One Out Of Three Isn’t Bad, Is It?

Good CIOs understand that in the field of IT, there is no such thing as just one magical technology. Instead, solutions to difficult business challenges are built using multiple IT technologies that all have to work together.

The same level of understanding about how the world of IT works is not shared by the rest of most firm’s senior management. Mark McDonald’s research shows that too little is fully understood about how cloud computing really works.
Clouds are built using three separate pieces of IT technology:

  • Server Virtualization
  • Service Orientated Architecture (SOA)
  • Software as a Service (SaaS)

In order to implement a cloud solution, firms need to adopt all three technologies. However, this point has not yet sunk in with most non-IT senior management.

Gartner’s research shows that most executives have very little interest in any of these technologies despite their belief that cloud computing is the way for their IT departments to go. Furthermore, roughly half of the executives surveyed believed that virtualization alone was the same thing as cloud computing.

What’s Next For Clouds?

Well, at least they all know that cloud computing exists and that’s got to be a good thing, right? Actually, no. Studies of new and emerging IT technologies have shown that they all seem to follow a predictable path.

Right now, most members of your firm’s senior management team are probably quite excited about the potential of cloud computing. Soon, this will change. As it becomes clear that this isn’t a magical cure (and cost reducer) that will solve all of your firm’s problems, cloud computing will move into what Gartner calls “the trough of disillusionment”. This is when people reject a novel new technology because it didn’t live up to its initial hype.

What All Of This Means For You

CIOs understand the true power of cloud computing. It offers a way to efficiently scale a firm’s computing infrastructure while at the same time allowing it to keep it’s IT operational costs under control.

Realizing that your senior management peers don’t quite fully “get” what cloud computing is and that they’ll soon decide that it’s not all that it was touted to be is an important understanding that we all need to have.

CIOs are going to have to continue to focus on finding ways to make use of cloud computing resources while incorporating its supporting technologies into the projects that they are working on today. Cloud computing will eventually arrive on the IT scene and it’s up to you to be ready when it comes.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Which of the three supporting technologies do you think is the most important to making cloud computing a success?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.
P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If IT was a game show and you were a contestant on it, right now it sure seems as though you could correctly any question that you were asked by replying “cloud computing”. That’s because basically outsourcing parts of your company seems to be the answer to every question in IT right now. But is it really the right answer?

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CIO Cloud Computing: What The Future Holds

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
When CIOs Look Into Cloud Computing's Future, What Do They See?

When CIOs Look Into Cloud Computing's Future, What Do They See?

Cloud computing is hot – there’s no denying that. However, as with all things in the information technology field, cloud computing isn’t standing still. Even as  you read these words, engineers are hard at work defining and refining just exactly what a cloud computing architecture looks like and how it behaves. Let’s take a peek at what the future holds…

Where The New Ideas Are Being Born

Although cloud computing research is going on in a number of small start-ups as well as at universities world-wide, the work that is being followed the closest is that which is being done by the very large firms. Here’s a quick run down of what they are doing:

  • HP /Intel / Yahoo: These three powerhouses have come together to launch the Cloud Research Testbed. The goal is to allow academic researchers to have access to supercomputing resources in order to try out new ideas such as computing chips that have been designed for cloud computing.
  • IBM Research: IBM has taken the global approach and launched its Research Compute Cloud. This cloud will be used to support business processes.

The 5-Year Plan

Something that has helped to propel cloud computing to the forefront of discussion in many IT departments is the simple fact that due to the economic downturn, there is no money left to design and build expensive computing architecture.

IT has for too long been seen as a department that simply maintains computing “boxes”. This adds very little value to the rest of the firm. It’s expected that small and midsized firms are going to be the ones jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon. The larger firms are expected to be setting up their own private clouds and only using public clouds when they temporarily need the extra capacity.

Improvements in cloud computing both this year and in the next few years should center around moving your applications from one cloud to another, have companies communicate better while in the cloud, and even sharing data in the cloud.

Final Thoughts

In the end, the best way to think about cloud computing is probably to view it as being yet another type of application deployment architecture. The real boon will be to software developers who will no longer be shackled by limited availability of computing hardware.

If the challenges that cloud computing is facing today, such as security, can be overcome then CIOs that discover how to best make use of this new resource will have found yet another way to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

Do you think that Yahoo and IBM are in a race to be the ones to define the cloud computing standards? Do you think that large firms will be successful in building their own private clouds? When do you think that public clouds will be “ready for prime time” and firms will start to use them over building out their own infrastructure? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

It can be a long and lonely journey through a recession for anyone, including CIOs. The company’s very survival may be at stake, the CIO’s job may be at risk, and of course there is that big unanswered question about what needs to be done to prepare for life AFTER the recession is over. Maybe Cisco’s John Chambers can offer us some insights…

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CIO Cloud Computing 101: Problems With Clouds

Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Not All Clouds Are Right For Cloud Computing<br>(c) - 2006

Not All Clouds Are Right For Cloud Computing(c) - 2006

Cloud computing is all the rage these days and everyone who is anyone is making plans to implement at least some flavor of it as soon as possible. It turns out that the decision to go with a cloud computing solution for your IT department might not be as simple as some would lead you to believe. There are challenges to successfully using a cloud and we need to talk about them…

The Seven Challenges Of Cloud Computing

With all of the magazine articles, conferences, and vendors who have shown up to sell it, it’s easy to forget that cloud computing is still an emerging technology – it’s not quite fully baked yet. Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has identified the following seven issues. CIOs will need to investigate their potential effects before agreeing to any cloud computing initiative:

  • Control: this is the biggest issue when it comes to using cloud computing. By design a company gives up control when they sign up to use a firm’s cloud resources. This means that the cloud provider can make changes to the infrastructure without telling the company at any time. This needs to be managed.
  • Performance / Reliability: When you are using resources that are not located within your firm’s buildings the question of how much computing horsepower you have available when you need it comes up. Additionally, failures will happen and so understanding how you’ll be notified and how quickly issues will be resolved is critical.
  • Security: You know that you can protect your mission critical business data when it’s inside your own walls, but what happens when somebody else is managing it for you?
  • Cost Of Bandwidth: You should be saving money on buying hardware and staffing to maintain it. However, you’ll need to very accurately forecast you bandwidth costs in order to determine the true cost of using the cloud.
  • Vendor Lock-In: true standards for how applications communicate and control applications that are in a vendor’s cloud have not yet been established. This means that vendors are creating their own proprietary interfaces that could end up tying you to a vendor for longer than you would like.
  • Transparency: basically this comes down to the difficulty that you’ll have doing an audit of your IT resources. Since you don’t have true visibility into the cloud you can’t say for certain who has access to your data and how you can keep people out of your sensitive data.
  • Reliability: I’d like to say that clouds are 100% reliable, but I can’t. The trade rags are filled with stories about connections that have gone down and back-up diesel generators that have failed to switch on. There is risk with every decision, you need to decide if you can handle the risk that comes with cloud computing.

Final Thoughts

As exciting as the new field of cloud computing is, CIOs need to slow down and take a deep breath. This is new stuff and that means that not all of the details have been worked out just yet. There are seven major areas that could have a dramatic impact on your company’s ability to get the most out of cloud computing. Do your homework and see if cloud computing offers you a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

How important is it for you to retain complete control over your IT boxes? How much downtime can your department / business handle? What would the impact of a security breach be? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Cloud computing is hot – there’s no denying that. However, as with all things in the information technology field, cloud computing isn’t standing still. Even as  you read these words, engineers are hard at work defining and refining just exactly what a cloud computing architecture looks like and how it behaves. Let’s take a peek at what the future holds…

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Posted in cloud computing | 8 Comments »

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