Posts Tagged ‘Google’

CIO Cloud Computing: What The Future Holds

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

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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.

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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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Posted in cloud computing | 5 Comments »

CIO Cloud Computing 101: Why Use The Cloud?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

By Dr. Jim Anderson

CIOs Need To Make Sure That Cloud Computing Is Not Just A Fad

CIOs Need To Make Sure That Cloud Computing Is Not Just A Fad

Does anyone besides me remember the big Furby craze that swept the U.S. in the early ’90’s? People went crazy for these little plush dolls and they started collecting them in hopes that they would one day be valuable. Well, that never happened and a lot of people got stuck with expensive toys that they couldn’t get rid of. Is is  possible that the current cloud computing craze in IT could be another Furby fad that will fade away?

What Kind Of Services Come In A Cloud?

If a CIO can move beyond the hype, he/she needs to spend some time doing their homework in order to find out what kind of services a cloud could offer that their company could make use of. Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has boiled cloud services down into four types of services:

  • Basic Services: this is not glamorous, but it may be the most popular type of service that a cloud environment can offer to your business. Basically simple Internet based services such as database functionality and capacity, middleware, and additional storage are used to supplement what your company already has.
  • IaaS: Buzz word alert – “Infrastructure As A Service”. This is when you are renting a complete computer (CPU, storage, bandwidth, etc.) that you access via the Internet. You would use this infrastructure to run your company’s applications on lock-stock-and-barrel.
  • PaaS: Platform-as-a-service – provides your firm with a development environment that your IT staff can use to create new applications for the rest of the company (and your customers) to use. This is computer plus development tools.
  • SaaS: Software-as-a-service – this is where you don’t care about what the software is running on, you just want to purchase access to the application. The most famous example of this is Salesforce.com’s CRM application.

Why Bother With A Cloud?

The Forrester research company has done some investigating and they now claim that most company’s data centers are using less than 50% of their total capacity. Despite the hype that is currently surrounding cloud computing, Leavitt has uncovered three very good reasons for looking into having your firm start to use cloud computing:

  1. Availability: interestingly enough, despite many firm’s misgivings about losing control over their IT equipment, there is a lot to be said to having a professional firm that has the deep pockets needed for redundant systems and tested disaster recovery plans run your IT infrastructure. If you work at a small or even a medium sized firm, this may be especially valuable to you.
  2. Integration Of Applications: sorry, we can’t do anything about those old apps that you are running. However, the new ones that are developed to run in the cloud will almost automatically be easy to integrate because they will use the suite of Web interface languages/tools  (SOAP, XML, etc.) that make this easy to do.
  3. Flexibility: unlike the majority of cell phone vendors in the U.S., currently most cloud computing service providers don’t require users to sign long term contracts that lock them in. This makes it easy to quickly get more cloud resources when your firm needs them.

Final Thoughts

It is all too easy for CIOs who are adverse to change to look at the current excitement over cloud computing and decide that it is yet another fad that will fade away in time. The reality is that cloud computing provides several different types of services that are useful to any IT department. This can’t be ignored.

Additionally, successfully adding cloud computing resources to the company’s existing IT infrastructure will mean that a CIOs will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

How much of your existing IT infrastructure do you think that your firm is currently using – more or less than 50%? Which of the four types of cloud computing services would have the most immediate value to your company? Why? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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…

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Posted in cloud computing | 10 Comments »

CIO Cloud Computing 101: Who Are The Players?

Monday, July 27th, 2009
CIOs Need To Understand Cloud Computing

CIOs Need To Understand Cloud Computing

One of the great things about working in the IT field is that whenever things start to get boring, we have the ability to create new buzzwords and make things interesting all over again. The arrival of “Cloud Computing” on the scene a couple of years ago showed that this cycle has not gone away. Maybe it would be worthwhile to take a step back and make sure that we’re all on the same page here – what is cloud computing and why should anyone care?

The Many Flavors Of Cloud Computing

Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has some thoughts for us.  A quick definition of just what cloud computing is might be a good place for us to start. In olden days (3 years ago), if you wanted to run an application you pretty much had to go out, buy a server, plug it in, load up the software, connect it to a network and then you were in business. Cloud computing changes all of that.

Now all you have to do is set up an account with a company who has already done all of the above steps. You can then load  your application onto their server(s) using the Internet to reach these servers and ta-da you are in business.

There are three main “flavors” of cloud computing that users are employing currently:

  • Thin Clients: allows you to minimize the processing power / storage needed by the end user’s computer and do the “heavy lifting” on servers and storage that are stored elsewhere.
  • Grid Computing: allows computers that may be located in completely different locations to be connected together in order to form a single virtual computing system. An example of this would be specialized image processing computers that were linked to a massive image storage system for processing.
  • Utility Computing: this is cloud computing in its purest form – CPUs for hire. You pay for what you use and you can use as much as you need. This is a great solution for firms that have seasonal spikes in the amount of data that they have to process.

Who Are The Cloud Computing Service Players?

The list of cloud computing service providers is long and seems to be getting longer every day. Here’s a partial list with a number of names that you’ll probably recognize…

Final Thoughts

Ok, so clearly this is not the final thought on Cloud Computing. I’ve got a lot more to cover with you, but this is a good place to quit for now. Cloud Computing was treated as a bit of a novelty when it first showed up. I mean, who would trust unreliable links to remote computers to run critical corporate apps?

Times have changed and the economics of Cloud Computing have also changed to make this a more attractive option. Every CIO needs to be thinking about how his / her IT shop is using computing resources right now and what role Cloud Computing could play in the future. Addressing this issue this will mean that CIOs will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

Have you spent any time thinking about using Cloud Computing yet? How long until you run out of room to add more servers to your company’s infrastructure? Have you calculated the total cost of ownership for the servers that you do have? Are your applications too critical to trust to a cloud? 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

Does anyone besides me remember the big Furby craze that swept the U.S. in the early ’90’s? People went crazy for these little plush dolls and they started collecting them in hopes that they would one day be valuable. Well, that never happened and a lot of people got stuck with expensive toys that they couldn’t get rid of. Is is  possible that the current cloud computing craze in IT could be another Furby fad that will fade away?

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Posted in cloud computing | 2 Comments »

Google’s Staffing Problems Have Much To Teach CIOs

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Google's Having A Common Staffing Problem - Will They Be Able To Fix It?

Google's Having A Common Staffing Problem - Will They Be Able To Fix It?

If you could be running the IT department for any company out there right now, which one would it be? A lot of us would say Google – everything that we’ve read and heard about the company makes it seem like a great place to work. However, it turns out that even Google is not immune to IT staff problems…

Google’s Staffing Problem

Google is in the middle of what is often called a “brain drain” – some of its best and brightest workers are leaving the firm to go join other companies. In the past few weeks they’ve lost Tim Armstrong who was their advertising sales boss and they’ve lost David Rosenblatt who was in charge of their display advertising. Oh, and they are losing their top engineers to Twitter and Facebook…

What’s Google Going To Do?

Google’s plan to try to stem this exodus of talent is a typical Google solution – they’re going to try and solve it by crunching numbers. Unlike many IT firms, Google has both the data and the processing power to attempt this.

Google plans on using data that they’ve collected from surveys and peer reviews in order to discover which of its employees feel underused. This may sound a little far fetched, but Edward Lawler who works at the University of Southern California says that eventually all companies will be approaching HR issues this way.

What’s Gone Wrong At Google?

Using algorithms to find unsatisfied workers is clever and all that, but clearly there is something else going on here. Interviews with former Google employees reveal some interesting things about the day-to-day practical realities of working in this high-tech Shangri-La.

Former employees reveal that people are leaving because many employees don’t feel that their efforts will make the same amount of impact as the company matures from its startup days. Compounding the problem is the fact that Google does not appear to provide much in the way of formal career planning. Often these tasks would be addressed by a company’s Human Resources (HR) department, but it appears as though Google’s HR department is viewed by many as being quite impersonal.

So What Should Google Be Doing?

As amazing as it may seem, the answer to Google’s problems is actually very simple – hard to implement, but simple to describe. What they need to do is to put their customer first. By clearly communicating to the entire company that Google exists to serve their customers, a great deal of other staffing problems will fade away.

Final Thoughts

One of Google’s biggest problems is that they have not found a way to keep their employees engaged. This isn’t surprising because Google dominates its market and so it doesn’t have any big competitors to use as a rallying cry.

Making its customers first would allow Google to focus its staff on a single goal that would extend throughout the company All of a sudden every employee would have a way to measure the value of his/her work. Once again, this wouldn’t necessarily be easy to do, but it’s the right thing to do. If you can figure out how to do this with your IT department then you will have found another way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

Do you think that Google’s algorithm will be able to identify those employees who might leave? Do you think that it will make mistakes? Do you think that this type of algorithm would work at your company? Do you think a customer focus would solve Google’s staffing issues? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Didn’t we solve that whole outsourcing thing years ago? Specifically aren’t the IT and the Finance departments on the same page when it comes to not only IF we should outsource some of the IT work, but also HOW it should be outsourced? If this is true, than what does the Satyam scandle mean for your IT / Finance relationship?

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Posted in staffing | No Comments »