whenyouputitthatway

In my opinion, the cloud provides the most cost effective, innovative, efficient, reliable and secure method of providing specific core IT services to business and organizations. Most people out there, or at least those people in IT, already know about the cloud, and most of us have our own thoughts and perceptions about what it is and whether it is relevant to us, however I think most IT decision makers are still “on the fence” or still don’t know if the cloud is the right move for their organization. Considering moving to the cloud is something that makes a lot of IT managers and decisions makers a little apprehensive. In a lot of cases the result of this apprehension is what some call “analysis paralysis”. In some cases this is financial analysis. We know how much cloud services costs, but it is often difficult for us to determine what it is actually costing us to provide that service today. In my experience, this is one of the easiest to address as it is rational to understand that standardized cloud services can be provided much cheaper than in house solutions due to economies of scale. One of the analyses that often goes unmentioned or undefined is the benefits analysis. IT decision makers, especially those that are technical, are quick to point out what they will be giving up if a service or solution is moved to the cloud, and what some organizations are giving up is some level of control.

when you put it thatway

In any cloud based solution, especially those that are standardized offerings which provide the greatest levels of cost savings, you will be giving up a little to hopefully get much more. When moving any solution or service to the cloud, you will be essentially putting a good deal of trust in your cloud vendor (which is why choosing the right one is important).( Note: It is also important to insure that this isn’t blind trust, which is to say make sure that there is a way to “cut ties” with the vendor or the solution and bring it back in house if desired in the future, and insure this is something that would not be cost prohibitive or disruptive to your end users.) In most cases, the benefits are reduction in costs and management overhead, providing increased levels of reliability and high availability, and providing anywhere access to services. On the other side of the coin, most of the perceived disadvantages are based on giving up control. This could be related to security, supportability, or in most cases flexibility. I would argue that supportability and security are actually better in the cloud, but flexibility; this is something that is possible in the cloud but right now that comes at a price, and for some vendors that price is higher than others, and for some there is little to no flexibility at all. The flexibility discussion is one to be had, however, first it needs to be accepted and understood that the cloud, or the potential for the cloud within your organization, is a valuable to asset to the business of your organization. So how do we get there? I wanted to share an analogy I use when considering the cloud, especially when talking to those that are apprehensive, and that’s making an analogy to how we travel. I’ll use my own travel planning as an example.

Comparing the Cloud to How we Travel

I currently live in Los Angeles, and I am originally from Boston. I need to get to Boston to visit and spend the holidays with my family. This is important to understand! The goal of my trip is NOT to get to Boston and back, the goal of my trip is to spend time with my family. It is very important to understand this when evaluating my options and this also applies to how we consider IT solutions and the cloud. Take email for example, the goal of IT is not to provide email, the goal is to provide a method for communicating with my co-workers, partners, and customers or citizens so that I can improve and/or streamline the way I do business. It’s important that the goal is clear, because often times we look at providing a good IT service as our goal, when our goal is to provide a service that benefits the business, not just the best of breed IT solution.

When planning to make a trip across the country I have many options. For the intentions of this analogy I will analyze 3 options. The first option is to drive across country and back, the second option is to charter a private plane, and the third option is to fly commercial.

Option 1: Doing it the old fashioned way

If I drive I won’t have to make any significant upfront purchases (capital expenses) as I already own a car. The benefits of driving across country (aside from sightseeing) are that I have a great deal of flexibility and control over my trip. I can leave whenever it is convenient for me, I can take my preferred route, and my safety and security is (for the most part) in my own hands. The disadvantages would be cost and inefficiency. I will have to pay all of my expenses such as fuel, food, hotel, and car maintenance after driving almost 7,000 miles (operational expenses). In addition, this would take significantly longer than my other options. This option is appealing to me as the driver (because I am effectively “in the driver’s seat”), but does not lend itself to accomplishing the goal of spending the most time with my family. I am effectively taking away resources (in the form of time I spend with my family), so that I have more control.

This option is similar to most current IT environments in small, medium and some large organizations. These organizations have built a data center, or multiple data centers that house and run all equipment (electrical, heating, cooling, networking, servers) and software (operating systems, applications, line of business solutions, etc.). The goal of this entire infrastructure is ultimately to provide a solution that is part of my day to day business. All of this infrastructure is there to support this goal, and is part of the operational expense required for me to provide this solution. As an IT administrator, I am “in the driver’s seat”, but this is at the significant expense incurred to install and maintain all of the supporting infrastructure. In this scenario I am taking resources (most of which can be associated directly with cost) away from organization and allotting a large amount of time and money to simply support this infrastructure. So if my goal as an organization to provide better services to citizens (in the case of government), I am not utilizing my resources effectively as I am allotting a large amount of resources to maintaining my IT infrastructure.

Option 2: First class is second class… I fly private.

My second option (kind of) is to charter a plane (or even buy one if I travel enough, maybe this seems far-fetched for an individual but not when you think in terms of an organization). The advantages of this option are that I get a lot of flexibility as I can decide the exact time of my departure, I exercise some control over security as I can screen and select my own crew and equipment, and time it takes to travel will be minimal. The disadvantages are cost, maintenance and reliability. Obviously, chartering or owning a plane will be expensive so I don’t have to expand on these details. In addition, if I or my organization was to buy a plane there would be a significant amount of cost associated with maintenance. If I owned the plane then I would also be constrained by the model of equipment I am using. For example, if a newer, faster, or more fuel efficient aircraft was available, there would be a significant investment necessary for me to upgrade my equipment. Finally there is the matter of reliability. If my plane or equipment breaks, I cannot travel so there is less reliability (or high availability) in this model. I could buy multiple planes to alleviate this constraint; however this would also significantly impact my cost. So this option will certainly be an effective way of spending the most amount of time with my family, while still providing some level of “control”, but this will come at a significant, and most likely prohibitive, cost.

This example aligns with most medium to large organizations. These organizations have large, enterprise scale, data centers and IT infrastructures. These infrastructures are maintained by hundreds of IT staff and 3rd party contractors. The goal remains the same, which is to provide a “world class” solution that is part of day to day business, but the cost is exponentially greater due to the scale and requirements of larger organizations. These types of organizations support large, diverse communities of users that require that these services be highly available and reliable. This often requires significant investments be made in redundant infrastructure and often redundant data centers. Also, this organization is constrained by the complexity and cost associated with upgrading and maintaining these systems. In order to implement a newer version of software or service it will often require a long, expensive process that will most often have them running at least one version behind the current version causing them to lose money and/or market share to competition. Again, all of this cost is going towards maintaining IT, and not toward supporting or improving the business of my organization.

Option 3: I’ll be home for Christmas… and can afford to buy Mom a gift.

Finally there is the option to fly on a commercial airline. The benefits of flying commercial are cost, efficiency and reliability. This will be the most cost effective because I will only be paying the airline for my ticket (and a bunch of additional fees in this day in age). It will be much cheaper than driving and definitely much cheaper than chartering or purchasing my own plane. The trip will also be efficient, in that it will take less time for me to get to my destination and also I will not have to spend additional time and money on maintaining my car or aircraft and preparing it for travel each time. Finally, this is my most reliable option because the airline is responsible for insuring that I will get to my destination. If my flight is not available I will have the option to choose a different flight, or travel from a different airport. In most cases, the airline is responsible for incurring any additional costs to provide this reliability. The biggest disadvantage to this option is flexibility. Once I am booked on a flight, I have no input regarding how this service is delivered. I have some options like where my seat is located or what types of services (meals, entertainment, etc.) are available to me onboard. I do not have input into exactly how the service is provided, such as who my pilot is, what type of plane we are flying on, when the flight departs or any of the other operational and maintenance tasks that are part of providing this service. I do have the option to choose which airline to fly however, so based on research, credibility, and past experience, I am able to choose the airline that I feel is the most affordable, safest, reliable and comfortable airline (or that meets my specific requirements). I will lose some levels of control, but not all, certainly not enough to impact my overall goal, which is to get home and spend time with my family.

This option is similar to utilizing a cloud based service. In this instance, let’s take email as an example. If I am a business or a government organization, my goals and business objectives do not include providing and maintaining email. My goals and business objectives due include providing a product or service to my customers in the most profitable, or cost efficient manner possible. Email is certainly a method for doing this as it provides me with a way to effectively communicate and collaborate with my co-workers, partners, and customers (or citizens) and I recognize it is an essential tool to my organization. I could provide this tool to individuals by building or continuing to support all of the infrastructure necessary to provide this service. This often means that I will be incurring all of the costs identified in the previous examples if I decide to maintain all aspects of this solution in my own data centers. As an alternative I could provide an even more feature rich, reliable and secure email environment and do so at a fraction of the cost using a cloud based service. By utilizing a cloud based service you can provide the same, if not better levels of experience for your end users (depending on your existing email system, and your choice of vendor). For example, if you’re using Microsoft Exchange and Outlook today, you can do the same in the cloud.

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whenyouputitthatway

SINCE YOU PUT IT THAT WAY… MAKING SENSE OF MAKING A DECISION ABOUT THE CLOUD.

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