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Why You Don’t Need a Cloud Computing Strategy

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As with any new exciting technology, companies commonly look towards creating a “strategy” around the movement in order to ensure their investments achieve the greatest ROI. In the 1990s, it was all about how companies needed a “Linux” strategy; the last decade has been dominated with companies needing a “virtualization” strategy; and the trend I’m seeing today is everyone talking about needing a “cloud computing” strategy.

While this new saying is good news for large vendors who quickly rebrand existing and/or legacy technologies to go along with the momentum, it can also cause a number of challenges. The main one is that it can introduce risks and new costs with minimal ROI for companies building out cloud strategies outside of their normal IT practice. So, to get it right the first time, rather than looking at the cloud as a separate replacement strategy, companies need to look at it from the bigger picture as a complete IT strategy.

Here are five key things to think about when identifying areas for cloud adoption and driving a successful IT strategy:

1. Understand the cloud and its benefits to your business: Think business, not technology – not all clouds are created equal. There are many choices, from hosted applications to hosted infrastructure – Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); some run on premise, some run off. Each have significant benefits but only when viewed in the context of how they fit in with your current operations. You need to understand how each of these can augment your IT strategy to achieve the benefits of efficiency and agility.

2. Build off your existing operational choices and be application specific: If existing services such as CRM and e-mail are functioning well you will gain very little by transitioning them to the cloud. In fact, these types of changes could prove confusing and incite end user rejection. However, if you are just implementing these services for the first time the cloud may give the benefits and cost savings that you need. This same rule applies to IaaS clouds. Rather than trying to replace existing infrastructure that is already working, identify workloads that are dynamic or new that constantly require attention on infrastructure to reap the benefits.

3. Think small, but plan big: Start out with a pilot. 2010 was the year of defining the cloud and 2011 will be the year of cloud implementation. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, recently predicted that many will try to deploy a private cloud, but many will fail. The key is to start small and identify areas where you can extend your existing strategy with new technologies to understand their impact. For IaaS clouds, the easiest is to start with your current virtualization strategy, as the cloud uses virtualization as a core technology. Whether it is development, testing, or new web application environments, the cloud can quickly and easily be implemented with a high likelihood for success.

4. Evaluate all of your options – think agility: There are many options when implementing a cloud solution. The choice between a public or private cloud should be made based on factors such as cost, security, availability and control. Each deployment model has pros and cons; the goal is to optimize for your business requirements. If you are choosing to build your own, private cloud, vendors can help you achieve this. Portability and flexibility are important elements to consider. You need to choose a solution that works within your system, but also does not lock you into a specific environment. Additionally, a solution that gives you the ability to migrate to public clouds in the future will prove to be valuable.

5. Acknowledge the immaturity of cloud computing, but don’t let it hold you back: Cloud computing is a new paradigm in IT. It has a few issues including data security and compliance, but new advancements every day continue to take the cloud to the next level. Across the industry, there are more companies and developers working on advancing this segment than many of the traditional/legacy apps. As such, you do not want to get behind the curve of the next wave of innovation. By acknowledging its immaturity and picking applications and workloads that can handle the risk, you get the benefit of getting ahead of the movement and truly understanding the technology as it matures and how it can become an incredible weapon in your IT strategy.

Cloud computing is an exciting new movement that promises to bring many benefits to companies of all size. By taking simple steps to understand how to integrate it into your existing “business strategy” versus treating it like a separate strategic project will increase the likelihood of success and simplify the transition to this new form of IT service.

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Microsoft Cloud Computing Predictions

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Many companies may have e-mail, virus scanning or CRM running as a service over the internet, but most organizations are only just starting out when it comes to cloud computing, according to Microsoft.

The software giant’s lists ways the nascent cloud market will change in the next few years.

Cloud-centric hardware

Servers, microprocessors and client devices will evolve as purpose-built systems to address the new paradigm of cloud computing. For example, diskless laptops that store data in the cloud could be used as an alternative to fully-fledged laptops, while server and storage companies revamp their offerings.

Partnering in the cloud

Traditional web hosting companies are likely to start wholesaling and then reselling cloud services from the global players as a way of building their businesses without building out physical infrastructure. Service providers, resellers or other agents will deal with multiple cloud providers, acting as central points for single sign-on, customer care and billing.

Benchmarking

Measuring cloud performance will be difficult because of the complexity wrought by multitenant infrastructures, but metrics will emerge to identify and resolve issues that effect speed and provide ways to assess how well cloud services are running.

Platform-as-a-service

While the main benefit of cloud migration currently tends to focus on cost savings, the long-term advantages in discovering the possibilities of applying infinite computing resources to meet enterprise challenges. Such scenarios are best made possible with Platform as a service (PaaS) models, a cloud-based platform for development and deployment of application software.

Systems management tools

The consoles familiar from enterprise IT will evolve to provide views of multi-mode IT operations where, for example, some assets are maintained behind the firewall while the cloud is used for “burst-mode” activities such as running a complex business intelligence query. IT will need to enable this through management and middleware tools.

Best practices

As organizations get to grips with cloud computing examples of governance, security, budgeting, testing and provisioning will emerge.

Standards and interoperability

As customers begin to seriously look at public or hosted clouds for business critical workloads, their requirements will go beyond data sovereignty. They will look for assurance that the suppliers have scale, stability and commitment to standards and will want switch suppliers without having to rewrite applications or reconstitute data. They will also want to switch workloads from an on-premise private cloud or traditional infrastructure to public cloud in an efficient, cost-effective way.

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The GSA Cloud Proof of Concept

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One of the key points of this article from here is, “A lot of agencies have lost their way and they are becoming IT departments instead of focusing on their mission”. Is this true of your business and IT? meshIP can get your business out of the IT business.

The General Services Administration’s decision to hire Unisys to move its e-mail to the cloud in many ways is the proof of concept for the rest of government.

Agencies and vendors are closely watching how GSA migrates to the commercial cloud both from a technical and culture standpoint.

Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, said Thursday that if GSA shows moving to the cloud for e-mail can be done, then more and more agencies will follow suit.

In fact, OMB will provide guidance for the 2012 budget that would require agencies to move to the cloud for specific commodity services, such as e-mail or storage, Kundra said.

Kundra said he’s driving a three-part cloud strategy starting with consumer-based platforms agencies can take advantage of like what GSA is doing.

“We want to make sure agencies don’t default to the traditional way of buying IT,” he said. “The traditional approach to buying IT is to go through the process where agencies believe they have to create custom solutions. GSA’s move is a first step in this new foundation we are building. There are countless cases I could cite where we have seen this shift in thinking about how we buy IT. It’s much better to provision IT where you are turning on services than to engage in this long term custom IT process. A lot of agencies have lost their way and they are becoming IT departments instead of focusing on their mission.”

And GSA knows agencies and vendors are paying a lot of attention, especially around the security and private of Google’s cloud.

Industry sources have expressed concern about where the Google data center is located and whether it’s located outside the United States.

GSA modified the request for quotes late in the response period to alter the requirement that the data center must reside in the continental United States. Vendor sources say that was specifically for Google.

GSA did not respond for a request for comment on why it modified the RFQ late in the process.

It wrote in the modification that “As more information about Software as a Service has emerged since we issued our Request for Proposal, we have gained a better understanding of the level of maturity of this new and exciting environment. Our primary concern was and continues to be for the security of our data. And, while GSA prefers a location within the United States, we recognize we may have equated location with security and excluded other factors that could also ensure the security of our data, which unduly restricted offerors.”

Casey Coleman, GSA’s CIO, wouldn’t confirm where the data center is located, but did say it was not in India.

“Security is a paramount concern in GSA’s decision and in every case information security and data security are much more than just about the physical location of the data center,” she said. “Cloud offers considerable efficiencies. Our vendor team will comply with all applicable requirements for security.”

She adds that GSA will monitor the security of the data centers and GSA owns all data in the cloud.

“In the contract it stipulates that data can’t be used or released and all key individuals must go through background checks,” Coleman said. “We also put in the contract that should GSA end the contract, the vendors are required to remove from their all government data from their servers.”

PV Puvvada, the vice president and managing partner for civilian agencies at Unisys Federal Systems, also wouldn’t confirm if the servers were in the continental U.S.

“As a smart security policy, we don’t talk publicly about the location,” he said. “We are working closely with GSA and they will have close monitoring and insight into what we will do to meet their requirements. I’m pretty sure GSA can take advantage of cloud and make sure it’s secure and reliable.”

Puvvada added that GSA put good security requirements in the RFP and Unisys and its partners will meet all of them.

Security is only one area where agencies will be watching what GSA does. The data migration and the overall user experience also will be closely monitored by others in government.

“There is a lot of interest on the part of other agencies,” said Dave McClure, GSA’s associate administrator for citizen services and innovative technologies. “Agencies always are looking for leaders and during this period of developing lessons learned, we are happy to be in this position.”

McClure said GSA’s experience also will influence a governmenwide effort to develop a blanket purchase agreement for e-mail-as-a-service. GSA issued a SmartBuy notice on FedBizOpps.gov in late October announcing their plan.

McClure said an intergovernmental cloud working group should have the request for proposals out by February and an award made later in 2011.

“There are a lot of agencies interested in getting that BPA on market so they can consider cloud e-mail,” he said.

Coleman said she’s received several notes from other CIOs congratulating her on the award.

GSA hired Unisys, Google, Tempus Nova, and Acumen Solutions under a contract worth $6.7 million over five years.

“GSA selected Google Apps for Government that is FISMA certified at the moderate level,” said Puvvada. “It will replace their legacy Lotus Notes system that they own, which is an environment that hasn’t kept up to needs of its employees.”

Puvvada said the more than 17,000 GSA employees and contractors with e-mail addresses will see little difference on the front end of the system. They will be able to keep their current e-mail addresses and all their data-contacts, calendar and archived e-mails.

“The beauty of the cloud is there are applications people already are familiar with so there is a not a whole lot of change if you are using G-Mail or Google Apps or any other platform,” he said. “These cloud-based new technologies are easy to learn and easy to get on. From an end user perspective, this is a big step forward in terms of the flexibilities it provides to take advantage of all the features.”

Coleman said the flexibility and the ability to easily upgrade and add new features were major reasons GSA decided to go with a cloud model.

“We expect a number of benefits including resiliency, an immediate upgrade to new functionality, a cost reduction nearly 50 percent from our in-house e-mail system and an improved access to mobile tools for our employees,” she said.

Coleman said the biggest challenge is the change management for employees. She said there has to be training and employee education about timing and expectations.

Puvvada agreed with Coleman that change management is the biggest challenge. He said Unisys subcontractor Tempus Nova has software to ease the data migration.