To Cloud or Not to Cloud for Transaction Document Production

To Cloud or Not to Cloud for Transaction Document Production Stephen D. Poe Nautilus Solutions

Transaction Docs & the Cloud Our Agenda
What is This ‘Cloud’?
How is it Applicable to Transaction Document Production?
Cloud Concerns
To Cloud or Not to Cloud?
Entering The Cloud

What is this ‘Cloud’

A Bit of History
Cloud concept first described by John McCarthy in the 1960s
"computation may someday be organized as a public utility"
My first Cloud
GE Timesharing, 1970-1974
Using a TTY communicating via an acoustic coupled modem
“ Cloud Computing” term first used in 1997
Amazon Web Service (AWS) launched 2006

Another Historical View

The Cloud
Remote computing over a network
Very thin client/server
Typically, only a Web browser on the client machine

Cloud Acceptance
Although growth rate is very high, still a small % of overall IT spending

Levels of Clouds Source: Microsoft

Levels of Clouds
The Cloud can be used as:
IaaS
As a remote server to run your IT on
PaaS
As a remote platform to run your applications on
SaaS
As a remote provider who provides a turnkey operation to you

Public vs. Private Clouds
Public Cloud
Servers and infrastructure are owned by an external organization and are shared
Your organization rents time on them
As do many other organizations
Private Cloud
Your organization sets up an internal Cloud behind your firewall for your organization’s departments to run on
Or an external vendor sets up a Cloud for your organization’s exclusive use
May still do same type of charging as a Public Cloud vendor
Hybrid Clouds
Many variations of the above two

Public vs. Private Clouds How does the appeal of private clouds in your organization compare with that of using public clouds? Source: IDC’s IT Cloud Services Survey, 2Q10

Cloud Cost Advantages Source: Microsoft

How is it the Cloud Applicable to Transaction Document Production?

Transaction Document Production Options in the Cloud
Moving parts of your transaction document production process to The Cloud; e.g.,
Document composition
Document reengineering
Postal hygiene, presort, electronic postsort
Document archive
Archive of record
Archive for customer support and end users
Process control and monitoring (ADF)

The Cloud or a Service Bureau?

The Cloud for Archive

Cloud Printing Service Providers
Provider offering multiple print options
Centralized and decentralized
Quick response, shipping
Currently mostly business printing oriented

Potential Applicability
Functionality
ADF
Archive
Document retrieval and display
Customer Support
End use display
Document composition
Document reengineering
Mail/postal hygiene and cost reduction

Potential Benefits
22% increase in firms seeking external document outsourcing solutions from 2009 to 2011
Adds a new outsourcing alternative
SMB gaining inexpensive access to enterprise-level applications
Lower start-up and capital costs
Reduced IT investment and lower IT operational budget
Less need for specific technical skills in-house
Lower cost to meet volume spikes
Better Disaster Recovery

Cloud Concerns

CIO Cloud Concerns Source: Gartner CIO Survey

Availability
Example: Amazon.com outage April 2011
4 days down for some clients
Drop to 98.9% annual up time just for this incident
Some loss of client data
Clients who configured themselves well were not affected
What are the SLAs?
What are the penalties? From a major supplier’s boilerplate:
“ Unless otherwise provided in the [Acme] Agreement, your sole and exclusive remedy for any unavailability or non-performance of [Acme] or other failure by us to provide [Acme] is the receipt of a Service Credit (if eligible) in accordance with the terms of this SLA or termination of your use of [Acme].”

Compliance
Most of the transaction space is regulated
Does your Cloud provider meet:
Current HIPAA, PCI, SOX, ‘xyz’ regulations?
Are they committed to meeting future regulatory changes?
Are you multinational?
Where are the Clouds physically located?
Where will they be located tomorrow?
China is making a major push to be a cheap home for Cloud server farms
Is data crossing transnational borders?
Does your Cloud provider meet regulations in all countries you will access the Cloud from?
How about conflicting regulations, such as US eDiscovery rules vs. EU Privacy laws?

Costs
Pricing based on Usage
May be hard to gauge ‘usage’
How is ‘usage’ measured?
What are normal usage costs?
What are peak usage costs?
Pricing
For how long are your prices guaranteed?
Expansion/contraction pricing?
Lock In
What are potential lock-in costs?
How much will it cost you to move?

Data Usage
Are you moving large data sets between the end user(s) and the Cloud?
What does this do to Internet bandwidth and WAN/LAN bandwidth?
Are there any additional costs for higher bandwidth access to your Cloud?

Data Ownership
You own your data
But who owns IP and data developed and modified by The Cloud staff?
Example – in a SaaS, if the Cloud personnel develop an overlay or write business rules for you, who owns the code/objects developed?
What are the conditions to retrieve all of your data and IP?

Licensing
If you own the software and the Cloud runs it (i.e., IaaS or PaaS):
How many licenses do you need?
What type of variable licenses do your vendors offer?
How can you satisfy your vendors regarding fair usage?
Are their issues if your licenses are running in another/multiple countries?

Privacy
Who can access the data?
What if it’s stored in a foreign country?
Google is reported to use servers in China to deliver Cloud services.
What are China’s data privacy laws?
Again, how about conflicting privacy regulations
US eDiscovery vs. EU Privacy?
What are the privacy laws in all the countries the Cloud servers are in now and in the future?

Risk
Corporate acceptable level of risk
To allow corporate data to be held and processed off-site
What level of risk is acceptable to your organization?
What level of risk is posed by moving to The Cloud?
What level of risk is posed by staying in-house?

Security
Public Cloud provider?
How good is their security?
DropBox.com log-in issue
Bug allowed anyone to access any account
For four hours on a Sunday morning
Private Cloud
Can your IT department do better?

To Cloud or not to Cloud?

To Cloud or Not to Cloud?
Remember – this is just another insource/outsource decision
Yes, there are risks
But could you do better in-house?
How risk-averse is your organization?
How cost conscious is your organization?
Which is more cost effective?
Develop a 2-3 year Total Cost of Ownership report for both options
May be an expensive report to develop
But you’re likely to learn a lot that will also help you elsewhere

Entering The Cloud

Five Phases
Define the Cloud
What are your goals? What business objectives do you want to accomplish by moving to the Cloud? What are your primary objectives? And who is the Senior Manager Champion and the Project Manager for the overall move to the Cloud?
Test the Cloud
Identify and implement several small cloud pilot projects. Use this phase to learn, set standards, develop polices and procedures, increase internal skill sets, start discussions with vendors regarding software licensing (IaaS & Paas)
Validate the Cloud
Expand your pilot projects enough to demonstrate real ROIs or show that they can actually meet the business goals set in Phase 1
Scale the Cloud
Start moving and implementing more projects and applications
Exploit the Cloud
Expand Cloud usage based on what has been learned to date. Explore new or novel opportunities based on the first four phases.

 A Cloud Checklist 
A full checklist is far, far beyond the scope of this presentation
The checklist will need to be tailored to your organization, environment, and business needs

A Cloud Checklist for Transaction
What are your business goals in potentially moving to the Cloud?
Do you have specific metrics for each of these goals?
What level of Cloud makes most sense?
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS?
Or different for different applications?
Private or Public?
Or Hybrid?

A Cloud Checklist for Transaction
What are potential pilot applications?
If public (or private farmed out)
Who develops the RFP?
Who’s on the list?
Who manages it in-house?
What’s the definition of ‘success’
How often do you review?

For More Information
Stephen D. Poe, EDP, CSM, CSPO
Nautilus Solutions
+1.214.532.0443
[email_address]
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sdpoe

To Cloud or Not to Cloud for Transaction Document Production

by Stephen Poe on Jul 14, 2011

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To Cloud or Not to Cloud for Transaction Document Production — Presentation Transcript