For the first time in history, consumers have access to better IT at home than at work
We are also seeing the industrialisation of IT
Where Industrial IT providers can provide services at 1/10 TCO- Gartner
Adam Smith- pins
One man
Pin factory- 10 people making 10,000 pins a day
Gartner Analyst Gregor Petri likened the Cloud Industry to the Japanese car manufacturers
To start with- they exported cheaper cars with quality to match
rusty
But rapidly they improved their quality- with thanks to edwards demming
And the rest, as they say, is history
We’re going through a similar transition in IT today
Internal IT is going through the same transition
From small on-premise production
To industrialised “factories”
So with this in mind- what’s our plan and what can we learn from people who have already done it?
What type of services should you be looking at migrating?
And the corporate IT real estate is a large and complex beast with choice literally everywhere. We need a way of simplifying it so we can make choices.
We need a frame of reference to make these choices simpler.
There is no silver bullet- it’s individual to you
So we need a framework to build your decisions on
The key question is what stage of lifecycle is that technology is and what competitive differentiation does it give to the business. That defines what the choices are.
This is the Technology lifecycle- as defined by Simon Wardley. Competitive advantage is had where ubiquity and certainty in outcome is least- i.e. on the bottom left. The further up and right you go the less differentiation you get as the services become more commoditised.
Take the CRM market for example- the early systems are on the bottom left and move up through Siebel to Salesforce in the top right
Because if they don’t provide the business differentiation- should we be spending time and investing capital doing them?
Because the issues are well known and understood.
So there are three types of risks we’re dealing with. Firstly the disruption of existing relationships. That software vendor you’ve worked with for years. How you’ve always done things.
Then the transitional risks relating to the shift from a product to a utility service model.
Thirdly the risks with outsourcing that activity to a third party. Let’s look at them
So what we’re really looking at is the transitional risks from shifting from a product to an outsourced utility service.
IT is complicated.
The challenges facing enterprises building private cloud services or leveraging public cloud services are significantly more complicated than just the technology. Fundamental change is needed in culture, business models, IT architecture, service management and politics — all opportunity areas for the channel to provide business consulting, but very different from the channel's traditional role.
PP – The lack of service orientation in a lot of organisations hampers any transition to the cloud. Successful transitions begin with a clearly defined service catalogue.
Greenfield sites
PP – Most businesses have legacy environments that are vital to them and their profitability. The problem with legacy environments is that often the people who set them up are the people you need to migrate or transition them, and often these people are no longer around. This is a dilemma, as we are at a stage where a lot of these systems will soon be unsupportable because the technology has moved on so far and the skills no longer exist to support the systems.
Risks:
Trust
Security of supply
Security
Governance
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
PP – lack of local knowledge – they don’t understand your business
PP – One of the main barriers that need to be overcome in the transition to cloud based services is SLA’s. How good are they, do they meet your business needs, are you comfortable with them ?
Risks:
Trust
Security of supply
Security
Governance
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
PP – Quality of service, alongside SLA’s are also a concern for organisations transitioning to cloud based services. How good are the eyes, ears and hands of our service providers, and how quickly do they respond when you need them ?
Risks:
Trust
Security of supply
Security
Governance
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
Risks:
Trust
Security of supply
Security
Governance
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
PP – Discuss jurisdictional issues that require data to be held within certain geographies and comply with local data laws.
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
PP – Change in the format or structure of held data.
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
Outsourcing risks
Lock in to a vendor
Pricing competition
Loss of strategic control
Deliberate strategy- not an all or nothing approach. Do so on a project by project approach
http://www.cio.gov/documents/federal-cloud-computing-strategy.pdf
The chart shown below uses two dimensions to help plan cloud migrations: Value and Readiness The Value dimension captures cloud benefits in the three areas discussed in Section 1 (i e , efficiency, agility, and innovation) The Readiness dimension broadly captures the ability for the IT service to move to the cloud in the near-term Security, service and market characteristics, government readiness, and lifecycle stage are key considerations As shown below, services with relatively high value and readiness are strong candidates to move to the cloud first
http://www.colt.net/cio-research/z1-overview.html
Cloud and mobile is driving the consumerisation of IT
The great Migration Email survey
Conducted by Research House Loudhouse
http://www.theoctopusgroup.co.uk/Loudhouse-Logo.jpg
500 IT Decision Makers
Across all industries
July 2011
Who’s looking at an email migration in the next 12 months? 2 years?
57% Plan on Migrating in the next 12 months
77% in the next two years
There’s an enormous amount of data on the move
How much are you migrating?
65% over 100Gb
29% over 500Gb
What platforms are people migrating to in the next 12 months?
How much are you migrating?
97% Microsoft Exchange
62% on premise
21% Hosted
14% Office365
How much are you migrating?
75% have opted for Exchange 2010
Remove FEM before migration
Policy enforcement before, during and after migration
Move the big data before you need to
Archive before you migrate
Provide 100% uptime wherever and whatever combination of Exchange you have
Don’t be afraid of some failure.
PP – look at outsourcing some of the services previously mentioned – inline, low risk, such as backups and archiving. These can be run in parallel with current solutions.
PP – Understanding contracts up front is vital. What happens when you want to change provider or hosting technologies ? How will you get your data back, and how long will it take, how much will it cost ?
But with an eye for the spaghetti- you don’t want to end up with an unmanageable mess
PP – Do we actually know what we have ?
Hybrid architectures
PP – Hybrid architectures are often seen as good ways of transitioning to a cloud based solution. They allow the customer to control migration at a pace and level that they are comfortable with, whilst still allowing them a level of autonomy that they are happy with.
Mean professional services
Cloud readyness-
PP – this is about understanding your service catalogue and business processes.
At your own pace
PP – The process must be carried out at the right pace for the business.
- let the Cloud come to you
Hi My name’s Justin Pirie
I’m the Cloud Strategist here at Mimecast but I’m best known as an Analyst Blogger in the SaaS and Cloud space.