Private cloud has been the “up and coming” trend for several years. You would think this would mean we’re all running clouds inside our firewalls by now. In reality, this hasn’t happened. Why? Where are all the clouds? All the technical skills that the IT folks need to get this done are normally in house or easily accessible to them. So you would think that private clouds would be super common. Turns out they are not. Only a very small minority of IT organizations have deployed successful internal Private Clouds. There are notable exceptions, but they’re just that, exceptions. Why is this so hard? Why can’t folks get this done in their sleep? In this book, we will explore the reasons why we fail and how to overcome these obstacles to success in our private cloud deployments.

1. (or how an architect learned to stop worrying and love the cloud)
Alex Jauch
@ajauch
linkedin.com/in/ajauch
1

2. Why Am I Giving This Presentation?
 My Background is Enterprise IT
 12 Years at MSFT
 Role Owner for Architect Career Path
 Founder of Catalyst, Precursor to MCA
 Lead Architect for NetApp’s MSFT Private Cloud
Solution
 Last Two Years on Private Cloud Space
2

3. What is A Cloud?
The Term “Cloud” has little meaning in practice
However, everyone wants “Cloud”
IT Organizations Seek to Implement “Cloud”
Definitions Vary
3

4. So What?
 Gartner: 78% of Enterprise IT
A high percentage of all IT Shops will Deploy a “Private
projects fail. Combine this Cloud Computing Strategy by
with the likelihood that 2014”
most IT shops will deploy  CIO.COM: 62% of all IT
private cloud and the Projects Fail
complexity of cloud means  Cisco: 52% of Cloud Projects
Driven Top Down
a high likelihood that most  Only 30% Driven by Customer
IT shops will fail at cloud. Requirements

5. The NIST Cloud Definition Framework
Hybrid
Clouds
Deployment
The NIST Cloud Definition Models
Private Cloud Community Cloud Public Cloud
Framework provides a simple Service Models
Software as a
Service (SaaS)
Platform as a
Service (PaaS)
Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS)
way to define what cloud is. Essential
On Demand Self-Service
This is hugely important for Characteristics
Broad Network Access
Resource Pooling
Rapid Elasticity
Measured Service
architects. We must first Massive Scale
Homogeneity
Resilient Computing
Geographic Distribution
define what it is we are Common
Characteristics Virtualization Service Orientation
building if we are to increase Low Cost Software Advanced Security
our chance of success.

6. Why We Fail
 The essential element of “cloud” is a customer centric
business model, not technology.
 The Majority of IT organizations approach private cloud
as a technology problem.
 This is a failure in Architectural practice.
6

7. What Is Architecture?
Architecture is the
intersection between business
and technology. When given
business requirements, the
architect produces functional
specifications; when given
technical capabilities, the
architect produces solutions.
7

8. Reducing Your Risk
There are two types of risk: Business and
Technical. Most of us focus the majority
of our time on technical risk. However,
the primary risk to cloud implementations
is not technical, it’s business. This lack of
focus causes failure due to inattention.

9. Which Column Are You In?
IT Creates and Manages End User Departments
Before designing and deploying a Budget Create and Manage
Budget
cloud, you must first ask yourself if IT Sizes Solution
24-48 Hour SLA for
End User Sizes Solution
5-10 Minute SLA for
you want to be in the cloud business Provisioning
0 RPO/15 Minute RTO
Provisioning
15 Minute RPO/24 Hour
or not. The column on the left Guest Patching Policy
RTO
No Guest Patching
describes a typical legacy IT Defined List of
Policy
Unlimited Applications
environment where IT exercises Applications
Advanced Capacity On-Demand Capacity
control to protect the business from Planning
Strict Performance SLA Loose Performance SLA
technical risk. The column on the Strict Security Policy
Least Privilege Model
Loose Security Policy
Full Privilege Model
right describes a typical cloud IT Supported VM’s End User Supported
VM’s
business such as EC2 or Azure.
9

10. Legacy IT Doesn’t Work
Why build a freeway if
you don’t have any
cars?
That’s what North
Korea does.
10

11. Capitalism is Messy
The reality is that centrally planned economies just
don’t work. Consumer focused economies work.
We know this from the last fifty years of history.
Communism (or rather totalitarianism) failed
completely. Why do we run our IT shops as
centrally planned economies? It’s because
capitalism is messy. As architects, we need to
accept the occasional useless program or project
to allow the market to dictate where precious
enterprise resources are best used. This goes
against our grain but is vital for success in cloud.

12. Customer Centric IT
In order to receive the full Traditional IT Customer Centric IT
benefits of cloud, we must Sets IT Standards Supports Business
Requirements
adopt a “Customer Centric IT” Focus on Operations
Excellence
Focus on Customer
Satisfaction
mandate. This means moving Engineering is key
skillset
Consulting is key skillset
away from centrally planned Sets Policy Seeks Input
standards driven organizations Focus on Large Projects Focus on Smaller
Projects
and towards services driven Organized by
Technology
Organized by Customer
organizations that support the Technology Focus Business Value Focus
Delivers most projects in Brokers external vendors
end business directly. house as needed
12

13. IT Portfolio Management
One way to do this is to Strategic High Potential
ALIGN the IT Portfolio to the
business. This exercise, Investments that are
critical to achieving the
Investments which may be
important in achieving
Contribution to
business future
taken from the Cranfield future business strategy. future success.
School of Business, helps to Investments which are
ensure that IT is working on Investments which are
essential to remain
valuable and deliver
improved performance,
the right things and competitive. but are not critical to
managing programs based Key Operational
success.
Support
on how they affect the
business. Business dependence on current solution

14. For More Information
This presentation was excerpted from my book, “Why
We Fail” which is available on Amazon.com:
http://bit.ly/AlexJauch
You can also listen to me giving this lecture at MMS
here: http://bit.ly/WhyWeFailTalk
More about private cloud and enterprise architecture on
my blog: http://bit.ly/ajauchblog
14