Why it pays to be early -- especially with this much cloud choice

It pays to be early.

Take my flight today, for example. I’ve done this flying-to-New York thing a few times. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s a good idea to reserve your seat early. I know when to head toward the line at the gate to minimize time spent standing around and maximize the chance that there’s still overhead bin space onboard. And, if it looks like this particular flight is headed for delay or cancellation, I already have a pretty good view of what my options are likely to be. I might even already be dialing/browsing customer service.

I think the same applies for cloud computing. To really have a good view of what you need to know, the folks who have been through this a couple times certainly have a head start. Being early to the party lets you assess what’s happening from a position of experience – peppered with a humbling but healthy dose of reality along the way.

I think today’s big cloud announcements from CA Technologies help drive home this point. (As you might have guessed, they are part of what I’ve been working on recently: 10 new/enhanced offerings for enterprises, 4 for service providers, plus a market accelerator program.) The announcements represent quite a bit of early market experience wrapped up for the benefit of very specific customer sets.

What we (and our customers) learned in the past 18 months

Last year, IT was asking some very basic questions about cloud computing, the core of which boiled down to “So, what is cloud computing, anyway?” CA Technologies kicked off 2010 with an aggressive cloud acquisition spree that surprised more than a few folks. We brought aboard a series of key technologies, some very smart folks, and a lot of on-the-ground services experience. Customers and industry-watchers showed interest (and skepticism, as you’d expect) as we brought the pieces together.

If you look back at our CA World announcements last year, you’ll see that we described the way cloud was changing IT and the solutions that we thought were needed. We talked about the IT role morphing into more of a supply chain orchestration job, focused on delivering IT service. We saw a need to understand those services, figure out ways to compare them, manage them, and control them.

But the market hasn’t been standing still. In fact, I think most would agree with me that the changes in IT as a result of cloud have accelerated. Our view that the IT function is shifting seems to be supported by some proof points (especially if you read some of the survey data I’ve seen in the past year). But that doesn’t mean we got everything perfect, right out of the gate. By being in the game early, we’re in a prime seat to watch the evolution. And react.

Evolving and targeting to match how enterprises and service providers adopt cloud

It’s now a little more than a year later, and we’re evolving our cloud portfolio. Today’s announcements are a set of next steps, and they reflect some pragmatic reactions to what we’ve seen. We’re enhancing the offerings we already have. We’ve built some new ones. And all of these are driven by what customers are saying and doing.

Here are some of the highlights, as I see them:

More than ever before, cloud means choice. Looking at cloud forces lots of internal and external decisions. As I’ve noted previously, these are decisions about technology, about organizational structure, about IT ownership and policy. With all of these options, there is no “one size fits all” for cloud. Instead, you have to make your own, very specific choices. And you want to have a portfolio of options that can help you regardless of which choices you need to make for your business. We, as a partner in that business, need to enable you to have your cloud, your way.

A broad portfolio to work from is a plus. The work to enable customers to use and provide cloud computing means a bunch of topic areas need to be covered. Management and security really end up jumping to the top of the list. (The CA portfolio is well-tuned to cover that emphasis, I might add.)

We see a lifecycle of decisions, and a set of capabilities at steps along with way. We think customers need to plan, design, deliver, secure, and assure their cloud efforts. And then constantly optimize these decisions for what’s best for their business.

Enterprises and service providers have very different needs and will make different choices. Enterprise and service providers are doing an interesting dance. Each sees benefit – and profit – in cloud computing, and is adopting it pragmatically. Enterprises are trying to evolve what they have invested in already, while maintaining the control they require and processes they’ve built up. That lets them continue with the heterogeneous components they have. That doesn’t lock them into a proprietary (and probably quite costly) “cloud stack.” Unless they want to be. In some cases, that’s a useful trade-off. But it still needs to be managed and secured.

Service providers are, in many cases, leading the charge to cloud, looking for ways to quickly deliver cloud services but to do so in a way that is going to mean differentiation and revenues, while building margin. Those that don’t won’t be around long. They are feeling pressure from big guys like Amazon and Rackspace. They’re trying to find the right niche. They’re trying to balance the right infrastructure with the financial structure to result in a winning (and sustainable) formula.

As a result of these differences, you’ll see sets of solutions from CA Technologies that address these very specific needs, but help make the connection between the two – the world of hybrid clouds – possible and appealing.

Finally, if you add new perspectives, experience with customers, and resources to some pretty innovative technology, you can move the needle. Several of today’s announcements show the combined effort of the vision of entrepreneurs that joined CA Technologies through the cloud acquisitions and the organic development efforts since then. A lot of these folks have been working on cloud since long before the term “cloud” existed.

Several of those are near and dear to my heart, and I’ll highlight those here:

CA Business Service Insight 8.0. We’re calling it 8.0, because the previous 7 versions were called Oblicore Guarantee and were focused on service level management. However, the work done on CA Business Service Insight since last year opens up new territory. The latest release gives enterprises information about their existing services and the ability to compare and contrast what they are doing internally with services they could choose externally. All this, while also managing the service levels from what they acquire from outside. In addition, CA Business Service Insight’s connection to the Service Measurement Index and Cloud Commons will become more and more intriguing as it matures.

CA AppLogic 3.0. The ability to work at an application level rather than dwelling on low-level hypervisor questions takes a huge step up with the addition of VMware support in this release. Now, you can think in terms of virtual business services instead of ESX or Xen. That’s an important extension to the vision that the 3Tera team brought to CA Technologies, especially if you’re an enterprise.

Service providers are probably still interested in the financial equation of using Xen, but now have new options in working with enterprises who’ve made big VMware investments. And, frankly, that’s everyone at this point. The new languages, VLAN tagging, and role-based access features are probably even more interesting to service providers and how they make money from a cloud business using CA AppLogic as their cloud platform. The service provider ecosystem that’s building around CA AppLogic is should get a mention here, too, but that’s worthy of its own post.

I’m personally pleased to see Cassatt capabilities woven in here, too (check out the Global Fabric Controller to see my previous company’s influence).

Learning pragmatically

There are a lot of moving parts here, mostly driven by the huge number of options that the cloud now presents. In my opinion, CA Technologies made a pretty prescient decision to jump into this market with both feet (and wallet), and to do so early. Much of what you’re seeing come to market here has benefited from early moves by both the innovators CA acquired -- and by CA itself.

The resulting time and experience have infused our offerings (and those of us working on them) with what I’d call a healthy amount of pragmatism. This pragmatism is something that I think will serve CA Technologies, its ecosystem partners, and our collective customers well as cloud computing continues to evolve.

And, of course, it’s good to see all those hours I’ve spent waiting for flights are paying off in interesting ways.

Looking forward or backward? Cloud makes you decide what IT wants to be known for

Cloud computing is all about choice. I’ve heard that a lot. What most people mean when they say this is that there are suddenly a whole bunch of places to run your IT workloads. At Amazon using EC2 or at Rackspace? At ScaleMatrix or Layered Tech? Or inside your own data center on a private cloud you’ve created yourself?

But there are some more fundamental choices that cloud seems to present as well. These choices are about what IT is going to be when it grows up. Or at least what it’s going to morph into next.

Here are 3 big decisions that I see that cloud computing forces IT to make, all of which add up to one, big, fundamental question: will IT define itself as an organization that looks toward the future or back into the past? Before you scoff, read on: the answer, even for those eagerly embracing the cloud, may not be as clear as you think.

The business folks’ litmus test for IT: Cloud v. No Clouds

First off, the business people in big organizations are using the rise of cloud computing, even after setbacks like the recent Amazon outage, to test whether IT departments are about looking forward or backward. When the business folks come to IT and describe what they are looking for, they now expect cloud-type reaction times, flexibility, infinite options, and pay-as-you-go approaches. At that point, IT is forced to pick sides. Will they acknowledge that cloud is an option? Will IT help make that option possible, if that’s the right choice for the business? Or will they desperately hold onto the past?

Embracing cloud options in some way, shape, or form puts IT on the path to being known as the forward-looking masters of the latest and greatest way of delivering on what the business needs. Rejecting consideration of the cloud paints IT as a cabal of stodgy naysayers who are trying their darnedest to keep from having to do anything differently.

John Treadway tweeted a great quote from Cloud Connect guru Alistair Croll on this same topic: "The cloud genie is out of the bottle. Stop looking for the cork and start thinking [about] what to wish for."

The business folks know this. They will use IT’s initial reaction to these options as a guide for future interactions. Pick incorrectly, and the business isn’t likely to ask again. They’ll do their own thing. That path leads to less and less of IT work being run by IT.

OK. Say IT decides to embrace the cloud as an option. The hard choices don’t stop there.

A decision about the IT role: Factory Manager v. Supply Chain Orchestrator

Starting to make use of cloud computing in real, live situations puts IT on a path to evaluate what the role of IT actually evolves into. Existing IT is about running the “IT factory,” making the technology work, doing what one CIO I heard recently called “making sure the lights don’t flicker.” This is IT’s current comfort zone.

However, as you start using software, platforms, and infrastructure as-a-service, IT finds itself doing less of the day-to-day techie work. IT becomes more of an overseer and less of the people on the ground wiring things together.

I’ve talked about this role before as a supply chain orchestrator, directing and composing how the business receives its IT service, and not necessarily providing all that service from a company’s own data centers. You can make a good case that this evolution of IT will give it a more strategic seat at the table with the business users.

But, even if you decide you want to consider cloud-based options and you’re all in favor of changing the role of IT itself, there’s still another question that will have a big effect on the perception – and eventual responsibilities – of IT.

The problem with sending the new stuff cloud: Building IT expertise in Legacy v. Cutting Edge

Everyone who has made the choice to use cloud computing is next faced with the logical follow-on question: so, what do I move to the cloud? And, then, what do I keep in-house to run myself?
And that’s where I think things get tricky. In many cases, the easiest thing to do is to consider using the cloud for new applications – the latest and greatest. This lets you keep the legacy systems that are already working as they are – running undisturbed as the Golden Rules of IT and a certain 110-year-old light bulb suggest (“if it’s working, don’t touch it!”).

But that choice might have the unintended effect of pigeonholing your IT staff as the caretakers of creaky technology that is not at the forefront of innovation. You push the new, more interesting apps off elsewhere – into the cloud. In trying to make a smart move and leverage the cloud, IT misses its chance to show itself as a team that is at (and can handle) the leading edge.

Maybe I’m painting this too black and white, especially in IT shops where they are working to build up a private cloud internally. And maybe I’m glossing over situations where IT actually does choose to embrace change in its own role. In those situations, there will be a “factory” role, alongside an “orchestrator” role. But that “factory” manager role will be trimmed back to crucial, core applications – and though they are important, they are also the ones least in need of modernization.

Either way, isn’t the result still this?: IT’s innovation skills get lost over time if they don’t take a more fundamental look at how they are running all of their IT systems, environment, and how they look at their own roles.

The problem I see is that big enterprises aren’t going to suddenly reassess everything they have on the first day they begin to venture into the cloud. However, maybe they should. For the good of the skills and capability and success of their IT teams, a broader view should be on the table.

Short-term and long-term answers

So, as you approach each of these questions, be sure to look not only at the immediate answer, but also at the message you’re sending to those doing the asking. Your answers today will have a big impact on all future questions.

All of this, I think, points out how much of a serious, fundamental shift cloud computing brings. The cloud is going to affect who IT is and how it’s viewed from now on. Take the opportunity to be the one proactively making that decision in your organization. And if you send things outside your four walls, or in a private cloud internally, make sure you know why – and the impact these decisions will have on IT’s perception with your users.

Since cloud computing is all about choice, it’s probably a smart idea to make sure you’re the one doing the choosing.

Survey: cloud really is shaking up the IT role -- with some new job titles to prove it

Cloud computing may still only be in the early stages of adoption, but it’s getting harder and harder to say that cloud is just a minor tremor in the IT world. More and more evidence is pointing to the conclusion that this is a full-on earthquake.

In the survey announced today done by IDG Research Services and sponsored by CA Technologies, Inc. (my employer), almost every single person that participated (96% of them anyway) believed that the main thing that the IT department does -- and is valued for -- has changed in the past 5 years. It's not just about running the hardware and software systems any more. Seven in 10 expect that shift to continue in the next 2 years.

Over half of the people attribute the changes to one thing: cloud computing. And that’s with adoption still in its early stages (our survey at the end of last year showed quite a bit of progress with adoption: 92% of the largest enterprises have at least one cloud service; 53% of IT implementers report more than 6. But most everything else isn’t being done in the cloud).

Tracking the shift in IT by watching the new IT titles

So what is this new area of value that IT is shifting to? One way to find out is to ask about the job titles. This particular survey did something that surveys often don’t do: it asked an open-ended, free-form question. The question was this: “In your opinion what job title(s) will exist in two years that do not exist today?”

I got a peek at the raw results: the approximately 200 respondents listed 112 separate answers. I guess that range of comments isn’t surprising. It’s hard to summarize, but very interesting to thumb through. But I’ll give it a shot, anyway:

A bunch of the new titles from both the U.S. and European respondents had cloud in the title. These included cloud manager, cloud computing optimizer, cloud service manager, cloud capacity planning, supervision of the clouds, chief cloud officer, and the like. These cloudy titles describe some of the new IT jobs that are appearing; I walked through some similar new titles in a previous post. Today’s new survey supports many of those earlier assertions from me and others I’ve been following.

Respondents also mentioned some interesting new titles that didn’t explicitly say “cloud.” In fact, only 40 of the new titles that respondents mentioned included the word “cloud.” The rest didn’t. These other titles described some of the increasingly important capabilities, in many cases directly connected to the shifts that cloud computing is causing.

So what were some of those other new titles expected over the next few years? Vendor manager, outsourcing manager, ombudsperson of IT issues, IT vendor performance manager, security/risk manager, chief process officers, chief communications officer, chief business enabler, virtualization solutions manager, business relationship manager, and chief analytics officer (which one respondent specifically described should report to the board of directors).

Pointing to requirements in the shift to an IT service supply chain

While this second set of titles doesn’t explicitly talk about cloud computing, they are being called out precisely because of the shift that the cloud is causing. Specifically:

· There’s a greater need to monitor and manage 3rd party vendors that are providing pieces of IT service to enterprises.

· Risk and compliance are called out as even more important than they are now. In fact, a later question in the survey tagged security management as the role that would change the most as a result of cloud computing. In addition, the survey asked what would be the moment that we’ll all know that “cloud has arrived”? Most popular answer: cloud will have “arrived” when vendors deliver solutions adequately addressing security and performance.

· Virtualization titles were also noted in the list of new ones, but many were higher-level managers, focused on solutions rather than particular technologies. In fact, when we asked which job titles did IT people think would be the most likely to disappear over the next 2 years, they listed infrastructure managers and administrators of all sorts. The folks doing administration, configuration, and management of server, databases, and networks were voted most likely to fade away. (I also did a previous post on the IT job “endangered species list,” if you're interested in more on that topic.)

More business savvy, please

The rest of the survey backed up the requirement implied in these new titles. The belief is that IT is today mainly known as owner and operator of the IT infrastructure. And that is what is changing. More than half (54%) of the respondents see the primary value of IT coming from its role managing an IT service supply chain within two years.

I’ve posted about this shift to treating IT like a supply chain several times in this blog, and it’s something that I and CA Technologies (judging from a lot of the bets the company is making in this space) expect to become more and more real over the next few years.

And with this move, the jobs will inevitably shift, too. That shift, if this survey is right, is starting now. The IT roles, our respondents predict, will focus more on being a business enabler – doing a better job integrating what IT can provide with what the business is asking for. The relationship management and communication skills with the business side of the house become much more important. Does a move to this supply chain model mean business savvy will trump technical IT skills? It certainly seems to be headed that way.

That doesn’t mean IT will banish its techies. On the contrary, those skills will continue to be important, too, given how central technology remains to IT’s success. However, cloud computing is giving IT a new focus and position on the business side of the house that it hasn’t really had before. IT has a chance to contribute more to business strategy. I expect many in IT to jump at the chance.

So...do the titles mentioned by our survey respondents make sense to you? What new titles are you seeing appear (or fade away) in your organization?

You can find a summary of the IDG survey, “The Changing Role of IT and the Move to an IT Supply Chain Model,” including graphics of some of the more interesting results and links to download the complete write-up, here.

A cloudy look back at 2010

Today seemed like a good day to take stock of the year in cloud computing, at least according to the view from this Data Center Dialog blog – and from what you as readers thought was interesting over the past 12 months.

Setting the tone for the year: cloud computing M&A

It probably isn’t any big surprise that 3 of the 4 most popular articles here in 2010 had to do with one of the big trends of the year in cloud computing – acquisitions. (Especially since my employer, CA Technologies, had a big role in driving that trend.) CA Technologies made quite a bit of impact with our successive acquisitions of Oblicore, 3Tera, and Nimsoft at the beginning of the year. We followed up by bringing onboard others like 4Base, Arcot, and Hyperformix.

But those first three set the tone for the year: the cloud was the next IT battleground and the big players (like CA) were taking it very seriously. CRN noted our moves as one of the 10 Biggest Cloud Stories of 2010. Derrick Harris of GigaOm called us out as one of the 9 companies that drove cloud in 2010. And Krishnan Subramanian included CA's pick-up of 3Tera and Nimsoft in his list of key cloud acquisitions for the year at CloudAve.

As you’d expect, folks came to Data Center Dialog to get more details on these deals. We had subsequent announcements around each company (like the release of CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9), but the Nimsoft one got far and away the most interest. I thought one of the more interesting moments was how Gary Read reacted to a bunch of accusations of being a “sell-out” and going to the dark side by joining one of the Big 4 management vendors they had been aggressively selling against. Sure, some of the respondents were competitors trying to spread FUD, but he handled it all clearly and directly -- Gary's signature style, I’ve come to learn.

What mattered a lot? How cloud is changing IT roles

Aside from those acquisitions, one topic was by far the most popular: how cloud computing was going to change the role of IT as a whole – and for individual IT jobs as well. I turned my November Cloud Expo presentation into a couple posts on the topic. Judging by readership and comments, my “endangered species” list for IT jobs was the most popular. It included some speculation that jobs like capacity planning, network and server administration, and even CIO were going the way of the dodo. Or were at least in need of some evolution.

Part 2 conjured up some new titles that might be appearing on IT business cards very soon, thanks to the cloud. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting for some reason. Maybe fear really is the great motivator. Concern about the changes that cloud computing is causing to peoples’ jobs certainly figured as a strong negative in the survey we published just a few weeks back. Despite a move toward “cloud thinking” in IT, fear of job loss drove a lot of the negative vibes about the topic. Of course, at the same time, IT folks are seeing cloud as a great thing to have on their resumes.

All in all, this is one of the major issues for cloud computing, not just for 2010, but in general. The important issue around cloud computing is not so much about figuring out technology, it’s about figuring out how to run and organize IT in a way that makes the best use of technology, creates processes that are most useful for the business, and that people learn to live and work with on a daily basis. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to say that this topic will be key in 2011, too.

Learning from past discussions on internal clouds

James Urquhart noted in his “cloud computing gifts of 2010” post at CNET that the internal/private cloud debate wound its way down during the year, ending in a truce. “The argument died down…when both sides realized nobody was listening, and various elements of the IT community were pursuing one or the other – or both – options whether or not it was ‘right.’” I tend to agree.

These discussions (arguments?), however, made one of my oldest posts, “Are internal clouds bogus?” from January 2009, the 5th most popular one – *this* year. I stand by my conclusion (and it seems to match where the market has ended up): regardless of what name you give the move to deliver a more dynamic IT infrastructure inside your 4 walls, it’s compelling. And customers are pursuing it.

Cloud computing 101 remained important

2010 was a year in which the basics remained important. The definitions really came into focus, and a big chunk of the IT world joined the conversation about cloud computing. That meant that things like my Cloud Computing 101 post, expanding on my presentation on the same topic at CA World in May, garnered a lot of attention.

Folks were making sure they had the basics down, especially since a lot of the previously mentioned arguments were settling down a bit. My post outlined a bunch of the things I learned from giving my Cloud 101 talk, namely don’t get too far ahead of your headlights. If you start being too theoretical, customers will quickly snap you right back to reality. And that’s how it should be.

Beginning to think about the bigger implications of cloud computing

However, several forward-looking topics ended up at the top of the list at Data Center Dialog this year as well. Readers showed interest in some of the things that cloud computing was enabling, and what it might mean in the long run. Consider these posts as starting points for lots more conversations going forward:

Despite new capabilities, are we just treating cloud servers like physical ones? Some data I saw from RightScale about how people are actually using cloud servers got me thinking that despite the promise of virtualization and cloud, people perhaps aren’t making the most of these new-fangled options. In fact, it sounded like we were just doing the same thing with these cloud servers as we’ve always done with physical ones. It seemed to me that missed the whole point.

Can we start thinking of IT differently – maybe as a supply chain? As we started to talk about the CA Technologies view of where we think IT is headed, we talked a lot about a shift away from “IT as a factory” in which everything was created internally, to one where IT is the orchestrator of service coming from many internal and external sources. It implies a lot of changes, including expanded management requirements. And, it caught a lot of analyst, press, customer, -- and reader – attention, including this post from May.

Is cloud a bad thing for IT vendors? Specifically, is cloud going to cut deeply into the revenues that existing hardware and software vendors are getting today from IT infrastructure? This certainly hasn’t been completely resolved yet. 2010 was definitely a year where vendors made their intentions known, however, that they aren’t going to be standing still. Oracle, HP, IBM, BMC, VMware, CA, and a cast of thousands (OK, dozens at least) of start-ups all made significant moves, often at their own user conferences, or events like Cloud Expo or Cloud Connect.

What new measurement capabilities will we need in a cloud-connected world? If we are going to be living in a world that enables you to source IT services from a huge variety of providers, there is definitely a need to help make those choices. And even to just have a common, simple, business-level measuring stick for IT services in the first place. CA Technologies took a market-leading stab at that by contributing to the Service Measurement Index that Carnegie Mellon is developing, and by launching the Cloud Commons community. This post explained both.

So what’s ahead for 2011 in cloud computing?

That sounds like a good topic for a blog post in the new year. Until then, best wishes as you say farewell to 2010. And rest up. If 2011 is anything like 2010, we’ll need it.

As cloud computing changes IT roles, which IT jobs are on the ‘endangered species list’?

A funny thing happened during my Cloud Expo presentation in Santa Clara recently that I wasn’t expecting. I was trying to come up with a few points in the session where I could get a read on whether the audience was following me or not. And since my topic was “How Cloud Computing is Changing the Role of IT…and What You Can Do About it,” I figured at least someone would have an opinion. So I asked a few questions of the audience.

And (you guessed it), there was no shortage of opinions. In fact, I found myself in the middle of a full-fledged discussion. Especially when we started talking about which IT job titles were or were not going to exist any longer as a result of cloud computing. Interesting stuff. Here’s a summary of the presentation I gave, plus a few comments from the audience thrown in for color:

Cloud computing is causing two big IT-related role shifts. Cloud computing has given business users choices it didn’t have before; it’s breaking the monopoly that IT has had on the sourcing of IT service. It means business can go around IT, can “go rogue” and find the services they think best suit themselves. The doom & gloom scenario for IT is that it’s time to pack up and go do something else.

Will IT go away because of cloud computing? Half of my session attendees (which was two-thirds end users) thought that cloud computing will at least cause IT to lose jobs. However, I’m not nearly that negative; I tend to agree with our own Bert Armijo who likes to say that IT jobs don’t go away when faced with the Next Big Thing. They just reshuffle. So the real question, then, is what does the deck look like after all the shuffling is done? More on that in a moment.

First: IT is becoming an orchestrator of a new IT service supply chain

What I told folks at Cloud Expo is that from what I see, cloud computing and its focus on business services, rather than the underlying technology, are altering the broad responsibilities and the approach of IT. Cloud is changing IT’s role inside an organization. It opens up the possibility of getting IT service from many different sources and the corresponding need to orchestrate those many sources. Mike Vizard talked about this in a recent IT Business Edge article: “Senior IT leaders,” he said, “will soon find themselves managing a supply chain of IT services.”

This role as orchestrator of things you don’t own is a new one in some ways, though many folks have been managing outsourcing (similar in some ways) for a while now. Shifting all of IT to have this mindset is very significant; it means adjusting to a role as a service provider, selecting the best of both internal and external services as appropriate.

And that’s where things get interesting for the actual jobs inside the IT department. Some of those are going to have to change.

Second: how IT jobs themselves are changing

One of my points was that this IT supply chain concept creates a whole new set of questions, opportunities, and requirements to make things work. (Here’s an earlier post of mine describing some of those new requirements.) IT will certainly be more business-oriented and less focused on the underlying infrastructure components as layers of abstraction help make it smarter -- and possible -- to think beyond the nitty gritty.

So how is cloud changing the individual roles and jobs within the IT department? I identified 3 important influencers:

· Automation – fewer manual tasks means less demand for the people who do them today
· Abstraction – technical minutiae are less important to focus on, while the business service itself takes on a much more primary role
· Sourcing – vendor management and comparison (and some way to make choices) move to the forefront

Products (like several of ours) can help take these new approaches in what are often very fast, effective steps. But the IT folks themselves need to realize that they really need a new way of looking at their jobs, and, in fact, some of their jobs may end up very different from where they are today. That’s not a quick problem to solve. I remember this issue being a weighty problem back in my Cassatt days, too.

So what IT jobs are on the endangered species list?

At Cloud Expo, I listed off a bunch of titles to see what the audience thought were the soon-to-be-extinct IT jobs. I let people categorize the jobs as either Cockroaches (as in, “will always have a job,” you can’t get rid of them), Chimps (“need to adapt to survive”), or Dodos (“buh-bye”). OK, so the categories weren’t necessarily flattering, but it added a touch of levity to what can be a somber topic for IT.

My in-room responses had some dissenting opinions, obviously, but they were, in fact, surprisingly uniform. Here's where people more or less categorized a few different IT jobs:

Cockroaches: service provider vendor manager, SLA manager
Chimps: software/apps deployment person, network administrator, server monitoring/ “Mr. Fix-it”
Dodos: capacity planning, CIO

Yes, you just read that my audience thought CIOs were going to go extinct.

I sensed a bit of dramatic license was being taken for impact in the room, but the discussion was definitely interesting. There is certainly a case to be made that the tools, approaches, and processes that the CIO relies on today, for example, need to get a major revamp, or things will look pretty bleak for the folks in those jobs.

There was agreement that the business-level capabilities of the IT people who look at service levels and manage service providers matches up well with the shift that seems to be going on toward business-level conversations.

And, the realization that even the most core of administrator roles (network, server) and the break-fix mentality currently in place in a huge majority of IT shops just doesn’t seem as relevant in a world seriously involved with cloud computing. Or, at least, it makes sense that there will need to be an important set of adaptations. In the world of cloud computing, you don’t fix the malfunctioning commodity server. Instead, you ensure that your systems route around it (through internal or external sources) and continue to deliver the service.

It’s time for quite a lot of staff evolution, from the sounds of it. At least, that’s what my Cloud Expo audience thought. My next post will cover exactly that: I’ll build on these comments and look at the approaches, roles, and solutions that I highlighted to help IT leverage the cloud computing trend.

And for the squeamish, I'll try not to mention cockroaches again.

(If you'd like a copy of my Cloud Expo presentation, e-mail me at jay.fry@ca.com.)

Internal clouds: with the right approach, you might be more ready than you think

If you saw the headline “You’re Not Ready for Internal Cloud” making the rounds last week, you might have thought Forrester analyst James Staten was putting the nail in the coffin of the private cloud market. Or maybe you just thought he was channeling Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessep from “A Few Good Men” (yelling "You can’t handle the truth!”…about cloud computing?).

It turns out neither is the case as you read that Forrester report and look around at what customers are doing: internal clouds aren’t to be dismissed. And customers can handle the truth about what’s possible here and now.

James deserves congratulations for once again crystallizing some key issues that customers are having around cloud computing – and for having some good advice on ways to deal with them. (It’s not the first time James has been ahead of the curve with practical advice, I might add. For some other examples, check out the links in my interview with him from a few months back.)

It turns out James hides one of the most important messages about “being ready for internal clouds” in the subhead of the report: “…You Can Be: Here’s How.”

Here are a few things that struck me in reading both James’ report and commentary on it last week (Forrester clients in good standing can read James’ write-up here):

The industry expects internal (or private) clouds to either be dead simple or impossibly complex. The truth is in the middle somewhere. If you’re trying to take what you already have and get those IT systems to begin behaving in a cloud-like manner, there’s certainly some work to do. Rodrigo Flores of newScale paraphrased Staten’s reasoning in his blog here as this: “Cloud is a HOW, not a what. It’s a way to operate and offer IT service underpinned by self-service and automation.”

Creating an internal cloud includes both technological changes and alterations to the approach that IT departments are taking to managing and distributing their infrastructure and resources. Because of that, it really isn’t possible to buy an internal cloud out of a single box. Plus, I’ve heard customers that are very interested in building on what they’ve already invested in. That requires an IT department willing to invest as well, in things like time, effort, but most of all, change. But there are some comparatively easier options. More on that in a moment.

You can’t just turn to your vendors for a simple definition of cloud computing that’s going to automatically match what you want. You have to get involved yourself. James has been one of the industry watchers who isn’t afraid to call vendors out when they are using a cloud label on their offerings without good reason. He notes that the term is thrown around “sloppily, with many providers adding the moniker to garner new attention for their products.” He warns that you can’t just “turn to your vendor partners to decode the DNA of cloud computing.” His comments match what I say in my Cloud Computing 101 overview. I believe the definition of cloud computing (and in this case internal or private cloud) is less important than actually figuring out what you can and should be doing with it. And that’s something that IT departments need to work on in conjunction with their vendors and partners. You can’t just take their word for it.

You do need to be pretty self-critical and evaluate your level of readiness for an internal cloud. In his article about James’ report, Larry Dignan from ZDNet notes that “there’s a lot of not-so-sexy grunt work to do before cloud computing is an option. IT services aren’t standardized and you need that [in order] to automate.” The Forrester report has a check list of things you should think about to decide if you’re ready to take some of these steps.

One of the highlights from that list is the importance of sharing IT infrastructure among multiple groups. As Dignan says, “various business units inside a company are rarely on the same infrastructure.” However, writes James, “the economic benefits of cloud simply don’t work without this” kind of sharing.

A while back (over a year ago, in fact), my blog co-contributor Craig Vosburgh posted some of his thoughts about what you must be ready to do from a technical standpoint to really operate a private cloud. It turns many of these are pretty complementary to James’ list. Craig mentioned the willingness to be comfortable with change of a style and scope that IT shops haven’t been used to before, given that workloads will possibly be shifting around from place to place at a moment’s notice, along with a number of other, more technologically-focused considerations. Whatever list you use, the point is that you need to have one. And you need to make sure you’ve thought through where you are now and where you’re going.

One measure that James spends a good portion of his paper talking about is the level of an organization’s virtualization maturity. His belief is that this will have a strong effect on their ability to make an internal cloud a reality.

Is this a useful thing to measure? From what I’ve seen, yes…and no. Virtualization maturity is important, but greenfield opportunities give you the chance to start from scratch with something simple and show big gains. James mentions several ways to actually deliver internal clouds. Only one of those involves progressing through all stages of a virtualization & automation project involving you existing, complex infrastructure for your key applications. He notes (and customers have, too) that you can actually start with something much simpler.

After all, as Rodrigo Flores noted in his blog, “why get stuck solving the hardest, most complex applications” when, in fact, those tend to be pretty stable, don’t really move the needle, and are often under the most intense governance and compliance scrutiny.

This is where a turnkey cloud solution can be a big help (and, yes, it should be noted that CA Technologies’ 3Tera solution falls into that category). Instead of having to move through a slower set of evolutionary steps around the systems and applications that you already have running and don’t want to disrupt, the other option is to start something new. Pick one of those new applications you’ve been asked for that’s not a bet-the-business proposition and try something that gives you a big leap over what already exists or the standard approach. If it fails, you learn something at minimal risk. But if it’s successful, you have a powerful new model to think about and try to replicate in other areas.

And, enough with the excuses. The bottom line is that trying one of these approaches is going to be critical for the IT department’s future. There are certainly very good reasons that internal or private clouds are going to be difficult. But I believe IT is going to be a lot like James Urquhart envisions in his recent post: it's going to be “hybrid IT.” For some things, you will leverage applications and IT infrastructure from inside your firewall; for other things, you'll get help from outside. There will be a need for managing each piece, and to manage the whole thing as a coherent IT supply chain. The more experience that you and your IT shop have with even a piece of this early in the process, the better choices you’ll be able to make from here on out.

In either case, take a look at James Staten’s report if you can. It’s helpful in thinking through these and a bunch of other very relevant considerations around internal clouds. But maybe its most useful role is to serve as a bit of an internal rallying cry, helping you get your act together on internal clouds.

Who knows? With the right approach, you might be more ready for internal clouds than you think.

Thinking about IT as a supply chain creates new management challenges

CA World has wrapped up, finally giving me time to post a few comments about the major product news of the week from the CA Cloud Products & Solutions Business Line: the announcement of the CA Cloud-Connected Management Suite. (You can catch up on the other supporting announcements, the launch of Cloud Commons and the formation of a consortium to create and drive the Service Measurement Index, in my previous post.)

I heard a lot of very positive feedback about CA Technologies’ plans, many from customers, partners, and industry watchers & experts that we’ve been talking to quite a lot for advice and feedback.

However, I think it’s always a good idea to start from the beginning, especially for those who didn’t make it to Vegas to hear the CA execs (or comedian Jake Johannsen, Maroon 5, or James Cameron, for that matter) in person. I think the premise behind this forthcoming product suite warrants a bit of color and background, especially since the implications for IT are pretty significant, if all goes as described.

Cloud computing means IT loses its monopoly

The premise is this: cloud computing enables you to run IT differently than before. IT has had a type of monopoly. It has, for the most part, been a monolithic provider of IT service to support an organization.

Enter cloud computing. As cloud computing matures, it breaks IT’s monopoly. Business users now have a choice: they can certainly go to their IT teams for support with new initiatives as they have been doing. But, they can also investigate SaaS or many different types of cloud services directly.

As in, without IT’s involvement.

I’ve talked about business users “going rogue” in a couple previous posts. Business users are investigating cloud services on their own more and more frequently given the increasing ubiquity of cloud capabilities, their pay-as-you-go models, and the speed you can get something up and running.

As Chris O’Malley, CA’s EVP for Cloud Products & Solutions, said in his CA World cloud track opening session last week (video replay here), “IT faces a rather stark choice: either add value to the acquisition of cloud services by business users, or risk becoming increasingly less relevant.”

Ouch.

Instead, IT can be the manager of a supply chain of services

So what things would IT need to be able to do in order to help business users make the best IT sourcing choices, regardless of what the final answer is? They’d need to do less of what they’ve typically done – manually making sure the low-level components are working the way that are supposed to – and become more of a trusted adviser to the business.

The big shift here is how the business is getting its services: those services are now potentially coming from many disparate sources. And the source of a particular IT service can (and should) change over time.

The result? IT needs to manage – and constantly improve – a changing IT service supply chain. Gartner analysts Ben Pring and Allie Young published a paper last May about these "service value chains," saying they "will be at the heart of cloud services." Their research updated Gartner's model for "understanding the ways in which multiple components sourced from multiple suppliers will come together in the new service delivery models loosely defined as 'cloud computing.'"

"Cloud computing isn't your future," said Forrester analyst James Staten in his more recent post, "it's a new part of your overall IT portfolio." IT will use internal capabilities, external ones, or a smart mix of both. And that is something it can’t manage with existing tools.

To be clear, things like security, service assurance, virtualization management, automation, and other similar capabilities that are extended to take into account cloud-connected environments are still critical (CA Technologies provides a portfolio of solutions for this, as do other big & small vendors). However, they don’t help you understand, control, and constantly improve this new IT supply chain.

Delivering on the new IT supply chain requirements

We decided to do something about this. We started by figuring out what pieces would be needed to make this possible. In other words, what are the new requirements if IT is to take on this role?

O’Malley rattled them off in his CA World presentation. We think the list includes these things:

· Gain insight to compare. First, you need insight into your IT services – both internal and external. You need to discover who is using what, and you need a standard way to describe and evaluate those services, based on important business-related metrics – something that could be used for apples-to-apples comparisons.

· Connect to expert knowledge. Second, you need access to relevant data about cloud services, feedback about those services, and best practices from a community of both peers and experts. This helps you decide if, when, and how you should use cloud computing for a particular application or capability. Customers told us that they need and want a place to share experiences with likeminded people on many, many cloud topics to overcome the huge information gap -- a gap that comes from the rapid changes driven by innovation itself.

· Cloud-enable applications. Third, you need an environment where you can make changes and act on this information. You need to enable both existing and new applications and IT infrastructure to be more flexible by abstracting them from current physical dependencies. This will make it easy to move workloads to an internal or external cloud environment and back again, if you decide that is the right thing to do.

· Challenge your choices. You also need to optimize the choices you’ve made while selecting and implementing available options. You need to constantly challenge and reassess those choices to take into account both new information and changing business goals.

· Deploy, manage, & secure those decisions. Finally, you need to be able to deploy, manage and secure services that leverage the choices you’ve made to meet enterprise-grade, industrial-strength requirements.

Once you have these core capabilities, you need to use them over and over again, making sure you are constantly improving over time. Because in this scenario, the right answer is going to change as time goes on.

As you might guess, we took this list as a good starting point for the capabilities of our new CA Cloud-Connected Management Suite. The suite will have 4 components: CA Cloud Insight, CA Cloud Compose, CA Cloud Optimize, and CA Cloud Orchestrate. For a summary of what each of these will be, you can look at this short paper or the press release. But you’ll notice they follow this list pretty closely.

How do you turn ideas for cloud management into reality?

CA Technologies is now in the midst of making the concept I just described real. We’ve been focused on organic development efforts, and have also found a number of innovative companies in the market with some core technologies to help deliver on this.

For those of you who have been following the string of acquisitions that CA has made in the cloud computing space in the past 11 months, you can probably see how this suite weaves together technology from the acquired companies. You’ll recognize core capabilities of Oblicore Guarantee as part of CA Cloud Insight, 3Tera AppLogic at the heart of CA Cloud Compose, and Cassatt in CA Cloud Optimize.

But, these technologies alone don’t fully flesh out the requirements I listed. Nothing in the industry does yet. That’s why, even after the acquisitions, there’s a bunch of development that’s on-going to deliver what customers need.

Understanding the IT supply chain: using Cloud Commons and the Service Measurement Index

To help get a handle on the components and management of this IT supply chain idea, we believe that IT needs not only a new set of product capabilities, but also a place to do research on the many cloud services and capabilities – and a way to measure them. Thinking it through, in order for customers to get what they need out of those functions, it seemed much smarter to have them exist separate from CA.

So, we set up Cloud Commons as an independent community and website. And we collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University to get the Service Measurement Index (SMI) started, and then placed SMI in the stewardship of their consortium, so it wouldn’t be tied to CA alone. These moves hopefully get the ball rolling, helping make both useful to the industry as a whole, regardless of whether someone is a CA Technologies customer or not.

But, put all these pieces together – a community of expert information, a standard way to evaluate cloud services, and this new suite of products – and you have the beginnings of a new set of tools and capabilities to help IT manage this new supply chain. And, in fact, a new, expanded role for IT.

Where are we now? Both potential and pitfalls

CA World was our first stake in the ground. The industry has been wondering how we were piecing all of our acquisitions and other work together. We intended the announcements and various sessions at CA World to at least provide the strategic framework for what we’re doing.

Now comes the hard part: delivery. We’re back in our offices, hard at work on that, only a little sad not to still be in Vegas (a week there is quite enough, though, I have to tell you).

Meanwhile, customers can get started with things like the Oblicore and 3Tera products now, giving them a taste of what’s to come, with a convenient upgrade path to the new suite later.

The first deliverables (CA Cloud Insight & CA Cloud Compose) are due by the final quarter of the calendar year. You can be sure we (and I) will keep you posted on our progress.

Until then, we want, expect, and welcome lots of feedback on every piece of this. It’s probably not what people were expecting from CA, but that’s just fine with me. Please feel free to chime in.