The 110-year-old light bulb is a little too much like today’s IT

Last weekend the San Francisco Chronicle had a big write-up on a crazy fluke of technology: a light bulb that has been working for over a century without burning out.

The celebrity bulb hangs from a ceiling, high above a Livermore, Calif., fire department, and has baffled anyone trying to figure out why it is still functioning after 110 years. It obviously does not have the same manufacturer as the light bulbs in my upstairs hallway – it seems that at least one of those needs replacing every month.

The curious part about the “centennial bulb” – and the part that strikes me as having some relevance to the IT systems we know and interact with on a daily basis – is that no one knows why it’s still working.

And, given that it is still working, no one is going to interrupt its operation to find out why.

That sounds a lot like how IT has traditionally been run. There’s a bunch of hard work and complicated technological details that go into getting a certain system or application up and running. The good news is: getting it up and running in the first place is often the hardest part.

The more successful applications are the ones that then keep running with a minimum of effort, the fewest upgrades, and least changes required. In fact, once something is doing its job, the ROI for an upgrade of an underlying hardware or software infrastructure component is, frankly, really low in the eyes of the users (vendors will often beg to differ, of course). You really don’t want to touch it, lest you break something.

The Golden Rules of IT, starting with “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”

Amusingly, that same topic came up in a conversation I was having with analyst and ZDNet blogger Dan Kusnetzky. He tied our conversation back to the “Golden Rules of IT,” which I first saw when Dan published them (for a second time, apparently) back in 2007. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” was merely the beginning of his list.

Dan included inarguable IT wisdom like “Don’t touch it, you’ll break it” and “If you touched it and it broke, it will take longer to fix and, in all likelihood, cost more than you think to fix.” Which, of course, leads to “Don’t make major changes unless people are screaming!” And, finally, that means settling for “good enough is good enough.”

But, as pithy as they are, those “Golden Rules” lead to really bad IT choices, I would argue.

When Golden Rules become bad advice

Thinking back to the long-lived Livermore light bulb, I can’t argue with the fact that it’s still working. But is it doing anything useful for the fire station other than attracting curious tourists from China, Germany, and Fresno?

Nope. In fact, it’s barely accomplishing its intended purpose – giving off light. It began life as a 60-watt bulb, but is only producing 4 watts at this point – about the same as a night light. Not so good if you’re trying to find the keys to the fire truck.

If you’re running an IT shop that’s supporting a rapidly changing business, this kind of technology nostalgia and tolerance for something that doesn’t seem to be making the grade seems quaint at best. More likely, it’s exactly the kind of thing that, in the end, is going to put your IT systems -- and your business – in jeopardy.

In IT, you would rather have “new idea” light bulbs turning on

In my post about how cloud computing lets organizations focus on “good enough” IT – being able to try out things quickly and effectively, without having to worry about every bell and every whistle – I’m essentially arguing for the opposite of the centennial light bulb. (Sorry, Livermore.)

Just because the old thing hasn’t broken doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try out something new. Tolerating a creaky, old system just because it hasn’t come crashing down yet is not pointing you in the right direction. “Good enough” is not something you settle for, but in fact an approach that gives you the freedom to try things, and to do so quickly. I can’t really speak for the light bulb industry, but the pace of IT technology change is so fast that you really have to be paying attention to what else is possible. And even if you aren’t, you can probably bet your competition is.

In fact, I’m arguing, cloud computing is perfect for this sort of experimentation. Cloud lets you dip your toe in and see how it goes. Cloud lets you try a new way of resourcing (or architecting) a given application. Cloud also means you only have to pay for what you use, when you use it. Experimentation like this is how innovation starts – and how new light bulbs go on in peoples’ heads in the first place. I’m betting it will lead to something better.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a bit of quirky history along the way. Those looking for a thrill-a-minute can check out the 24-hour-a-day webcam pictures of the centennial bulb doing its thing at http://www.centennialbulb.org/.

More about the ‘people side’ of cloud: good-bye wizards, hello wild ducks and T-shaped skills

One of the problems that has dragged down the transformational ideas around cloud computing is the impact of this new operating model on organizations and the actual people inside them. I noticed this back in my days at Cassatt before the CA acquisition. The Management Insight survey I wrote about a few weeks back pointed this out. And, if you’ve been following this blog, I’ve mentioned it a couple other times over the past few months as the hard part of this major transition in IT.

While the technical challenges of cloud computing aren’t simple, the path to solve them is pretty straightforward. With the people side of things…not so much.

However, I’m optimistic about a new trend I've noticed throughout the first month of 2011: much of the recent industry discussion is actually talking through the people issues and starting to think more directly about how cloud computing will affect the IT staff.

Now, maybe that’s just beginning-of-the-year clarity of thought. Or people sticking to some sort of resolutions.

(I have a friend, for example, who swears off alcohol for 31 days every January 1st. He does it to make up for the overly festive holiday season that has been in high-gear the previous month. But I think he also uses it as an attempt to start the year out focusing himself on the things he thinks he should be doing, rather than having an extra G&T. And it usually works. For a while, anyway.)

Whatever the reason, I thought it was worth highlighting interesting commentary that’s recently appeared in the hopes of extending (and building on) the discussion about the human impact of cloud computing.

It’s got to be you

Back in December, the folks on-stage at the Gartner Data Center Conference had a bunch of relevant commentary on IT and its role in this cloudy transition.

Gartner analyst Tom Bittman noted in his keynote that for cloud computing, IT needs to focus. The IT folks are the ones that “should become the trusted arbiter and broker of cloud in your organization.” He saw evangelism in the future of every IT person in his audience from the sounds of it. “Who is going to be the organization to tell the business that there is a new opportunity based on cloud computing? That’s got to be you.” Are people ready for that level of commitment? We’ll find out. With great power comes great responsibility, right?

Automation & staffing levels

With cloud also comes an increasing reliance on automation. That hands IT people a big reason to push back on cloud computing right there. As Gartner analyst Ronni Colville said in one of her sessions, “the same people who write the automation are the ones whose jobs are going to change.”

In another session, Disney Interactive Media Group’s CTO Bud Albers talked about how the company’s cloud-based approach to internal IT has impacted staffing levels. “No lay-offs,” he said, “but you get no more people.” That means each person you do have (and keep) is going to have to be sharpening their skills toward this transition.

T-shaped business skills

In the era of cloud computing, then, what do you want that staff to be able to do?

Gartner’s Dave Cappuccio talked about creating a set of skills that are “T-shaped” – deep in a few areas, but having broad capabilities across how the business actually works. He believes that “technology depth is important, but not as key as business breadth.” The biggest value to the business, he said, is this breadth.

So that means even more new IT titles from cloud computing

To get to what Cappuccio is proposing, organizations are going to have to create some new roles in IT, especially focusing on the business angle. A few posts ago, I rattled off a whole list of new titles that will be needed as organizations move to cloud computing. Last week, Bernard Golden’s blog at CIO.com talking about “Cloud CIO: How Cloud Computing Changes IT Staffs” made some insightful suggestions (and some, I’m happy to say, matched mine). He noted the rising importance of the enterprise architect, as well as an emphasis on operations personnel who can deal with being more “hands-off.” He saw legal and regulatory roles joining cloud-focused IT teams and security designers needing to handle the “deperimeterization” of the data center. And, IT financial analysts become more important in making decisions.

Gartner’s Donna Scott agreed with that last one in her session on the same topic at the Gartner Data Center Conference. She believed that the new, evolved roles that would be needed would include IT financial/costing analysts. She also called out solution architects, automation specialists, service owners, and cloud capacity managers.

Wild ducks & the correct number of pizzas

So what personalities do you need to look for to fill those titles?

At the same conference, Cameron Haight discussed how to organize teams and whom to assign to them. “If you have that ‘wild duck’ in your IT shop, they’re dangerous. But they are the ones who innovate,” he said.

Haight noted that the hierarchical and inflexible set up of a traditional IT org just won’t work for cloud. What’s needed? Flatter and smaller. “Encourage the ‘wild duck’ mentality,” said Haight. “Encourage critical thinking skills and challenge conventional wisdom” in individuals.

As for organizing, “use 2-pizza teams,” he suggested, meaning groups should be no larger than 2 pizzas would feed. (He left the choice of toppings up to us, thankfully.) Groups then should support a service in its entirety by themselves. Haight believes this drives autonomy, cohesiveness, ownership, and will help infrastructure and operations become more like developers, lessening the “velocity mismatch” between agile development and slow and methodical operations teams.

To take this even farther, take a look at the Forrester write-up called “BT 2020: IT’s Future in the Empowered Era.” Analysts Alex Cullen and James Staten talk about a completely new mindset that’s needed for IT (or, as they call it, BT – business technology) by 2020. Why? Your most important customers today won’t be so important then, what those new customers will want IT doesn’t yet provide, and the cost of energy is going to destroy current operating models.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? But, hey, 2020 is still a ways off.

Moving past wizardry: getting real people onboard with real changes today

Getting the actual human beings in IT to absorb and actually be a part of all these changes is hard and has to be thought through.

At a recent cloud event we held, I interviewed Peter Green, CTO and founder of Agathon Group, a cloud service provider that uses CA 3Tera AppLogic (this clip has the interview; he talks about cloud and IT roles starting at 3 min., 55 sec.). These changes are the hardest, Green said, “where IT sees its role as protector rather than innovator. They tend to view their job as wizardry.” That’s not a good situation. Time to pull back the curtain.

Mazen Rawashdeh, eBay’s vice president of technology operations, noted onstage at the Gartner conference that he has found a really effective way to get everyone pointed the same direction through big changes like this. “The moment your team understands the ‘why’ and you keep the line of communications open, a lot of the challenges will go away.” So, communicate about what you're up against, what you're working on, and how you're attacking it. A lot.

Christian Reilly posted a blog last month that I thought was a perfect example of that eyes-wide-open attitude, despite the uncertainty that all of these shifts bring. Reilly (@reillyusa on Twitter) is in IT at a very large end-user organization dealing with cloud and automation directly.

“I am under no illusion,” Reilly posted, “that in the coming months (or years)…automation, in the guise of the much heralded public and private cloud services, will render large parts of my current role and responsibility defunct. I am under no illusion that futile attempts to keep hold of areas of scope, sets of repeatable tasks or, for that matter, the knowledge I’ve collected over the years will render me irreplaceable.

“Will I shed tears? Yes. But they will be tears of joy.”

A little over the top, sure, but he gets a gold star for attitude. Green of Agathon Group thinks the cloud is actually the opportunity to bring together things that have been too separate.

“Where I see a potential, at least,” said Green, “[is] for cloud computing to act as a common area where tech and management can start to converse a little bit better.”

So, as I said, January has given me a little hope that the industry is on a good path. Let’s hope this kind of discussion continues for the rest of the year.

A cloudy look forward at 2011

A bunch of us in the cloud computing business here at CA Technologies put our heads together to see if we could articulate what we thought some of the big trends were going to be in cloud for 2011. It was a long and interesting list, as you might expect.

So, I cherry-picked a handful of key ideas from that list for this post. Don’t consider this a set of broad, all-knowing pronouncements, but instead think of this as some concepts that are getting traction – ones that I believe we’ll want to watch as we start the new year. Let me know if you agree, disagree, or have something even better to add.

Of course, you can’t surf the high tech pubs over the past few weeks without hitting dozens of such lists. So why is this one worth a scan?

I think the items on this list do a good job representing conversations and work we’ve been doing with two important constituents: leading-edge service providers and more traditional enterprise IT operations teams. We work with both and see a lot of ways that the two groups are learning from – and influencing – each other. Trend #1 to watch: I’m betting this cross-pollination continues, especially as people start thinking about hybrid public-private cloud computing environments.

Even better, most of these concepts represent an evolution of issues and trends we’ve been talking about over the past few months. I’m including links to posts that I or someone on our team has written in case you’re interested in a little background or supporting commentary.

As Casey Kasem used to say, on with countdown…

The “old guard” of IT will push back and then face up to the changing role of IT

A lot of people will continue to rail against cloud computing, highlighting its failures. Network or system administrators, those whose jobs are focused around traditional IT silos or the “break & fix” process, and even some traditional IT vendors will likely all chime in. After all, from their perspective, their livelihoods are being threatened with this transition. The smartest of the bunch will seize the cloud as an opportunity, transforming their own roles, leading to the emergence of new IT titles. We’ll see Chief Sourcing Officers, Cloud Service Architects, even Cloud Orchestrators. And that’s just for starters.

MSPs become the model of cloud progress

Many MSPs are bringing innovative, cloud-based solutions to market (many building on top of CA 3Tera AppLogic). They have spent 2010 working through the kinks, and they are showing IT pros from enterprises and service providers alike that real cloud computing progress is being made. MSPs are showing the industry how to do it. The GM of the CA Technologies cloud business, Adam Famularo, commented on how this is shaping up in CRN and CA’s Matt Richards noted a few examples in a recent blog as well. Enterprises are starting to not only see MSPs as a source for cloud services, but also as a model for how to operate IT.

The hypervisor will begin a 5-year march to obscurity

OK, maybe that sounds like I’m overstating things a bit. Even so, expect the relationship between virtualization and cloud computing will become much clearer in 2011. Companies are now understanding that virtualization alone does not equal cloud. And even recent moves by VMware and the other hypervisor vendors show that the VM is not the strategic center of the cloud universe. Hypervisors are an important piece of technology, but aren’t the be-all or end-all.

Agility will be prized more highly than depth of functionality

The cloud is driving organizations to realize that they don’t need to have complex, process-heavy IT for everything they do. In fact, “good enough” is a kind of catchphrase for the cloud. For the apps where speed is more important, optimize on that. Embrace that agility where it makes sense (and it will make sense in a lot of places).

A government will ban using the cloud for any of its services…

It seems that all the discussion about the concerns of privacy, security, and the like, will probably lead to a government somewhere that will forbid all use of cloud services. I’d expect that to come as a knee-jerk reaction to some government agency or private organization experiencing a major breach or failure. At the same time, cloud security and SLAs will grow in importance as public and commercial industries alike seek to address these risks.

…while another government will fully invest in cloud computing

Other government entities, however, will find the cloud too compelling to ignore. The U.S. federal government, for example, has made an aggressive move to the cloud and continues to show its commitment to this approach, providing education and other support for government agencies. Our federal government even has a stated “cloud first” policy for some items from U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra. So, despite the perceived security and quality of service risks, governments will continue to drive innovation and advancement of their own IT systems by using new cloud services.

People will stop trying to define “cloud computing”

Thank goodness. And not a moment too soon.

Seriously, though: there’s no longer a debate about the viability of public vs. private clouds – we know that most enterprises are going to have some combination of both. At the same time, NIST is talking about expanding its existing definition of cloud computing in interesting ways. We’d recommend thinking about how to encompass the way IT is starting to think and act – focusing on the delivery of services more than the underlying technical components.

There will be a groundswell of consumer interest in cloud

Consumers are starting to hear about this cloud thing. You can grumble about Microsoft’s odd “to the cloud” holiday card ads (I have), but the profile of cloud computing continues to increase. There will be a follow-on groundswell effect within organizations, as business users’ expectations for speed, choice, and agility dramatically increase. And increase. And increase some more. IT pros will need to move quickly in order to provide the necessary infrastructure and services that its users come to expect.

Attempts to develop a single cloud performance benchmark will fail

As the choices for cloud services increase (and they will…daily), there will emerge an even greater need for transparent and reliable metrics and the ability to compare services against each other. Vendors and third parties will continue on the path of trying to find a single benchmark to measure performance, but they will fail. Instead, I’m betting folks will come to realize that cloud services need to be measured on many factors, including cost, security, agility, and more. A single benchmark will not give organizations the insight they need to make smart decisions aligned with their specific priorities. (CA Technologies is working as part of the Service Measurement Index (SMI) Consortium to address exactly this issue, by the way.)

Despite “troughs of disillusionment,” “cloud-washing” and FUD, users will show real progress in the cloud

Organizations will try a lot of things in 2011. Some will fail (hopefully fast), and the best projects will succeed. They will uncover realistic, practical uses that give them the flexibility and speed they require to improve how they serve the business. Sure, some might say we’re about to enter that unpleasant phase of an emerging market where the reality begins to expose the hype for what it is, but that’s actually a very healthy part of the cycle. It separates the real from the, um, PowerPoints.

Finally, if you don’t like our thoughts…

If you don’t like our ideas (or at least the ones I highlighted), comment here with some of your own. Also, here are some interesting lists from a few notable industry voices and what they think has been happening and what they think you might expect from the next 12 months: Derrick Harris from GigaOm on 2010 and 2011, Forrester’s James Staten, Bernard Golden at CIO.com, Chris O’Brien from the San Jose Merc on Silicon Valley in general (and his self-assessment on his own past predictions), Gordon Haff from Red Hat (and some good back & forth comments on his ideas), the gifts of 2010 according to James Urquhart’s Wisdom of Clouds, Krishnan Subramanian’s Cloud Ave list of key cloud acquisitions of 2010, and Christian Reilly, giving a user’s perspective to keep everyone honest. Finally, the folks at Cloud.com have an even longer list on their site if that’s not enough.

So, take it all in. Let us know what you think. Oh, and happy new year.

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.

Making 'good enough' the new normal

In looking back on some of the more insightful observations that I’ve heard concerning cloud computing in 2010, one kept coming up over and over again. In fact, it was re-iterated by several analysts onstage at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas earlier this month.

The thought went something like this:

IT is being weighed down by more and more complexity as time goes on. The systems are complex, the management of those systems is complex, and the underlying processes are, well, also complex.

The cloud seems to offer two ways out of this problem. First, going with a cloud-based solution allows you to start over, often leaving a lot of the complexity behind. But that’s been the same solution offered by any greenfield effort – it always seems deceptively easier to start over than to evolve what you already have. Note that I said “seems easier.” The real-world issues that got you into the complexity problem in the first place quickly return to haunt any such project. Especially in a large organization.

Cloud and the 80-20 rule

But I’m more interested in highlighting the second way that cloud can help. That way is more about the approach to architecture that is embodied in a lot of the cloud computing efforts. Instead of building the most thorough, full-featured systems, cloud-based systems are often using “good enough” as their design point.

This is the IT operations equivalent of the 80-20 rule. It’s the idea that not every system has to have full redundancy, fail-over, or other requirements. It doesn't need to be perfect or have every possible feature. You don't need to know every gory detail from a management standpoint. In most cases, going to those extremes means what you're delivering will be over-engineered and not worth the extra time, effort, and money. That kind of bad ROI is a problem.

“IT has gotten away from “good enough” computing,” said Gartner’s Donna Scott in one of her sessions at the Data Center Conference. “There is a lot an IT dept can learn from cloud, and that’s one of them.”

The experiences of eBay

In talking about his experiences working at eBay during the same conference, Mazen Rawashdeh, vice president of eBay's technology operations, talked about his company’s need to be able to understand what made the most impact on cost and efficiency and optimize for those. That mean a lot of “good enough” decisions in other areas.

eBay IT developed metrics that helped drive the right decisions, and then focused, according to Rawashdeh, on innovation, innovation, innovation. They avoided the things that would weigh them down because “we needed to break the linear relationship between capacity growth and infrastructure cost,” said Rawashdeh. At the conference, he laid out a blueprint for a pretty dynamic IT operations environment, stress-tested by one of the bigger user bases on the Web.

Rawashdeh couched all of this IT operations advice in one of his favorite quotes from Charles Darwin: “It’s not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” In the IT context, it means being resilient to lots of little changes – and little failures – so that the whole can still keep going. “The data center itself is our ‘failure domain,’” he said. Architecting lots of little pieces to be “good enough” lets the whole be stronger, and more resilient.

Everything I needed to know about IT operations I learned from my cloud provider

So who seems to be the best at “good enough” IT these days? Most would point to the cloud service providers, of course.

Many end-user organizations are starting to get this kind of experience, but aren’t very far yet. Forrester’s James Staten says in his 2011 predictions blog that he believes end-user organizations will build private clouds in 2011, “and you will fail. And that’s a good thing. Because through this failure you will learn what it really takes to operate a cloud environment.” He recommends that you “fail fast and fail quietly. Start small, learn, iterate, and then expand.”

Most enterprises, Staten writes, “aren’t ready to pass the baton” – to deliver this sort of dynamic infrastructure – yet. “But service providers will be ready in 2011.” Our own Matt Richards agrees. He created a holiday-inspired list of some interesting things that service providers are using CA Technologies software to make possible.

In fact, Gartner’s Cameron Haight had a whole session at the Vegas event to highlight things that IT ops can learn from the big cloud providers.

Some highlights:

· Make processes experienced-based, rather than set by experts. Just because it was done one way before doesn’t mean that’s the right way now. “Cloud providers get good at just enough process,” said Haight, especially in the areas of deployment and incident management.

· Failure happens. In fact, the big guys are moving toward a “recovery-oriented” computing philosophy. “Don’t focus on avoiding failure, but on recovery,” said Haight. The important stat with this approach is not mean-time-between-failures (MTBF), but mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). Reliability, in this case, comes from software, not the underlying hardware.

· Manageability follows from both software and management design. Management should lessen complexity, not add to it. Haight pointed toward tools trying to facilitate “infrastructure as code,” to enable flexibility.

Know when you need what

So, obviously, “good enough” is not always going to be, well, good enough for every part of your IT infrastructure. But it’s an idea that’s getting traction because of successes with cloud computing. Those successes are causing IT people to ask a few fundamental questions about how they can apply this approach to their specific IT needs. And that’s a useful thing.

In thinking about where and how “good enough” computing is appropriate, you need to ask yourself a couple questions. First, how vital is the system I’m working on? What’s its use, tolerance for failure, importance, and the like. The more critical it is, the more careful you have to be with your threshold of “good enough.”

Second, is speed of utmost importance? Cost? Security? Or a set of other things? Like Rawashdeh at eBay, know what metrics are important, and optimize to those.

Be honest with yourself and your organization about places you can try this approach. It’s one of the ideas that got quite a bit of attention in 2010 that’s worth considering.

Survey points to the rise of 'cloud thinking'

In any developing market, doing a survey is always a bit of a roll of the dice. Sometimes the results can be pretty different from what you expected to find.

I know a surprise like that sounds unlikely in the realm of cloud computing, a topic that, if anything, feels over-scrutinized. However, when the results came back from the Management Insight survey (that CA Technologies sponsored and announced today), there were a few things that took me and others looking at the data by surprise.

Opinions of IT executives and IT staffs on cloud don’t differ by too much. We surveyed both decision makers and implementers, thinking that we’d find some interesting discrepancies. We didn’t. They all pretty much thought cloud could help them on costs, for example. And regardless of both groups’ first impressions, I’m betting cost isn’t their eventual biggest benefit. Instead, I’d bet that it’s agility – the reduced time to having IT make a real difference in your business – that will probably win out in the end.

IT staff are of two minds about cloud. One noticeable contradiction in the survey was that the IT staff was very leery about cloud because they see its potential to take away their jobs. At the same time, one of the most popular reasons to support a cloud initiative was because it familiarized them with the latest and greatest in technology and IT approaches. It seems to me that how each IT person deals with these simultaneous pros and cons will decide a lot about the type of role they will have going forward. Finding ways to learn about and embrace change can’t be a bad thing for your resume.

Virtualization certainly has had an impact on freeing people to think positively about cloud computing. I wrote about this in one of my early blogs about internal clouds back at the beginning of 2009 – hypervisors helped IT folks break the connection between a particular piece of hardware and an application. Once you do that, you’re free to consider a lot of “what ifs.”

This new survey points out a definite connection between how far people have gotten with their virtualization work and their support for cloud computing. The findings say that virtualization helps lead to what we’re calling “cloud thinking.” In fact, the people most involved in virtualization are also the ones most likely to be supportive of cloud initiatives. That all makes sense to me. (Just don’t think that just because you’ve virtualized some servers, you’ve done everything you need to in order to get the benefits of cloud computing.)

The survey shows people expect a gradual move from physical infrastructure to virtual systems, private cloud, and public cloud – not a mad rush. Respondents did admit to quite a bit of cloud usage – more than many other surveys I’ve seen. That leads you to think that cloud is starting to come of age in large enterprises (to steal a phrase from today’s press release). But it’s not happening all at once, and there’s a combination of simple virtualization and a use of more sophisticated cloud-based architectures going on. That’s going to lead to mixed environments for quite some time to come, and a need to manage and secure those diverse environments, I’m betting.

There are open questions about the ultimate cost impact of both public and private clouds. One set of results listed cost as a driver and an inhibitor for public clouds, and as a driver and an inhibitor for private ones, too. Obviously, there’s quite a bit of theory that has yet to be put into practice. I bet that’s what a lot of the action in 2011 will be all about: figuring it out.

And who can ignore politics? Finally, in looking at the internal organizational landscape of allies and stonewallers, the survey reported what I’ve been hearing anecdotally from customers and our folks who work with them: there are a lot of political hurdles to get over to deliver a cloud computing project (let alone a success). The survey really didn’t provide a clear, step-by-step path to success (not that I expected it would). I think the plan of starting small, focusing on a specific outcome, and being able to measure results is never a bad approach. And maybe those rogue cloud projects we hear about aren’t such a bad way to start after all. (You didn’t hear that from me, mind you.)

Take a look for yourself

Those were some of the angles I thought were especially interesting, and, yes, even a bit surprising in the survey. In addition to perusing the actual paper that Management Insight wrote (registration required) about the findings, I’d also suggest taking a look at the slide show highlighting a few of the more interesting results graphically. You can take a look at those slides here.

I’m thinking we’ll run the survey again in the middle of next year (at least, that seems like about the right timing to me). Two things will be interesting to see. First, what will the “cloud thinking” that we’re talking about here have enabled? The business models that cloud computing makes possible are new, pretty dynamic, and disruptive. Companies that didn’t exist yesterday could be challenging big incumbents tomorrow with some smart application of just enough technology. And maybe with no internal IT whatsoever.

Second, it will be intriguing to see what assumptions that seem so logical now will turn out to be – surprisingly – wrong. But, hey, that’s why we ask these questions, right?

This blog is cross-posted on The CA Cloud Storm Chasers site.

Beyond Jimmy Buffett, sumos, and virtualization? Cloud computing hits #1 at Gartner Data Center Conference

I spent last week along with thousands of other data center enthusiasts at Gartner’s 2010 Data Center Conference and was genuinely surprised by the level of interest in cloud computing on both sides of the podium. As keynoter and newly minted cloud computing expert Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up.

This was my sixth time at the show (really), and I’ve come to use the show as a benchmark for the types of conversations that are going on at very large enterprises around their infrastructure and operations issues. And as slow-to-move as you might think that part of the market might be, there are some interesting insights to be gained comparing changes over the years – everything from the advice and positions of the Gartner analysts, to the hallway conversations among the end users, to really important things, like the themes of the hospitality suites.

So, first and foremost, the answer is yes, APC did invite the Jimmy Buffett cover band back again, in case you were wondering. And someone decided sumo wrestling in big, overstuffed suits was a good idea.

Now, if you were actually looking for something a little more related to IT operations, read on:

Cooling was hot this year…and cloud hits #1

It wasn’t any big surprise what was at the top of peoples’ lists this year. The in-room polling at the opening keynotes placed data center space, power, and cooling at the top of list of biggest data center challenges (23%). The interesting news was that developing a private/public cloud strategy came in second (16%).

This interest in cloud computing was repeated in the Gartner survey of CIOs’ top technology priorities. Cloud computing was #1. It made the biggest jump of all topics since their ’09 survey, by-passing virtualization, on its way to head up the list. But don’t think virtualization wasn’t important: it followed right behind at #2. Gartner’s Dave Cappuccio made sure the audience was thinking big on the virtualization topic, saying that it wasn’t just about virtualizing servers or storage now. It’s about “the virtualization of everything. Virtualization is a continuing process, not a one-time project.”

Bernard Golden, CEO of Hyperstratus and CIO.com blogger (check out his 2011 predictions here), wondered on Twitter if cloud leapfrogging virtualization didn’t actually put the cart before the horse. I’m not sure if CIOs know whether that’s true or not. But they do know that they need to deal with both of these topics, and they need to deal with them now.

Putting the concerns of 2008 & 2009 in the rear-view mirror

This immediacy for cloud computing is a shift from the previous years, I think. A lot of 2008 was about the recession’s impact, and even 2009 featured sessions on how the recession was driving short-term thinking in IT. If you want to do a little comparison yourself, take a look at a few of my entries about this same show from years past (spanning the entire history of my Data Center Dialog blog to date, in fact). Some highlights: Tom Bittman’s 2008 keynote (he said the future looks a lot like a private cloud), 2008’s 10 disruptive data center technologies, 2008’s guide to building a real-time infrastructure, and the impact of metrics on making choices in the cloud from last year.

The Stack Wars are here

Back to today (or at least, last week), though. Gartner’s Joe Baylock told the crowd in Vegas that this was the year that the Stack Wars ignited. With announcements from Oracle, VCE, IBM, and others, it’s hard to argue.

The key issue in his mind was whether these stack wars will help or inhibit innovation over the next 5 years. Maybe it moves the innovation to another layer. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to see how customers will allow stacks to rule the day. At CA Technologies, we continue to hear that customers expect to have diverse environments (that, of course, need managing and securing, cloud-related and otherwise). Baylock’s advice: “Avoid inadvertently backing into any vendor’s integrated stack.” Go in with your eyes open.

Learning about – and from – cloud management

Cloud management was front and center. Enterprises need to know, said Cameron Haight, that management is the biggest challenge for private cloud efforts. Haight called out the Big Four IT management software vendors (BMC, CA Technologies, HP software, and IBM Tivoli) as being slow to respond to virtualization, but he said they are embracing the needs around cloud management much faster. 2010 has been filled with evidence of that from my employer – and the others on this list, too.

There’s an additional twist to that story, however. In-room polling at several sessions pointed to interest from enterprises in turning to public cloud vendors themselves as their primary cloud management provider. Part of this is likely to be an interest in finding “one throat to choke.” Haight and Donna Scott also noted several times that there’s a lot to be learned from the big cloud service providers and their IT operations expertise (something worthy of a separate blog, I think). Keep in mind, however, that most enterprise operations look very different (and much more diverse) than the big cloud providers’ operations.

In a similar result, most session attendees also said they’d choose their virtualization vendors to manage their private cloud. Tom Bittman, in reviewing the poll in his keynote, noted that “the traditional management and automation vendors that we have relied on for decades are not close to the top of the list.” But, Bittman said, “they have a lot to offer. I think VMware’s capabilities [in private cloud management] are overrated, especially where heterogeneity is involved.”

To be fair: Bittman made these remarks because VMware topped the audience polling on this question. So, it’s a matter of what’s important in a customer’s eyes, I think. In a couple of sessions, this homogeneous v. heterogeneous environment discussion became an important way for customers to evaluate what they need for management. Will they feel comfortable with only what each stack vendor will provide?

9 private cloud vendors to watch

Bittman also highlighted 9 vendors that he thought were worthy of note for customers looking to build out private clouds. The list included BMC, Citrix, IBM, CA Technologies, Eucalyptus, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, and VMware.

He predicted very healthy competition in the public cloud space (and even public cloud failures, as Rich Miller noted at Data Center Knowledge) and similarly aggressive competition for the delivery of private clouds. He believed there would even be fierce competition in organizations where VMware owns the hypervisor layer.

As for tidbits about CA Technologies, you won’t be surprised to learn that I scribbled down a comment or two: “They’ve made a pretty significant and new effort to acquire companies to provide strategic solutions such as 3Tera and Cassatt,” said Bittman. “Not a vendor to be ignored.” Based on the in-room polling, though, we still have some convincing to do with customers.

Maybe we should figure out what it’ll take to get the Jimmy Buffett guy to play in our hospitality suite next year? I suppose that and another year of helping customers with their cloud computing efforts would certainly help.

In the meantime, it’s worth noting that TechTarget’s SearchDataCenter folks also did a good job with their run-down on the conference, if you’re interested in additional color. A few of them might even be able to tell you a bit about the sumo wrestling, if you ask nicely.

And I’m not making that up either.