Keynote Speech: How Much Of Your Future Will Be In The Cloud? Strategies For Embracing Cloud Computing Services, James Staten, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Cloud computing has shifted from being a question of “if” to one of “when” and “where” in your IT future and portfolio. Is it best to stick with SaaS, or should you be deploying new services directly to the public clouds like Amazon EC2 or Windows Azure? What applications are candidates for the cloud, and which should remain in-house? And for how long? This session will explore the enterprise uses of cloud computing thus far and synthesize the thinking across Forrester on this issue to present you with a road map and a strategy for embracing the cloud that benefits both your business and the IT function. Cloud can be a catalyst for the IT-to-BT transition so long as you harness it effectively.
Session attendees can expect to learn:
- How to tell a true cloud solution and its relative maturity from simple cloud washing.
- The truth behind the economics of cloud computing.
- The best places to start and strategies to build your own path to cloud efficiency.
Prior to the conference, James wrote a positioning/discussion piece, which is published on ZDNet. From what I saw on Twitter, the most controversial idea was the “Pay per use or metered consumption” requirement to be consider cloud computing.
James opens more >>
Tagged as:
Forrester,
ITF10,
JamesStaten
Posted by brenda michelson at 12:29 pm in Blog, analyst positions, fundamentals | Permalink
| Comments(1)
| Trackback URL
Last week, in discussing findings from the BT Global Services Enterprise Intelligence survey, I wrote about why cloud computing environment location matters:
“Many of the clouderati will tell you that the physical location of the cloud computing environment shouldn’t matter to adopters. While technically and architecturally this might be true, given appropriate and reliable network connections, there are business implications of physical location. Most notably, regulatory and compliance concerns for cloud-resident data.”
Today, via Twitter, I became aware of an Interactive Data Protection Heat Map, published by Forrester, and shared on their Infrastructure & Operations Professionals blog:
“To help you grasp the varying scope of regulatory requirements at a high level, we’ve also created an interactive privacy heat map that denotes the degree of strictness — highlighting scope of protection, affected entities, ‘adequacy’ standards met, and heavily surveilled countries — across national data protection regulation.”
The map is in Flash, go check it out.
Tagged as:
enterprise considerations,
Forrester
Posted by brenda michelson at 2:31 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, adoption, data, regulatory | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
The next survey on my list from MWD Advisors, a UK based IT Advisory group, specializing on issues concerning IT business alignment. Neil Ward-Dutton was kind enough to share this premium report with me. This survey was conducted in partnership with the IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and had a diverse sample (organization size and geography) of 358 architect-type respondents. From the report overview:
“In September 2009, MWD worked in conjunction with our partners at the IASA to discover how IT architects view Cloud Computing – what the current challenges are, who is committed to using Cloud Computing – and to gain an insight into what is needed to make Cloud Computing compelling for organisations. The resulting study shows that there are strong levels of Cloud Computing activity being driven by IT architects – but at the same time, that some of today’s vendor marketing drives are missing the mark.”
Out of respect for the premium nature of this content, I’m going to limit this post to a few points.
First, the key findings point out the importance of IT architect involvement with cloud computing initiatives. However, the reasoning differs from the Forrester findings. The MWD survey emphasizes “cohesion between on-premise systems and those in the Cloud". Cohesion includes “ensuring that applications are robust enough to deal with changes to the physical environment that may happen at any time.” [This aligns with one of my 5 Enduring Aspects of Cloud Computing]
Second, despite the rampant hype surrounding cloud computing, only 9 respondents agreed with the statement: “Cloud Computing is all hype and no substance”. The majority of the sample believes “Cloud Computing is fundamentally about service delivery and consumption, not technology”. [So, for everyone who believes service management practices go away with the cloud, think again.]
Third, respondents perceive cloud computing’s greatest value to be “Access to scalable resource with no capital expenditure required – pay as you go”. This differs from the Forrester survey results that ranked “Speed up application delivery” (63%) well over capex avoidance (30% for production, 28% for test).
There are many good insights in the MWD Advisors and Forrester reports. Each paints a picture of cautious optimism for cloud computing, recognizing business benefits and risks, and the need for thoughtful adoption strategies.
Tagged as:
enterprise considerations,
Forrester,
MWD Advisors,
Neil Ward-Dutton
Posted by brenda michelson at 5:30 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, adoption, enterprise integration, software architecture | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
Continuing the 100-day cloud watch, I’m working through my list of cloud computing surveys and papers. Given my background and primary readership, I’m starting with the enterprise architecture focused research. First up is the Forrester Report: EAs Are Seeing the Beginning of Cloud’s Impact On IT by Gene Leganza. The paper stemmed from a recent Forrester Leadership Board (FLB) teleconference:
“A recent Forrester Leadership Boards (FLB) teleconference, attended exclusively by Enterprise Architecture Council members, focused on the impact of cloud computing on EA and the traditional IT structure. We polled the 75 attendees, all enterprise architects, to determine their level of familiarity with cloud concepts and terminology, the degree to which these enterprise architects are engaging with the business and IT community to make decisions about cloud deployments, and the motivation for looking to the cloud for solutions.”
The report offers good information about why organizations are adopting cloud computing – include the different drivers of enterprise architecture and infrastructure professionals – along with enterprise architecture’s involvement in cloud computing adoption and implementation. I’d like to focus on this last point:
“Of the 54 session attendees who responded to this question, 20% said they were aware of no cloud deployments in their enterprise. Of the 43 who knew of cloud use, 26% said enterprise architects were involved in all cloud decisions, 58% said they were pulled in for guidance on possible cloud deployments some of the time, and 16% said their business or IT staff had licensed cloud services without EA’s involvement.”
Forrester surmises: “The ease of procuring cloud resources makes it likely that business project sponsors or IT development and support staff will acquire cloud services without engaging the standard technology governance processes where architects typically become engaged.”. At the Gartner AADI conference, Eric Knipp referred to this phenomenon as the rise of “Citizen Development”.
In the report, Leganza suggests that instead of “falling victim to an end run by the business”, enterprise architects need to embrace the role of business advisor. Specifically, Leganza recommends:
“Get proficient in cloud-related issues and terminology. If IT in general and architects in particular are to position themselves as trusted advisors to the business — thus playing a role in the IT-to-BT transition rather than being a victim of it — architects should be the ones to recommend cloud services when they are appropriate rather than let the business position cloud as a way to get IT services without the IT department. To be in a position to advocate cloud-based solutions, architects must have a thorough understanding of the facts, subtleties, hype, and misinformation surrounding cloud computing, and they must develop a practical model for which of their workloads are appropriate for the cloud and which must be deployed internally…”
“Look for ways to improve IT services with cloud-based offerings. Work with subject matter experts in infrastructure and application engineering to see where cloud-based services can provide hosted solutions that are more cost-effective and flexible than in-house scenarios without introducing undue risk…"
“Consider cloud services when brainstorming business solutions. Create a cloud cheat sheet — your own customized guide listing criteria that identify a workload appropriate for the cloud — for use in early-stage architecture reviews or when discussing possible solutions to business problems. Any flexible and cost-effective hosting arrangement that does not introduce risk can translate to technology-enhanced business capabilities with no increased support burden on internal IT, which is a win-win for both IT and its business stakeholders.”
“Provide a context for solution decisions with an integrated view of architecture. …Providing an easy-to-understand high-level graphical view of business, information, and applications — such as in a capability map — can enable informed discussions about possible cloud-based solutions that don’t ignore integration requirements.”
Todd Biske, a seasoned enterprise architect and renowned SOA Governance expert, also speaks to the EA as Business Advisor in a recent post.
Tagged as:
enterprise architects,
enterprise considerations,
Forrester,
Gene Leganza,
Todd Biske
Posted by brenda michelson at 2:07 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, adoption, analyst positions, enterprise architecture, enterprise integration | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
