January 13th, 2011

Changing lenses, McKinsey sees Agility side of Cloud Computing

Back in April 2009, McKinsey set the cloud computing community afire with a presentation arguing that corporate cloud computing adopters might expend more money using cloud versus traditional data center resources.  As reported by Steve Lohr in the NYTimes Bits blog:

“The McKinsey study, “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing,” concludes that outsourcing a typical corporate data center to a cloud service would more than double the cost.”

Many in the cloud computing space, including Gartner’s highly respected Lydia Leong, immediately took the ‘math’ behind this report to task.

My issue at the time wasn’t the math  more >>

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Posted by brenda michelson at 1:02 pm in adoption, Blog, economics, pundit positions | Permalink | Comments(0)
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January 6th, 2010

5 Enduring Aspects of Cloud Computing

Forgoing the hyperbole of cloud computing predictions – sensational outages to a cloud-in-every-pocket – I want to start 2010 discussing the enduring aspects of cloud computing on enterprise business-technology.  Regardless of the final manifestation of cloud computing, and the tally of deployments, successes and failures, I believe cloud computing will influence the expectations and practice of enterprise business-technology throughout the decade.

I have identified five enduring aspects from a practitioner perspective.  Certainly, there are enduring aspects on the provider side as well, such as advances from Infrastructure 2.0 and disruptions created by new economic and pricing models.  However, I will leave that list for provider-side specialists. 

The first three enduring aspects focus on the expectations from business-technology organizations. 

1. Resource Optimization – Cloud computing has raised Executive awareness to the disproportion of installed versus utilized computing capacity, along with the requisite expenses of space, power, software licenses and support personnel. 

If they have not already, Executives will mandate infrastructure ecology initiatives, starting with the consolidation and pooling of compute and data resources, and progressing to software execution efficiency. 

 more >>

Tagged as: 2010 hypothesis, brenda michelson, capability delivery, popular post

Posted by brenda michelson at 5:59 pm in Blog, economics, elasticity & scale, fundamentals, infrastructure 2.0, performance & reliability, platform, pundit positions, software architecture | Permalink | Comments(4)
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November 16th, 2009

SOA, Cloud & Value Acceleration

Given my longstanding background in SOA and my current work in Cloud Computing, I’m often asked how the two complement each other, particularly from the business benefit perspective.  Briefly, here are my thoughts and observations.

From the SOA Side

The immediate benefit of combining SOA and Cloud Computing is time.  Reaching out to the cloud for business or technology capabilities, allows SOA initiatives to compress time to value. 

In the longer term, the benefits include improved collaboration, customer satisfaction and business growth.  By offering SOA based business capabilities to the cloud, businesses can improve interactions with business partners and existing customers, and/or generate new revenue streams.

From the Cloud Side

The immediate benefit of cloud computing is financial.   more >>

Tagged as: business drivers, popular post, soa

Posted by brenda michelson at 4:06 pm in adoption, Blog, economics, enterprise architecture, services architecture | Permalink | Comments(0)
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November 4th, 2009

Elemental Cloud-o-gram

Click on the diagram for the full view.  Read about the cloud-o-gram.

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Posted by brenda michelson at 6:18 pm in Blog, cloud-o-gram | Permalink | Comments(2)
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September 29th, 2009

Cloud Computing Picks for Business Analysts

Recently, a business analyst asked me for some cloud computing reading ideas.  His goal was to get familiar with cloud computing without drowning in technobabble or wading through near-religious rhetoric.  After sending him an email with some picks, it occurred to me that many business analysts are similarly interested.  With that, here is a selection of cloud computing reads and topics you should keep an eye on.

Cloud Computing Basics

In the basics, you are looking to learn about cloud computing components, offerings and economic value.  Because without value, there is no need to explore further.

 more >>

Tagged as: archives, business analyst, popular post, reading picks

Posted by brenda michelson at 9:53 am in Blog, fundamentals | Permalink | Comments(0)
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June 3rd, 2009

Grumpy Architect week: There is more to services than re-use

Perhaps I’m just grumpy this week.  Or, concerned for the future.  Or, most likely, both.  Nevertheless, I find conventional SOA lore more bothersome than usual.  Specifically, the paired notions that the sole reason to implement services (or not) is re-use potential, and that the main architectural aspect of SOA is governing said services for re-use. Now, don’t misinterpret, there is true value in sharing services and governance is critical.  However, SOA, or better said, services-architecture doesn’t begin and end with re-use potential and enforcement.

For those with architectural backgrounds – software not marketing trend – what follows is nothing new.  You are well acquainted with foundational tenets such as separation of concerns, modularity, loose coupling, cohesion etc and the associated benefits.  Unfortunately, based on my interactions over the last several months, I must report (a) this knowledge is not universal (b) people can’t articulate the benefits of well-architected software and/or (c) the dots don’t connect all the way to SOA.

Since the presence of well-defined (and well-built services) is assumed in a bevy of existing and emerging technology strategies — mashups, event-processing, business process automation and cloud computing — we need to correct the record on the total value of services and make the connection to proper architectural discipline.

 more >>

Tagged as: archives, modularity, popular post, service design, software architecture

Posted by brenda michelson at 7:59 pm in architecture, Blog, services architecture | Permalink | Comments(0)
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