By Cat Yong
There has been, and there still is, so much hype about cloud computing that the industry tends to forget about traditional IT departments and the legacy IT they look after, that aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Who’s helping them out?
Cloud this, cloud that… everything is being ‘cloudi-fied,’ a phenomenon that one Gartner analyst describes as cloud-washing – “You know when you whitewash a wall, when you paint a wall white? A lot of IT solution providers do have existing products and services which they re-label as a cloud option.”
He added that an example of this is the hosted model. “There are a lot of companies that do co-location and hosting. We call that an infrastructure utility provider. In my country (Australia), Telstra calls that a cloud.”
So no wonder, lately the focus on cloud stories has shifted slightly towards its love-hate relationship with IT departments in organisations. To add salt to wound, Forrester research director Michael Barnes opined, “If the IT department doesn’t adapt and improve how they provision services and resources, they should disappear.”
In other words, if the business it is supposed to support, does not get resources and services fast enough, the business will consume and access services from another source. Ouch.
To be fair, he had added that cloud technologies exist to augment internal IT, not replace it.
But what is the real situation inside a company’s dingy little back room where the IT department hangs out?
Demystifying internal IT… kinda
Intel’s internal IT is one good example of legacy that is aware of industry trends and is keeping up with demands of their business.
Intel’s IT country manager in China, Liam Keating explained that the division is 6400 strong and serves 91,500 employees across 54 global sites. To remain lean, flexible and responsive, the chip maker underwent a server refresh program whereby Intel consolidated their data centres and saved US$9 million till 2011.
Keating said, “The new normal is that organisations expect to have rapid delivery of real productivity tools without having to wait.”
AmCorp Group’s CIO, Edwin Ding, however is one IT professional who almost pooh-poohs cloud computing. He probably can do so as he works in the regulated financial services industry that looks askance at placing sensitive data and information at the mercy of ‘outsourcers’ ala public cloud.
During a breakfast roundtable hosted by a data centre automation solutions provider, he had said, “When we talk about the cloud, when you really look into the infrastructure and mode, there is not much difference from outsourcing.”
When building out private clouds however, saving costs is not a good enough proposition anymore. He said, “Three years to ROI is unacceptable. Tech would have changed, depreciation would have happened!
“On top of that, we can’t just write off existing investments, some heads may roll. So, we have a dilemma – we want to go ahead but we can’t because of legacy.”
Barnes had pointed out a new way of cloud delivery; virtual private cloud; that is actually able to work around the FSI industry’s queasiness about where sensitive data should sit. It allows the FSI folks more control over the data centre, at least knowing where their data is and having insight and control over how their data is accessed.
Cloud is also starting to look attractive for business continuity and disaster recovery purposes; the virtual private cloud offers these regulated industries a way to do it.
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Meeting halfway
Back to Intel. They aren’t shunning cloud technologies but rather using it to their advantage. Eighty-percent of new services they have on the cloud is delivered internally by their own private infrastructures.
Keating said, “If Intel were considering putting something on the cloud, there are steps to take. We approach the public cloud very cautiously and would only put stuff that isn’t core or mission critical.”
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and public clouds come in handy for business units that want to provision services for themselves; it can be done in a matter of 6 to 8 weeks, instead of months.
“We have adopted public cloud services, but we have adopted it with other enterprise-class providers. Intel’s IT list of requirements would have never been met by consumer-class cloud services. We insist on enterprise-level SLAs.”
Ultimately, Intel believes IT’s role should be that of an integrator. Keating said, “IT needs to be involved when business units want to integrate cloud services with existing infrastructure at the backend.”
Is IT losing control?
Another point of contention between IT and cloud is how consumerisation of IT is causing tech departments to slowly lose control. Trends like BYOD are seeing more types of devices coming into businesses and offices and cloud-enabled services is one of the culprits for letting this happen – hands up those of you who sometimes kick back in the office with their iPad by streaming music and videos to it? Or WhatsApp friends and family?
“The assumption that the enterprise cloud is something that is distinct and different from the personal cloud, is going away,” said Barnes.
He goes on to say that IT has to redefine control, rather than try to take it back. “Determine what parts can be controlled, and what parts can be sourced from the cloud.”
The way to approach it is with a service-orientation – cloud-based IT services can help the tech department provision to the business, more efficiently and conveniently. The ideal state is for IT services to be organised into a catalogue on a self-service portal.
Tech people are the unsung heroes of an organisation. And now, they are seemingly being replaced by the newer, shinier toy – external cloud providers. What would the latter say to the former, if given the chance?
