The opportunities to buy services from a public cloud seem to increase daily. The flexibility it brings and the knowledge that someone else looks after the hardware, makes the public cloud an attractive option.
But a conversation with a client and colleague recently indicate to me that “lifting and shifting” processing to public clouds, what I call “credit card clouds”, is fine as far as it goes. But there is a further step to go, which requires some experience and guidance – that of using the cloud to transform the way the business runs.
Back in my early IT training, I was taught that “rubbish in = rubbish out”. And this also applies to moving processing into the cloud – public or private. Yes there are some benefits to do that but to realise the full potential, something extra is needed. Such as looking at the way the system is built – can it be done better, can it be built simpler, can it be more maintainable, can more standardisation be introduced? Can things be set up to enable business users to access compute power when it is needed, to fully spread the cloud flexibility through the organisation?
This is where some serious leadership and experience is needed to take enterprises on this next stage in their cloud journey. For enterprises that need to know they are running as lean as possible, that need to know they are realising the full potential of all of their assets, then this is a vital step to take. Only then will Cloud Computing give its full value to the enterprise, even when using a public cloud provider.
PM in the Cloud 