Ask any mountaineer about the importance of tracking clouds during a climb, and they’ll tell you it is right up there with ensuring your ropes are in good condition! Clouds tell a story of what’s currently happening weather-wise, and what will happen in the future.
In the rapidly changing world of IT, The Cloud (it’s a proper noun now!) is determining the future of computing, storage, AI, and practically every other information technology on the planet. Think about it, companies used to hire tens, hundreds or even thousands, of IT infrastructure professionals to design, build and manage the important technologies that underpinned their industry’s unique business applications. These infrastructure pro’s were essentially the “structural engineers” of the IT department, decidedly at their core of the team that also included App Developers, Cybersecurity pro’s, Data Center Ops specialists, Desktop Support, etc.
Look what the Cloud has done to this infrastructure team… it’s made a good portion of this traditional role go away. Why? Because IaaS providers like AWS have built “ready-to-go” infrastructure that’s ready to go in hours, not days, weeks, or months. And PaaS providers such as Microsoft, Servicenow, and others, are similarly doing the same, offering their unique platform in a bundled, ready-to-go format… no more Windows Server on x86, running Exchange, attached to TB’s of storage… nope, you just subscribe to what you need and the underlying infrastructure is there. And should your company not want to do any of the above, they can opt for browser-based SaaS offerings like Salesforce, NetSuite, and a myriad of others, all of which are fairly simple to implement and customize.
In essence, these Cloud-based, XaaS, solutions are really shaping the decisions of companies as they think about what applications they need to support their business operations and customer requirements with expediency, minimal labor costs, and super high performance. I once worked with a company that processed Federal tax returns for e-filers. For years they struggled with how to build enough capacity to handle “tax season,” from March through June, yet not have all of this unused infrastructure sitting around doing nothing the remainder of the year. Now it’s not a problem. They just spin up what they need, when they need it, and voila… problem solved.
But what about the notion that the Cloud is “too expensive?” This can be true. But it can also be folly. The cost of the cloud is dependent on many factors, including the amount of cloud assets you leverage, whether you dedicate them, or just “spin them up” (which is definitely more expensive). You have to factor in bandwidth costs, too. It will take a thorough analysis to make the determination if your workloads should be cloud-based, owned and operated at your own data center, or a hybrid of the two. The current infrastructure team, in conjunction with their teammates from other IT teams, and probably a reliable consultant with experience in cloud migrations, can figure this all out.
Back to the point that The Cloud is a predictor of things to come… It’s a straightforward response as to why: Every company needs to move faster, manage labor costs, be differentiated from their competitor, deliver great service and adapt quickly to new ideas or opportunities. Waiting months to implement the underlying infrastructure for your great new app, customer portal, or online banking function, simply doesn’t fly any more. To move at the new speed of business, you have to leverage The Cloud, even if it’s to incubate the application until you can determine if it might be more economical, reliable, or better performing, utilizing owned infrastructure at your company’s data center.
Virtually anything you can dream up to offer your customers via the internet, or your internal customers, too, can be delivered via The Cloud. Your developers, automator’s, and operators on the IT team are either experienced in this realm, or have the aptitude to shift in a reasonably fast manner. So, if your business unit or IT team’s have great ideas they believe will increase revenues and profits, The Cloud is predicting fantastic weather for being able to get it done at a speed, ease, and price that you may have never thought possible!!
