In an earlier post, I talked about user innovation and how to harness this inventive power for your products. I want to give an example of user innovation that I have come across when working for my previous company, SirsiDynix.
SirsiDynix builds software for libraries. The software products run many
aspects of a library's operations, including the library's web
presence. The web site allows library users to search for library
materials online, check their availability, and, if desired, reserve
them (to be picked up later). This functionality is termed the OPAC
(Online Public Access Catalog) and is a basic component of almost all
library management systems. SirsiDynix also provides a feature rich Web
Services API for their library management system (called Symphony)
which allows developers to access the data and functionality of the
system. The Web Services API provides an interface to the Symphony
system and is intended to allow developers to enhance and extend the
base product.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The Role-Playing Game — How Enterprise IT Should Prepare for Cloud Adoption
I’m often asked, “What’s the biggest thing standing in the way of enterprise IT getting on board with cloud adoption?”
My response is always the same: “The biggest thing standing in the way of enterprise IT cloud adoption is IT’s unwillingness to accept that business units (BUs) are already adopting the cloud.”
By 2012, BUs are eager to flout IT authority and circumvent IT constraints in order to solve problems now rather than see their requests languish in IT’s backlog of special projects, hostage to unreasonable wait times.
Those days are over. IT now has two options: Get on board or get left behind.
I’m seeing this exact scenario in our customer organizations as well. Customer BUs approach IT seeking solutions, without ever involving IT in the preliminary decision making process. They prefer instead to drag IT in at the very end and inform them of what is going to happen, rather than consult them about what may happen.
IT’s role has changed, whether they choose to recognize it or not. Their long-standing position as “policy police,” arbiter of good taste in applications, judge over whether an application requires IT policy and corporate security standards or not — it’s all coming to an end.
IT must face the fact that BUs are increasingly adopting the cloud, and support that move by:
Don’t wait for cloud adoption to start getting your house in order. If IT stays in reactive mode as BUs make cloud decisions, they’ll end up with “integration” minus “strategy” — applications will be integrated on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis, creating a proliferation of point-to-point connections that is a repeat of the fragile, “spaghetti” integrations of the past.
IT must act now to get ahead of the curve — meaning ahead of BU demand — defining a solid integration strategy before the cloud apps start building out (or as early in that process as possible).
Does moving to the cloud mean that IT will lose some control? Yes. But I challenge them to be big-minded about it: Support BU adoption of the cloud, embrace your new role, shed your service-manager chrysalis and spread your trusted-adviser wings.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
My response is always the same: “The biggest thing standing in the way of enterprise IT cloud adoption is IT’s unwillingness to accept that business units (BUs) are already adopting the cloud.”
By 2012, BUs are eager to flout IT authority and circumvent IT constraints in order to solve problems now rather than see their requests languish in IT’s backlog of special projects, hostage to unreasonable wait times.
Those days are over. IT now has two options: Get on board or get left behind.
I’m seeing this exact scenario in our customer organizations as well. Customer BUs approach IT seeking solutions, without ever involving IT in the preliminary decision making process. They prefer instead to drag IT in at the very end and inform them of what is going to happen, rather than consult them about what may happen.
IT’s role has changed, whether they choose to recognize it or not. Their long-standing position as “policy police,” arbiter of good taste in applications, judge over whether an application requires IT policy and corporate security standards or not — it’s all coming to an end.
IT must face the fact that BUs are increasingly adopting the cloud, and support that move by:
• Becoming more aligned with the BUs and their goals;
• Providing security in the cloud;
• Managing service level agreements with cloud providers;
• Following escalation procedures;
• and advising the BUs on how — not whether — to adopt the cloud.
• Providing security in the cloud;
• Managing service level agreements with cloud providers;
• Following escalation procedures;
• and advising the BUs on how — not whether — to adopt the cloud.
Don’t wait for cloud adoption to start getting your house in order. If IT stays in reactive mode as BUs make cloud decisions, they’ll end up with “integration” minus “strategy” — applications will be integrated on an ad hoc, project-by-project basis, creating a proliferation of point-to-point connections that is a repeat of the fragile, “spaghetti” integrations of the past.
IT must act now to get ahead of the curve — meaning ahead of BU demand — defining a solid integration strategy before the cloud apps start building out (or as early in that process as possible).
Does moving to the cloud mean that IT will lose some control? Yes. But I challenge them to be big-minded about it: Support BU adoption of the cloud, embrace your new role, shed your service-manager chrysalis and spread your trusted-adviser wings.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Page One
By 2015, the cloud will become the preferred mechanism for software delivery,
which means organizations everywhere will have more choices when
selecting an application provider, and fewer reasons to maintain their
own applications on-premise.
Compare that to 2012. Today, if you use on-premise business application suites like SAP or Oracle, you’re effectively tied to those applications.
But not so in 2015. By then, you’ll be able to be selective when it comes to components. In fact, that level of selectivity is already becoming commonplace: Today, organizations everywhere are moving away from big packaged business suites, and toward best-of-breed components for their CRM and HR applications (e.g., Salesforce and Workday, respectively).
But the organization’s new advantage of increased selectivity puts a burden on the IT department to manage multiple vendors, transforming their role from providers of on-premise services to managers of off-premise cloud applications. The increased complexity IT will have to manage will be substantial and will add new dimensions to their role. IT will have to be ready and able to:
Not all IT departments will be ready to manage this level of broadened responsibility, so they’ll consolidate all of their multiple vendor agreements with one of the many cloud brokers we can expect to appear on the scene – intermediaries who will integrate various applications and services, aggregate it all to create a single view, and manage the service vendors on behalf of the IT department.
We can even expect that cloud brokers may end up doing going beyond vendor-agreement stewardship, to provide value-added services as well.
For example, it is not at all out of the question to expect that cloud brokers will map the data collected across the services their client organization has charged them to manage, integrate it with free services like Google Maps, and empower the client’s HR department to get a better idea of how the organization’s employees are spread out around the world – which could then inspire new, previously inconceivable tactics for employee-enablement initiatives.
The writing is on the wall: 2015 will mark the end of the cloud’s lengthy foreword and the start of its first chapter, and it will be exciting to witness, in 2013 and 2014, which organizations won’t be able to resist flipping to page one.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
Compare that to 2012. Today, if you use on-premise business application suites like SAP or Oracle, you’re effectively tied to those applications.
But not so in 2015. By then, you’ll be able to be selective when it comes to components. In fact, that level of selectivity is already becoming commonplace: Today, organizations everywhere are moving away from big packaged business suites, and toward best-of-breed components for their CRM and HR applications (e.g., Salesforce and Workday, respectively).
But the organization’s new advantage of increased selectivity puts a burden on the IT department to manage multiple vendors, transforming their role from providers of on-premise services to managers of off-premise cloud applications. The increased complexity IT will have to manage will be substantial and will add new dimensions to their role. IT will have to be ready and able to:
• Work with different types of providers
• Enforce a host of widely disparate SLAs
• Evaluate varying levels of performance
• Prepare for different disaster-recovery scenarios
• Implement a variety of support and escalation processes
• Accommodate different subscription and billing models (whether transaction- or api-based).
• Enforce a host of widely disparate SLAs
• Evaluate varying levels of performance
• Prepare for different disaster-recovery scenarios
• Implement a variety of support and escalation processes
• Accommodate different subscription and billing models (whether transaction- or api-based).
Not all IT departments will be ready to manage this level of broadened responsibility, so they’ll consolidate all of their multiple vendor agreements with one of the many cloud brokers we can expect to appear on the scene – intermediaries who will integrate various applications and services, aggregate it all to create a single view, and manage the service vendors on behalf of the IT department.
We can even expect that cloud brokers may end up doing going beyond vendor-agreement stewardship, to provide value-added services as well.
For example, it is not at all out of the question to expect that cloud brokers will map the data collected across the services their client organization has charged them to manage, integrate it with free services like Google Maps, and empower the client’s HR department to get a better idea of how the organization’s employees are spread out around the world – which could then inspire new, previously inconceivable tactics for employee-enablement initiatives.
The writing is on the wall: 2015 will mark the end of the cloud’s lengthy foreword and the start of its first chapter, and it will be exciting to witness, in 2013 and 2014, which organizations won’t be able to resist flipping to page one.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Moving Up the Stack
The 2014 tier of Axway’s infographic, “The Cloud: Impact and Adoption – Predictions for Today and Tomorrow,”
features a note that “SaaS vendors and enterprises (will) pressure IaaS
vendors to ‘move up the stack’ to PaaS and provide management,
security, regulatory and disaster recovery services.”
We see this happening already. Amazon, for instance, is adding services on top of its EC2 offering’s raw infrastructure, including data-storage capabilities via elastic block storage, described as “off-instance storage that persists independently from the life of an instance”; messaging capabilities that allow cloud applications to communicate with one another; and disaster recovery capabilities that ensure all data is safe and all applications have optimal uptime.
If you’re merely looking to use cloud applications like Salesforce (a CRM application) or Workday (an HR application), then this trend of consolidation—where large infrastructure players are adding more and more capabilities to their infrastructure offerings and becoming platform offerings—might not be so important to you, as all infrastructure and platform issues that might affect you are hidden behind your application.
But if you’re looking to move your own proprietary applications to the cloud, then you must consider the long-term potential of your cloud provider very carefully.
Taking advantage of one of the smaller PaaS vendors and building applications using their technology might be a tempting option. But keep in mind that it’s very likely that in two or three years, IaaS vendors that have successfully “moved up the stack” will add more and more of the smaller PaaS vendors’ capabilities to their basic offerings, forcing those vendors out of the market and sending those vendors’ clients scrambling to find new cloud homes.
What would you do if you found yourself in those clients’ shoes?
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
We see this happening already. Amazon, for instance, is adding services on top of its EC2 offering’s raw infrastructure, including data-storage capabilities via elastic block storage, described as “off-instance storage that persists independently from the life of an instance”; messaging capabilities that allow cloud applications to communicate with one another; and disaster recovery capabilities that ensure all data is safe and all applications have optimal uptime.
If you’re merely looking to use cloud applications like Salesforce (a CRM application) or Workday (an HR application), then this trend of consolidation—where large infrastructure players are adding more and more capabilities to their infrastructure offerings and becoming platform offerings—might not be so important to you, as all infrastructure and platform issues that might affect you are hidden behind your application.
But if you’re looking to move your own proprietary applications to the cloud, then you must consider the long-term potential of your cloud provider very carefully.
Taking advantage of one of the smaller PaaS vendors and building applications using their technology might be a tempting option. But keep in mind that it’s very likely that in two or three years, IaaS vendors that have successfully “moved up the stack” will add more and more of the smaller PaaS vendors’ capabilities to their basic offerings, forcing those vendors out of the market and sending those vendors’ clients scrambling to find new cloud homes.
What would you do if you found yourself in those clients’ shoes?
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
Due Diligence
Cloud Industry Forum noted in their 2011 paper, “Cloud Adoption and
Trends for 2012,” that when asked to name their biggest concerns around
cloud adoption, 62 and 55 percent of respondents, respectively, “… were
clear that data security and privacy stood out above all others.”
Those are understandable concerns. After all, when you move to the cloud, you’re entrusting the availability of key applications and the security and privacy of your data (including sensitive information about your customers and partners) to a third party.
What’s not so understandable is why those concerns should be inhibitors for adopting the cloud, since most cloud providers already recognize that, by 2013, security and penetration tests will be a requirement of cloud implementations.
Axway’s infographic, “The Cloud: Impact and Adoption – Predictions for Today and Tomorrow,” cites Gartner’s note that, “By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.” This makes perfect sense, but it begs an important question: Shouldn’t that 40 percent be asking for that proof today?
If your cloud provider isn’t willing to discuss their security analyses and penetration tests, your next action is simple — find a cloud provider who will.
Because while having concerns about any brave new world is understandable, denying your business countless advantages because of a lack of due diligence is not.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
Those are understandable concerns. After all, when you move to the cloud, you’re entrusting the availability of key applications and the security and privacy of your data (including sensitive information about your customers and partners) to a third party.
What’s not so understandable is why those concerns should be inhibitors for adopting the cloud, since most cloud providers already recognize that, by 2013, security and penetration tests will be a requirement of cloud implementations.
Axway’s infographic, “The Cloud: Impact and Adoption – Predictions for Today and Tomorrow,” cites Gartner’s note that, “By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.” This makes perfect sense, but it begs an important question: Shouldn’t that 40 percent be asking for that proof today?
If your cloud provider isn’t willing to discuss their security analyses and penetration tests, your next action is simple — find a cloud provider who will.
Because while having concerns about any brave new world is understandable, denying your business countless advantages because of a lack of due diligence is not.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
With the Cloud, IT’s Best Days Lie Ahead
When the cloud becomes the primary operating model for the enterprise, the IT department’s role will change. It will no longer be a systems administrator, an arbiter of what the enterprise can and cannot have. Instead, it’ll be a service administrator, an agent who is there to help users get the most out of their cloud-based applications.
First, IT will need to change its view of security. Traditionally, IT has owned security and acted as the guardian of data and systems access. But with the move to the cloud, most security will be provided by the cloud provider, which means IT will have to act as a liaison between the business units (BUs) and the cloud provider, helping the former understand the security model of the latter, and helping the latter build a security model which takes the former’s particular needs into account.
Next, IT will need to reposition itself as a trusted advisor. In a stark reversal of the traditional view of IT as an inhibitor of productivity, IT will now be viewed as an agent who works in the best interests of the business units, as the business units will be free to choose the cloud-based applications they wish to use without consulting IT. Rather than heavy-handedly dictate which applications the BUs can and can’t use, IT will be tasked to passively suggest best practices for the BUs, and do everything in its power to ensure their success.
Further, IT will need to reconsider its key internal processes, things like helpdesks, support policies, and support procedures. Today, those processes are based on the premise that all processes are on-premise and within IT’s control. But with a third-party cloud provider involved, IT will find that there are limits to what it can do, that their existing model won’t necessarily accommodate cloud-based systems and applications. It will be imperative, then, for IT to fully own its role as a service administrator. Failing that, the BUs will be apt to bypass IT whenever they have a technical issue and instead go straight to the cloud provider, and IT will lose even more control.
Finally, IT will need to switch its thinking from “maintenance mode” to “strategic mode.” Today, some 80 percent of IT’s resources are focused on systems maintenance — merely keeping things up and running. But when the cloud becomes the primary operating model for the enterprise, and maintenance falls squarely on the shoulders of the cloud-service provider, IT will have the time to change their reputation in the organization. They should determine which critical business initiatives they can support, consider how emerging technologies can benefit the enterprise, and take this opportunity to become more proactive and less reactive.
Of course, some applications will likely never move to the cloud. When it comes to those applications, IT’s role will remain unchanged. For example, a trading algorithm at a Financial Services company — a proprietary application with high intellectual-property value — may simply be too integral to the value of the enterprise to ever comfortably host off-premise.
But most applications will find a home in the cloud, and it’s up to today’s IT departments to anticipate the coming paradigm shift and embrace the opportunities it will create for them, not the least of which will be the chance to gain a reputation for facilitating productivity and lose the reputation for inhibiting it.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
First, IT will need to change its view of security. Traditionally, IT has owned security and acted as the guardian of data and systems access. But with the move to the cloud, most security will be provided by the cloud provider, which means IT will have to act as a liaison between the business units (BUs) and the cloud provider, helping the former understand the security model of the latter, and helping the latter build a security model which takes the former’s particular needs into account.
Next, IT will need to reposition itself as a trusted advisor. In a stark reversal of the traditional view of IT as an inhibitor of productivity, IT will now be viewed as an agent who works in the best interests of the business units, as the business units will be free to choose the cloud-based applications they wish to use without consulting IT. Rather than heavy-handedly dictate which applications the BUs can and can’t use, IT will be tasked to passively suggest best practices for the BUs, and do everything in its power to ensure their success.
Further, IT will need to reconsider its key internal processes, things like helpdesks, support policies, and support procedures. Today, those processes are based on the premise that all processes are on-premise and within IT’s control. But with a third-party cloud provider involved, IT will find that there are limits to what it can do, that their existing model won’t necessarily accommodate cloud-based systems and applications. It will be imperative, then, for IT to fully own its role as a service administrator. Failing that, the BUs will be apt to bypass IT whenever they have a technical issue and instead go straight to the cloud provider, and IT will lose even more control.
Finally, IT will need to switch its thinking from “maintenance mode” to “strategic mode.” Today, some 80 percent of IT’s resources are focused on systems maintenance — merely keeping things up and running. But when the cloud becomes the primary operating model for the enterprise, and maintenance falls squarely on the shoulders of the cloud-service provider, IT will have the time to change their reputation in the organization. They should determine which critical business initiatives they can support, consider how emerging technologies can benefit the enterprise, and take this opportunity to become more proactive and less reactive.
Of course, some applications will likely never move to the cloud. When it comes to those applications, IT’s role will remain unchanged. For example, a trading algorithm at a Financial Services company — a proprietary application with high intellectual-property value — may simply be too integral to the value of the enterprise to ever comfortably host off-premise.
But most applications will find a home in the cloud, and it’s up to today’s IT departments to anticipate the coming paradigm shift and embrace the opportunities it will create for them, not the least of which will be the chance to gain a reputation for facilitating productivity and lose the reputation for inhibiting it.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
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