IFR in the Clouds: True Heading & Cloud Computing

The internal IT department and the Cloud

At one of my last customer visits Cloud Computing was not very popular...

The usual refusal:

- That will never work !

- This is only a 3 quarter trend..

- Aah, by the way, we are doing Cloud Computing since 5 years.

The last ones are my favorite ones....You talk probably to the slowest moving and lease inovative  ISP in the german market. Maybe it is caused by their company history or just by inertia:

All customer negotiations need months, their end-customers call them slow and unflexible.

 And than you are forced to listen to one person of the marketing department saying " Cloud Computing is nothing new. We do this since several years"

 Or, even better:  Products that are sold on the market since more than 10 years are now called Cloud Computing Security Solutions, claiming that they are your only chance to have security in the Cloud Computing space.

This is in my opinion a real danger for the Cloud Computing idea. Same happens in the Green-IT space. After a few months every server is green.

This kind of non-sence treating you as a customer as a fool is called 

Cloud Washing =  Repainting  standard offerings as new, trendy and Cloudy

So, you just take your standard product offering, print "Cloud Computing inside" on the bag an off you go ! If you work in the product marketing department of one of these company, here is the perfect tool for you !

What are my recommenations for ISPs or internal IT Departments ?

1. Be open. Open skies.
   Take the opportunity to learn about Cloud Computing. Take it serious.
   
2. Manage risk, manage compliance requirements
   There are risks around. Vendors might disapear (Cloud evaporation). In Europe you have to deal with high Compliance requirements, even rising.
   
3. Manage vendor-lock
   Don't use a Cloud Computing offering without a clear EXIT strategy !!!
   
4. Offer cloud services, no Cloud Washing
   Offer your customers easy and new Cloud Computing offerings. You don't have to start with 100 Servers or 10 SaaA. No Cloud Washing, never. Your customer will notice and will hate you.
   
5. Consulting services
   Offer consulting services around your new business. ALL of your customers have high demand on technology neutral consulting services, thats for shure. Offer your services fast, or your customers will listen to somebody else.
   
6. Architectural services
   Integrate Cloud Computing offerings into your standard service catalog.
   
7. Cloud services, but with acceptable SLAs
   Offer services only with acceptable and good SLAs. If you want to know what is not accpable: Just have a look at the SLAs of most of the Cloud Computing Infrastruture offerings in the web/cloud.
8. Strict control # of operating systems
   Reduce the number of operating systems and operating system variants. Keep in mind that a virtulized operating system is still an operating system. Remember that  a virtualization SW does not solve your Release-/Patchmanagement requirements. Learn about the best operating system for cloud computing.
   
9. Cloud services must be part of a solution
   Don't even think about IaaS offerings. This is a crazy market with no market prices but political pricing. You as a small company will have no chance in this market, beleave me. Offer allways more complex services like PaaS or SaaS.
   
10. Offer building private clouds
    Just start your own little Private Cloud ! Read how to start your own little Cloud in one of the next blog entries :-) stay tuna.