Weather predictions and the CIO: enough of Cloud Computing

Last month, I was part of a two day gathering (attended by a little less than 100 CIOs) at a great beach resort in the wonderful locales of Goa. It had stopped raining after 20 days of incessant rain, said the lady at the Reception while welcoming us. The next few days were expected to be cloudy, with some sunshine bringing smiles—the CIOs were looking forward to rewind, relax, and network while exploring some serious thoughts on IT during the day. Weather stayed faithful to the prediction—apart from the occasional showers, the sun played hide and seek with the clouds. I could recognize cirrus, nimbostratus and cumulus.

As the conference progressed, it was evident that every IT services and product company (irrespective of what they had to offer), created some connect with cloud computing. We had power management, data center hosting services, servers, virtualization, software, telecom services and some of the global top five IT companies—all talking about cloud computing as the essence of IT. This herd behavior had resonance with hype seen in the late ‘90s around the Web and Internet. Words from the past echoed, “Any company who does not have a Web strategy will be dead in the next decade”. We all know that most of the companies which had only a Web strategy fell off the cliff into the chasm of oblivion. Predictions and promises of the cloudy set mirror the irrational exuberance that was pervasive in the dotcom era.

Do you know what cloud computing is? A rhetorical question; the speaker did not wait for the answer and began his 30 slide presentation starting with what is virtualization. The next speaker added to the misery with green data center and energy efficiency, while acknowledging that IT contributes to only 2% of the carbon emissions. If everyone did their bit, carbon emissions would come down by 0.4%. And, if all of us moved our entire infrastructure to the cloud, maybe that figure will go up to 0.7%. Save the world, move to the clouds. Over the next day, almost everything (from basic definitions to use case models and in between) was pushed down on the hapless audience, which braved the frontal attack while wistfully looking at the sunny sky outside.

Out of courtesy to the speakers and organizers, CIOs continued to field the inane presentations as well as panel discussions on clouds, clouds, clouds, and some more clouds. A resurgent CIO challenged the vendor’s wisdom (on stage) about treating the audience like kindergarten kids. They were challenged on solutions for the enterprise’s current ailments or help for the CIO’s real life problems; not just talk about irrelevant solutions. CIOs broke into spontaneous applause which would bring a politician pride, but evinced no answers from the speaker—again, like the politician. Sections of the audience wandered away after every break, leaving behind a thinning crowd for subsequent speakers. The sun too teasingly invited captives to come out, as the waves’ murmur tortured the spirit. The CIOs saw merit in discussing cloud formation in the skies—no connection with the conference room’s discussion.

With the ecosystem yet to evolve and create meaningful cloud transition strategies for enterprise users, the IT vendors will do a favor by not increasing the hype and aligning to reality. Privately, most vendors acknowledge the fact that clouds are as yet mature, since the concept is surrounded by a lot of questions that require hard answers like security, geographical data residency, privacy, licensing, and many more. Their organizational compulsions prevent them from being honest in a public forum—lest it be seen as them not toeing the party line. Thus, vendors and consultants will do well to listen to their customers before charging ahead on their favorite subject for now, cloud computing.

As the conference was coming to an end, a tweet escaped the room, “Cloud in the sky, cloud in the room, my mind is cloudy too after listening to so many speakers on cloud computing”. Personally, I enjoyed counting the clouds outside than the utterances inside.

Food for thought or snack gone bad: Data centers drive business agility

In the recent past, I attended a few seminars conducted by large IT solution providers with a tantalizing subject line, “How to achieve business agility” (or something on similar lines). The invite’s text appeared to offer a ready-to-eat snack with all the good tidings of fruits, fresh vegetables, salads, and everything that’s healthy. Since it sounded like the formula for fitness in a week so, CIOs obviously turned up in large numbers—only to realize the old adage that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Almost all the organizers wanted to focus on how to improve data center efficiency, utilization, management and agility in provisioning new servers. According to all of them (without exception), the delay in provisioning a new server can lead to compromises in business agility, thereby adversely impacting the outcomes. Each vendor’s formula for success revolved around their solution for virtualization and (or) management tools, which allow quicker provisioning of virtual machines—allowing the IT organization to bring up a new application within hours, as compared to the days when physical servers were in vogue.

I find this unpalatable, as it presupposes that everyone in the IT organization is only focusing on the infrastructure, with no communication with the team members who create or buy applications. Or that we have a scenario where the applications team does not tell the infrastructure team until the last minute that they require some compute and storage resources to deploy their test, development, or production environments. The assumption is that the two factions are not on the same page on projects or timelines, which results in delay.

Agreed that virtual machines can be provisioned quicker than physical machines—CIOs will also agree with this, but that’s only part of the story. If not enabled with policy, it can also lead to innumerable virtual machines (with limited or no use), thereby blocking resources and creating inefficiency. Virtualization continues to remain at the periphery of deployment, with core and large package providers as yet to certify their applications on virtual servers.

Typically, IT organizations are more organized in nature, with visibility of planned deployments and requirements of licenses or hardware. Dependencies are well known, and irrespective of the physical or virtual environment that the enterprise may prefer, this is rarely a cause of delay (or lack of agility).

In my observation, project delays are more to do with scope creep, signoffs or even indifference from business. It’s a subject that deserves a longer discussion on another day.
So has the data center become the cause of business angst? Well, I’ve never heard of such a scenario in the recent (nor the distant) past!

Coming back to the event under discussion, presenters sheepishly agreed to counterviews from the attending CIOs, and attempted to justify their stance by stating that their global research data had indeed given them such insights. Talk about assumptions!

My view is that vendors should refrain from such titillating titles to attract the audience. At the end of the day, vendors end up with the realization that most participants badly want to leave. The CIOs stay back only out of sheer decency and respect. As a result, vendors run the risk of alienating their key customers by continuing this play of words.

Coming back to the ready-to-eat snack, it was stale, oily and very unhealthy—causing heartburn and acidity. Most of the CIOs required gallons of liquor to drown the symptoms of disbelief and utter boredom.

Vendor Feed Forward (not feedback)

I have been inactive for a while, wondering what is it that I should write about. There were a few instances when a burning issue or something I felt about strongly, but that urge passed quickly.

Surprise (not really), corporate blogs are becoming big with companies putting up blogs which talk about their products and services. These use broad based trends to promote their solution and why you as the CIO/decision maker should be running to them to help solve your problem.

After attending a few events in the last 3 months and having been subjected to a barrage of vendor pitches, I wonder why they never learn from their past mistakes ? Almost every event has a technology vendor as a sponsor and by virtue of the money spent, they get a few slots to address the audience.

Guess what do they do with their valuable time ? Talk about their products, which anyway everyone in the audience knows about, wasting precious time which could have been used to engage in a dialogue or seek their participation to explore opportunities. You will find 80% of the audience busy with blackberry phones or doodling away; some brave ones walk out while a few interrupt the speaker with their snores ! And to add to the misery, they want feedback !

So I requested a few organizers to create a forum for feed forward (as opposed to feedback) to help the poor things understand what we want to hear from them. It would be a great service to the IT fraternity if vendors listened and used the information gathered in their planning on what to do with the timeslots.

But then we are not rewarded for going against conventional wisdom. Marketing and Sales organizations will want to make presentations on what they have or will there be wind of change ?

The Digital Divide

I had a very interesting experience a few weeks back in a CIO conference organized by one of the leading IT publishing house which had a congregation of about 100 CIOs and 15 CXO (business and head of enterprise). The theme of the conference revolved around the challenges faced by the CXO and the CXO (IT) in leading through technology driven innovation. The experience was interesting as my Sales & Marketing Head was invited as a subject matter expert and held 2 sessions that were well attended.

Since this was a first for him to be called to speak in an IT conference, he was spellbound by many a facets of a typical CIO who debated, discussed, challenged and learned through aggressive interaction within the group as well as the invited CXOs. The breadth of technology solutions on display by the sponsoring IT companies gave him a perspective of cutting edge possibilities and application to business.

All our interactions in the Management Team meetings and recommendations that were endlessly debated and a few that never got off the ground created a great flashback. To him it was a revelation of sorts to see industry peers seek advice on challenges and possibilities within their organizations.

What is the point I am trying to put across ? Well, for our CXOs to get a real perspective of the talent that they possess and for them to respect you as a CIO and your views, it is important for them to be exposed to your peers and the industry at large. IT conferences offer one such opportunity that you should effectively use to your advantage. You don't want them to realize your true potential after you have decided to seek greener pastures either out of frustration or because its kind of end of the road where you currently are.

Have you attempted to get your CXOs to participate in any IT event ? Give it an earnest attempt and once you succeed, success will follow internally too. Go ahead, what are you waiting for !!