This is a follow up to Are we all going to Disappear in a Cloud?
Some of the factors that will move applications used by SMEs into the Cloud.
+ Cost. For me, the most important factor is cost – if companies can see they’ll save money, then more and more services will be Cloud-based…
…but, I think the issue is complicated by the fact that a large proportion of companies don’t actually know how much individual services cost. They can probably obtain a few invoices – for instance, for their Exchange license in the case of an eMail server – but my guess is many won’t know the other costs (staff costs, hardware depreciation costs, costs of running a machine in their server room, costs of backups and so on).
So in order for cost to be a motivating factor then the savings must be both obvious and compelling – for instance, less than their annual license cost.
+ Availability. Another factor is the promise of better availability (though with caveats – see this post). High availability is, in theory, something which can be provided much more easily and cheaply by big, consolidated providers – with the understanding you’ll need reliable and redundant Internet connections.
+ Skills. Where skills to run a certain service are difficult to obtain or are expensive, or where IT Directors feel they are dependent on a few key employees, this will provide a considerable push to remove that dependency by ‘Clouding’ the service.
+ ITIL V3.Having gone through a recent refresh, ITIL has reorganised itself to focus on services as we’ve blogged about here. It would be surprising if this focus, and the resulting demand for improved availability and capacity, did not act as a catalyst for change.
+ Users. Users of services will start to realise they can buy services they need directly from vendors, bypassing the IT department. It presents a huge challenge to the traditional control exercised centrally by the IT function (something we’ve mentioned before). I’ll leave you to decide if this is a Good Thing or not.
But there are some pretty significant factors that will slow down (but not stop) this move as well.
- Trust. You have to
- trust that your provider isn’t going to go bust and is paying their bills
- trust that they have redundant infrastructure
- trust that they take regular backups and know how to restore those backups
- trust that they will look after your data, because they hold it – you don’t
- trust that their security is pretty good
That’s a lot of things to take on trust, especially as these are the things that are junked when companies run low on funds. However, I don’t see this as something that will stop Cloud-based services – it’s more of a cultural thing. Once companies start using these kinds of services and start using them, this will become less and less of an issue as it gets less and less attention.
- Reliance on the Internet. How many SMEs have truly redundant Internet access? Probably not many, but if you move mission-critical applications this is something you’re going to have to look at.
- Integration. If you have System A which is integrated in some way with System B, it can be something with will no longer work when you move either or both to the Cloud (the area of integration is something not handled well in my view by Cloud end-user applications, in my view).
- Culture. Possibly the culture of local provision is well established and difficult to change.
So having asked the question ‘are we all going to disappear in a cloud’ I’ll offer my own observations.
I don’t think we (IT service and support staff) are going to disappear BUT I think that the role of the Helpdesk/Service Desk is going to change from (primarily) a provider of services to a manager of services – and that this will, at some point, have an impact both on staff headcount and staff skills.
Out: Detailed operating system and configuration skills
Out: Provision of service skills, and a provision of service focus
In: Contingency planning
In: Vendor relationship management (time to read up on those old Supplier Management posts).
In: Network provision and performance, as this is currently how Cloud services are delivered.
In: Monitoring and reporting of end-user experience and availability
Technorati Tags: Cloud computing, ITSM, IT
