There are a lot of factors to consider before welcoming cloud computing into your enterprise, but apparently your executive job title can be the key factor in determining what kind of cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) you are willing to invest in.
Forrester Research Inc. analyst Frank Gillett blogged recently that he spotted two clear types of executive groups when it came to choosing IaaS: informal buyers and formal buyers. His hypothesis was formulated as part of a hardware survey his group conducted in October 2010.
"Informal buyers are outside of the IT operations/data center manager organizations, such as engineers, scientists, marketing executives, and developers," Gillett noted in a recent blog. "Formal buyers are those in the IT operations and data center managers responsible for operating applications and maintaining infrastructure."
Each kind -- informal and formal -- requires different offerings, pricing plans, and technologies.
According to the graph below, the distinct needs of the two types of IaaS buyers match their job descriptions. Those who dabble in cloud infrastructure (marketing executives or engineers for example) prefer to pay only when they use the service and are worried about flexibility. Committed types (IT operators and datacenter managers) on the other hand, prefer stability and are out to save money. However in some cases, there are some choices that don't fit the model, especially when it comes to security, managed services, and telecom features.
Graphic courtesy of Forrester Research
Cloud security has been an underlying issue for any executive considering IaaS. But executives who buy IaaS informally are selling themselves short by asking for standard security certifications, in my opinion. Despite the flexibility of a Web-based IaaS configuration, these "informal executives" are putting their critical data and systems at risk for compromise.
As for formal buyers such as datacenter managers, they are more likely to pick up on managed services and telecom features to support their purchases, according to Gillett's report.
It also seems that the informal cloud buyer (e.g., scientist or developer) is three quarters more likely to look at short-term application usage. Across all of the enterprises Gillett surveyed, about 50 percent were fixed on temporary applications -- those used for short-term projects like computer modeling. A separate 22 percent were focused on compute-intensive applications such as financial services or testing.
There also seems to be some confusion among cloud services buyers because the person doing the purchasing may not be the CIO, Gillett found out. Almost two thirds of IT infrastructure buyers don't identify themselves as the primary buyers of cloud IaaS, the report noted. That sounds similar to what ThinkerNet contributor Tom Nolle noted during a recent Webinar on the opportunities CIOs have in choosing communications service providers as cloud providers.
"While cloud projects can emerge from CIO teams, it's the staff planners that are evaluating the projects and aligning the objectives that could lead to RFIs [requests for information] and RFPs [requests for proposal]," Nolle said.
Whether its the CIO or a business manager signing the checks, identifying what kind of IaaS buyer you are can help you align your enterprise with your cloud infrastructure needs.
Michael,
I think it is exactly those service level agreements that get in the way...those are the things IT worries about that the end user with the credit card does not worry about. That is one of the reasons that the IaaS options are attractive, and why IT can't be as responsive. I think the real piece of work is for IT to get comfortable with less of an SLA for work at can live with reduced assurance. However, they need to be able to effectively communicate the exposure, and thhe savings/value gained for accepting the increased risk. If It can do this, they will gain credibility in the space and be involved, and not bypassed. -- Christopher ( sorry about the run on responses, but the IPAD interface does not allow me to format my responses).
I could see both scenarios happening, Christopher.
If your company's forte is not cloud services, using a qualified IaaS vendor would suit the needs of a vertical like retail or manufacturing (I see IBM and Microsoft filling in the needs here).
If IT decides working with the IaaS-needy divisions is a good idea, essentially, IT becomes the service provider itself. There are opportunities for outside vendors to help with the delivery model (Rackspace for example).
In any of these configurations, enforcing service level agreements should be near the top of the list. If the divisions feel the process is too complex or there is too many hoops to jump through, then they might not want to proceed with their project.
Michael, do you see the enablement in the form of pre qualifying IaaS vendors or internal cloud environments, or possibly IT working with the users to design/ select the offering that the end user can en use? Or some other model?
Each has merits, but the question is how are companies going to be able to best leverage these environments?
-- Christopher
I'd say that one way to look at the problem is to better-enable departments outside of IT with cloud-based IaaS abilities. This is what is happening at the US government and other companies.
Departments and divisions can tap into provisioning of servers and services with a bit of red tape, but overall effectiveness.Look at the explosion of business uses as soon as the broader use of the Web replaced using time-sharing on mainframe computers.
IaaS obviously has much more at stake than SaaS, but the payoff can be much greater especially as companies specify their cloud policies and let their divisions run wild.
Based on other trends with technologies that can be 'bought on a credit card', the quick hitters tend to be bought by the business side of the house and the longer term things are bought by IT.
In this scenario, if a scientist needs to get something done on a one time, ad hoc basis, the cloud offering may be quicker, or at least less painful than going to IT. If the cloud offering does not work out, they can still fall back to IT for the service and have ventured little, thus they don't have much to lose.
However, if the IT organization makes a decision to move to the IaaS offering, they are still going to be held accountable by the business. If it fails, they don't have anyone one else to fall back on.
Even in case where IT is trying to be responsive, the risk is pretty big. Image if the business users comes to IT for a quick project and the IT team recommends an IaaS offering. If it fails, the business team will hold IT accountable for the failure. If the user had gone on their own, the attitude would be more accepting since the business person had not set expecations of the solution working perfectly.
IT organizations need to embrace the IaaS offerings, understanding the risks that they pose and propose them as alternative solutions to the end users, with all the caveats of the potential issues or at least set the expectation that the solution might not meet the users needs. It's not an easy line to walk for IT, but we need to learn from users, and take chances and at the same time educate our users to the pros and cons (there are 2 sides).
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