One of the issues in the ongoing debate over the pluses and minuses associated with cloud computing is how clouds will impact IT. From an IT management standpoint, many traditionalists believe that the proliferation of cloud services is creating chaos.
But I firmly believe that the alternative management that comes with cloud services offers advantages that can help IT and demonstrate its value to the organization.
There is no question that the consumerization of IT is cause for concern among the IT community, which fears that ad hoc cloud adoption can lead to real security problems. Renegade end users and strategic business units (SBUs) unilaterally adopting standalone software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and even platform as a service (PaaS) offerings can also produce interoperability challenges with legacy systems.
Just as these end users and SBUs have discovered that today’s cloud alternatives offer more than just greater ease of use at a lower cost than their old systems, enlightened IT people are also finding that leading enterprise-class cloud services generally provide stronger access control, activity monitoring, performance measurement, and configuration capabilities than their on-premise predecessors. This means that they are not only easier to deploy, but generate better management controls and reporting as well.
Ask any seasoned IT manager about the pitfalls of managing IT in the past and they are likely to point to the complexities of the established on-premise management platforms, such as IBM Tivoli or HP OpenView. Sometimes these systems have actually compounded IT challenges rather than solve them.
This is not the case with today’s cloud management solutions, the best of which provide analytics that enable IT to verify service level compliance among cloud service providers, performance management tools to enable service optimization, and management reporting to clearly prove the value of the services to corporate executives and end users.
So smart IT professionals are beginning to employ these new tools to help them better manage their mix of on-premise and cloud-based resources.
For example, the Enterprise Strategy Group found in their 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey, published this past January, that 28 percent of organizations surveyed were using cloud computing services as a way to control IT costs, up from only 13 percent in 2009.
Leading IT management vendors are attempting to combat this new competition by acquiring some of the leading cloud management vendors and/or promising new startups in this space. This was the impetus of BMC Software’s decision to buy Numara Software in January and CA’s acquisition of Nimsoft in 2010.
What does cloud management mean for the IT community?
Just this: It’s time to get over your fears of the cloud. Learn how today’s cloud management tools and solutions can make your job easier and more clearly demonstrate your value to the rest of the organization.
@jkaplan: The rebranding of legacy systems as Cloud solutions, which many refer to as "Cloud-washing", is frustrating but inevitable when a better alternative arrives that established players can't match functionally.
You are absolutely right. Over the years we have seen almost all major enterprise level software providers fine tuning their products to work on the cloud. Like you said, since a better alternative is available established brands have to cope up to the platform or else they risk losing business.
I have seen ERP's being implemented on the cloud. I am not sure if it was done for the benefits or just to keep up with the status quo.
Exactly Mary, it is a name game. And unfortunately most cloud cheerleaders always use the term in a generic sense. I can fully understand and embrace a cloud solution as it applies to off site secondary repository, or distributed content provider. But to say that my in house desk-top systems can be managed better through a far distant galaxy is some what of a stretch for me to get my arms around. I mean, doesn't it still come down to having a desktop specialist come visit the client machine to plug the ethernet cable back i the wall after the cleaning crew knocked it out? How does a cloud fix all that?
The Cloud security question gets plenty of attention by others on the IE site, so I didn't think I needed to weigh in on that topic. However, once again many of the new Cloud-based security solutions can run circles around the legacy systems of the past.
I also didn't mean to imply that those who aren't taking advantage of today's Cloud alternatives are not "enlightened", but too many have refrained because of gut-level concerns without taking a good look at the real attributes of the proven Cloud solutions.
The rebranding of legacy systems as Cloud solutions, which many refer to as "Cloud-washing", is frustrating but inevitable when a better alternative arrives that established players can't match functionally.
To your point, Kurtkeys, the word cloud is used for services that are otherwise not new. What, for instance, is a VoIP cloud but a VoIP service, renamed? I could be wrong, but I think it is worth checking what clouds are and aren't these days.
Amen Mary, and I really am a bit preturbed by the statment that "enlightend" people see the loid as a new and great thing. It implies that those of us who don't embrace clouds are somehow out of the loop or mentally challenged. And while going from 13% to 28% is a big jump, it hardly indicates a landslide change. I for one am still skeptical when buzz words are thrown about willy nilly to make it sound as though all the greatest ills that plague IT can be sloved if only you embrace the clouds
Back in the day, vendors -- and consultants -- swore by the savings and simplicity created by a network/system manager like OpenView. Now it's used as a selling point for cloud computing.
This reminds me of the days when network management first appeared. Initially, vendors boasted of artificial intelligence and "special agent" software. When it was clear that uses didn't trust those terms, and even felt they had negative connotations, the argot changed again.
There will always be a lot of hype around IT management. It's not simple, it's subjective, and there isn't one solution that works for all.
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