Today I am talking at TechDays Romania about cloud computing challenges faced by IT Pros. After being heavily involved in cloud computing issues for more than 4 years now, I came to an interesting conclusion: when it comes to IT Pros (ranging from the IT Manager down to the rookie sysadmin), the top concerns are not really technical. The aggressive (in a good way) messaging coming out from the large cloud providers geared towards the fundamental advantages of the cloud is creating the perception that the era of cloud computing will bring an end to the era of the IT Pro. Consequently, one of the top questions asked by IT Pros is: will the move to cloud computing jeopardize my job? Am I going to be still needed once the cloud takes over?
Well… One of the key messages of my talk is that ADAPT is the name of the game. I base my logic on the following two assumptions:
- Despite the current perception, once the cloud becomes mainstream, there will be as much IT Pro work to be done as ever
- The thing is, this work will be a bit different than the one IT Pros are used to do
The main challenge for an IT Pro from the cloud perspective will be, as I mentioned above, adapting to the new reality. As always, there are going to be casualties, I have no doubt about it. Still, I think the vast majority of IT Pros will be quite successful in the cloud computing era. The success of reinventing yourself as a cloud-aware IT Pro depends on the ability to perform the following fundamental tasks:
- Analyze the new world
- Understand cloud computing fundamentals
- Compare different offerings from different providers
- Optimize your existing and future infrastructure using the latest developments
- Evolve your infrastructure and apps to match the current state of the art
- Start all over again
When it comes to understanding cloud fundamentals, I think the core equation is:
(IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) x (Public, Community, Hybrid, Private)
I’ve talked in quite a bit of a detail about this equation in one of my previous posts. In this context, it’s also a very good exercise to understand the process behind the birth of the major cloud computing platforms available today (Windows Azure, Google Apps, AWS Elastic Beanstalk – to name just the PaaS ones).
Some of the most important challenges faced by today’s IT Pros when it comes to cloud computing are in my opinion the following:
- Understanding specifics and vendor discriminants (cloud computing gains ever more momentum and evolves at a rapid pace, so this is not an easy task)
- Build and keep the exit strategies of your infrastructure (assure provider independence)
- Security (of course )
- Fight lack of understanding and misconceptions
- Balance bottom-up vs. top-down adoption
- Prepare for ad-hoc standards and interop headaches
- Avoid over and under utilization
- Address network limitations
From a higher perspective, some of the most sensitive issues to be addressed are in areas like:
- Data governance (cloud computing implies loosing some of your capabilities to govern your data)
- Manageability (still an issue with all cloud vendors)
- Monitoring (a whole new ball game)
- Migration (what, when, and how to move into the cloud)
- Changes in infrastructure, architecture, procedures, operations
- Data changes (REST vs. SOAP, SQL vs. No-SQL)
- Service Level Agreements
My conclusion?
It’s going to be a wild ride in the years to come, but I think it’s old news for most of us. After all, it’s always fantastic to live and breathe the next big thing. Right?
Subscribe