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Cloud Computing Bull or Bear?

In February, as I began my cloud watching in earnest, I wrote the following:

“Only time will tell if my cloud watching is attention well spent.  If the cloud is indeed "the future of the Internet", then yes.  If the cloud is merely a repackaging of everything that we already do, then no.  Most likely, the cloud's promise falls somewhere in between, landing closer to the future than the past.”

Since then, of course, I’ve launched Elemental Cloud Computing, which some have interpreted as a now bullish position on cloud computing.  That would be a misinterpretation. Consistent with that that February post, my interest in cloud computing remains understanding the potential in terms of opportunity and risk, and the ties to my on-going work and interest areas:

“Added to this (more likely than not) significance, are parallels with my own writings, work and interest areas (current and past), including architecture realization through blending strategies, the power of service grids, the ceding of applications to business capabilities, the morphing of boxes to platforms, and (forthcoming) creating an active information tier.”

Over the weekend, I answered an email inquiry from a Financial Analyst at a Securities firm, who wanted my opinion on “clouds”.  My (unedited) response:

“As for cloud computing, it's very early.  The economics make cloud computing attractive, especially in tough economic times.  However, the savings need to be weighed against very real risks posed by security, compliance and overall stability.

Given the early stage and limited adoption stories, I find myself cautiously optimistic about the space.  However, there is a real risk that the industry loses itself in the rampant hype, forgoing necessary investment and innovation, and falling back on cloud-washing current products.  In that case, cloud computing will be nothing but the biggest hype wave (yet) to crash.

So, long winded way of saying, I'm neutral for now.”

Cloud computing bull or bear?  Neither yet.  Neutral for now.  But, I’m intrigued enough to increase investment of my attention.  You should too.

Feeding Problems & Starving Opportunities?

In recognition of what would have been Peter F. Drucker’s 100th birthday, the Wall Street Journal is rerunning some classic Drucker on Management pieces.  The piece today,  originally published Oct. 21, 1993, is The Five Deadly Business Sins. 

The first 3 sins are related to pricing and profit margins, the 4th is “slaughtering tomorrow's opportunity on the altar of yesterday”, and the fifth is feeding problems and starving opportunities:

“-- The last of the deadly sins is feeding problems and starving opportunities. For many years I have been asking new clients to tell me who their best-performing people are. And then I ask: "What are they assigned to?" Almost without exception, the performers are assigned to problems -- to the old business that is sinking faster than had been forecast; to the old product that is being outflanked by a competitor's new offering; to the old technology -- e.g., analog switches, when the market has already switched to digital. Then I ask: "And who takes care of the opportunities?" Almost invariably, the opportunities are left to fend for themselves.

All one can get by "problem-solving" is damage-containment. Only opportunities produce results and growth. And opportunities are actually every bit as difficult and demanding as problems are. First draw up a list of the opportunities facing the business and make sure that each is adequately staffed (and adequately supported). Only then should you draw up a list of the problems and worry about staffing them.

I suspect that Sears has been doing the opposite -- starving the opportunities and feeding the problems -- in its retail business these past few years. This is also, I suspect, what is being done by the major European companies that have steadily been losing ground on the world market (e.g., Siemens in Germany). The right thing to do has been demonstrated by GE, with its policy to get rid of all businesses -- even profitable ones -- that do not offer long-range growth and the opportunity for the company to be number one or number two world-wide. And then GE places its best-performing people in the opportunity businesses, and pushes and pushes.”

Drucker concludes the piece:

“Everything I have been saying in this article has been known for generations. Everything has been amply proved by decades of experience. There is thus no excuse for managements to indulge in the five deadly sins. They are temptations that must be resisted.”

So, I have to ask, is your IT leadership indulging in the fifth deadly sin?  Is enterprise architecture, typically staffed with top performers, focused purely on problems?  Or, do they resist temptation, by investing some top talent in opportunity?

Enterprise Architects as Daydream Believers…

Back in 2006, when I wrote my Business-Driven Enterprise Architect as IT Linchpin post, I noted several success tips directed at CIOs.  Including this one:

“Encourage Enterprise Architects to “Feed Their Brains.” For enterprise architects to stay on top of their game, they need to continuously explore, stretch their boundaries, and sometimes, just sit and think. Recognize this is part of the deal. Be patient when the areas they explore don’t have an obvious connection to your business or technology plans. Trust their instincts.”

In a recent Wired article, Clive Thompson calls out recent brain science research that suggests, “daydreaming can actually be useful”:

“For years, brain scientists viewed a wandering mind as merely a lapse in cognition. But recent studies have found that we lose concentration shockingly often. A 2007 study by Michael Kane of the University of North Carolina found that our minds drift away from our tasks fully one-third of the time. And this suggests that daydreaming can actually be useful — because if it were such a bad thing, it’s unlikely that we’d do it so often.

Why do our minds wander? Brain-scanning technology has uncovered some clues. It turns out that when your mind drifts, your temporal lobes — which are associated with processing long-term memories — become busier. So when you float off into a reverie, you’re actually doing important data-storage work.

Daydreaming isn’t just the mind’s way of processing information, though. Other scans have found that the wandering mind also utilizes the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that’s involved in problem-solving. The upshot, says Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara who is studying this area, is that your idling mind is likely doing deeply creative work, tackling your hairiest long-term tasks — projects you’ve been trying to address for months, the arc of your career, the state of your marriage. “Mind-wandering is actually a very involved task,” Schooler says. “You leave the here and now and focus on more remote concerns that nevertheless might be more important. We’ve been focusing on the downside of this, but we need to think about the upside.”

Indeed, Schooler suspects that research like his explains why so many “aha” moments occur when we’re drifting — like Archimedes in the tub.”

Thompson goes on discuss how these findings, if proven correct, should lead to a redesign of the way we work:

“How about designing software that optimizes daydreaming? For example, one problem with drifting is that we’re often unaware we’re doing it. We can hit upon a cool idea but never even realize it. Imagine an app that randomly pings you to see if your mind is wandering — and if it is, lets you record what you’re thinking about.”

While I’d rather not be pinged out of my daydreaming, err deep thinking, I found the follow-on point to be key:

“…a way to strip away the crud of daily work and learn what your brain’s real priorities are.”

Imagine that, the positive, sustainable, business impact of enterprise architecture, once the crud is stripped away.

Cheer up, Sleepy Jean.
Oh, what can it mean.
To a daydream believer
And an architecture team.

[With apologies to John Stewart, composer of Daydream Believer.]

SOA, Cloud & Value Acceleration

Given my longstanding background in SOA and my current work in Cloud Computing, I’m often asked how the two complement each other, particularly from the business benefit perspective.  Briefly, here are my thoughts and observations.

From the SOA Side

The immediate benefit of combining SOA and Cloud Computing is time.  Reaching out to the cloud for business or technology capabilities, allows SOA initiatives to compress time to value. 

In the longer term, the benefits include improved collaboration, customer satisfaction and business growth.  By offering SOA based business capabilities to the cloud, businesses can improve interactions with business partners and existing customers, and/or generate new revenue streams.

From the Cloud Side

The immediate benefit of cloud computing is financial.  Delegating workloads to a pay-as-you-go cloud computing environment eliminates upfront capital expenditures, and allows organizations to pay only for utilized capacity, therefore spreading out operating expenditure. 

Workload appropriateness for cloud computing is tested against technical and business characteristics.  Minimally, from a technical perspective, the workload is evaluated in terms of usage, performance, latency, service level needs, codebase, execution environment and dependencies.  From a business perspective, the workload is minimally evaluated in terms of business critically, core functionality and data sensitivity.

Organizations with portfolios comprised of large scale, monolithic, tightly coupled applications face “all or nothing” decisions when evaluating cloud computing candidates. Despite passing a technical profile test, a monolithic application that contains core business functionality and/or sensitive data will probably fail the overall cloud candidacy test.  This represents a lost opportunity, especially if the core functionality and/or sensitive data only comprise a small portion of the overall application.

Organizations with portfolios based on well-defined services, with solutions assembled using service oriented constructs, are better positioned to take advantage of cloud computing’s financial benefits.  Instead of making decisions at the application or suite level, you can make decisions at the business capability level. 

For example, a monolithic order capture application might fail the cloud candidacy test due to the business criticality of the order process, or customer data sensitivity.  However, portions of the order capture application, such as product catalog, recommendations and promotion capabilities may be perfect cloud candidates.  If the order capture solution is service-oriented, or minimally, the product catalog, recommendations and promotions capabilities are delivered as services, then those capabilities can be delegated to a cloud computing environment, therefore realizing capital and operating cost savings.

From Your Side?

As I said at the top, this a brief take on the benefits of combining SOA and Cloud Computing.  I’m interested in hearing what other people think. 

• Are you seeing other benefits? 
• Is the thought of reworking your application portfolio untenable? 
• Is the price of not reworking your application portfolio even worse?

 

[cross posted from elemental cloud computing]

Cloud Watch now underway… Lawyers, Data and Money

This week, I’ve started up the Cloud Watch section of Elemental Cloud Computing.  Cloud Watch items are snippets from cloud computing industry news, business and technical publications, and thought leaders.  These snippets may be as short as a 140-character tweet, or as long as a few paragraphs.  Cloud Watch items will be posted throughout the course of the day, and may be expanded as more voices and sources cover a hot topic.  Cloud Watch items may include a short Elemental Cloud Computing perspective.

The opening cloud watch items are a mix of business and economics, and data, contracts and legal issues:

• Bessemer’s 8th of Cloud Computing and SaaS: Leverage and monetize the data asset
• Workload Metrics: Business Transactions per Kilowatt?
• Microsoft Exec: Customers Embracing "Cloud Computing" <– But whose?
• GigaOm: 10 Open Source Resources for Cloud Computing
• Lawyers, Clouds and Warrants
• McKinsey to CIOs in ‘New Normal’: Rethink Procurement…
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Cloud Computing is Relevant for (mostly) everyone
• Joyent is First in China: Launches Commercial Cloud Computing Platform

From Elemental Cloud Computing, there several ways to follow the cloud watch.  The Current Cloud Watch section on the homepage, the Cloud Watch tab of the Recent Posts navigation element in the sidebar, the Cloud Watch tab of the site navigation, via the Cloud Watch or Full Site feeds and email, and on Twitter.