Last week I had a discussion that really got me thinking. The subject was simple, how would the cloud look like in five years from now. Easy subject, isn’t it? I started pointing out some things, but quickly realized I needed to put my thoughts in order and first answer the question of what was in favour of cloud?
I really see three elements that favour a large cloud adoption:
- First, IT is increasingly experienced as being too rigid to adequately support the business in an increasingly volatile world. Currency fluctuations, energy price evolution, political moves, speed of information dissemination, information overload are all factors that influence the need for more agility in the business.
- Second, the realization that the bulk of IT budgets are spent for maintenance, leaving little for innovation and transformation of the existing IT environment in a more responsive one
- Third, the arrival of a new generation workforce, called GEN-Y, familiar with communications, media and digital technologies. SMS, chat, Twitter, Facebook are their day to day communication tools, Google their dictionary, and as one of them told me “e-mail is for communicating with the old”.
So, CIO’s are confronted with a strong push to find ways to respond to the business needs faster and to new recruits that expect different tools to communicate, collaborate and do their job. As this new generation settles in the enterprise and as they take responsibilities, the nature of IT is doomed to change.
GEN-Y is always connected, but not using bulky notebooks. So, lighter devices are emerging and will increasingly become the core access platforms to cloud based services. But here an interesting problem appears. While GEN-Y users have access to the highly protected assets of the company, they also want to continue being in touch with their friends and internet buddies. So, lighter, user friendly, devices should be able to segregate between an enterprise and a personal environment. This leaves CIO’s with two headaches, the support of a multitude of devices (most of them non windows) and security concerns related to the mixed use of those devices.
This trend lends itself to the support of employee-owned devices. Chris Peters, from Intel, reports about a discussion at Intel’s Developer Forum on the subject, pointing out consumer devices are here to stay. He highlights four key steps to take when implementing the support of such devices. He unfortunately does not dwell on how to segregate information on such devices.
Architecturally speaking, we now get an interesting approach. For the stake of the argument, let’s assume the employee device is a smart phone. On the “personal side” he uses the apps store to get access to a number of applications (but aren’t they services if we really think about it?) to keep in touch with friends and family. On the “business side” he logs into the IT environment, typically combining both cloud and non-cloud applications (remember, we are in 2015), and chooses the services he needs. Those services may be provided by IT or sourced from internet service providers. That is where the aggregation platform, I already discussed previously, plays a role. Concurrently being involved in activities on both sides may create a leak between the intranet and the internet. Appropriate security measures should be taken to avoid issues. We have to recognize however that malicious insiders and traffic hijacking are probably at least as relevant as this threat.
In an effort to reduce not just his maintenance, but also his overall budget, the CIO will have virtualized and automated the majority of his IT environment (as much as applications allow it), and is running things on standardized technologies. This has resulted in an efficient use of the datacenter resources, reducing human interaction and energy consumption. It is highly probable he has a partner providing him with additional compute capacity when required, and doing that in a secure, compliant and seamless manner, ensuring high service level agreements. This limits the CIO’s investments in IT infrastructure, leaving a larger part of the budget to address the ever changing needs of the business.
All technologies discussed here exist today, but they are typically not used concurrently. As we progress to 2015, the availability of standards and the evolution of existing technologies should allow CIO’s to support the business with greater agility while addressing the specific needs of new employees. Whether they keep their own IT infrastructure or source it from suppliers will fundamentally depend on two key elements. First, do they need capital expenditure in the IT space or not, and second, do they fully trust their partner understands and addresses their security and compliance needs.
It’s this revolution that has started. While early adopters are jumping in the cloud, while analysts predict companies without IT assets, the market is evolving slowly to a state of more efficient use of IT, experimenting with multiple supply models. This is a fascinating time as we are reshaping the use of technology and transforming our way of working.
