Cloud infrastructure

PM Times – Implementing IT Governance – A Perspective

Today businesses rely on information technology (IT) as an integral part of their overall enterprise strategy. For the same very reason, a new field of thought called IT governance has been under development for several years. Just as business management is governed by generally accepted good practices, IT should be governed by practices that help ensure
-An enterprise’s IT resources are used responsibly
-Risks are managed appropriately
-Information and related technology support business objectives
In other word IT governance is the process by which decisions are made around IT investments.

Although the level of maturity and acceptance of IT Governance varies considerably across different organizations and sectors but a number of different views emerge in its favor. These view, though present conflicting arguments but favor the implementation of IT Governance.

IT alignment to the business is the highest rated driver and outcome of IT Governance practices. A large majority of organizations recognize the importance of IT alignment in order to deliver sustainable business results, and feel IT Governance is the best means to achieve this. A general understanding among all the organizations and their CIOs is

“The successful application of IT Governance principles can provide a mechanism to increase the effectiveness of IT and, in turn, meet the increasingly high demands from business for IT.”

More of the PM Times article from Atul Gupta and Alankar Karpe

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01
Sep 16

IT Business Edge – Preparing for the Evolution of the IT Administrator Role

Just as writing has come to mean texting, blogging or any form of digital writing, the cloud today means one or all of the three Cs: computing, connectivity and communication. And just as nearly all thought to putting pen to paper has disappeared, all reference to the natural cloud is long forgotten. The three Cs have altered the way we consume services. The adage, “change is the only constant,” holds true in the IT landscape like no other, forcing IT admins to constantly learn new skills and make strategic decisions.

In this slideshow Vidya Vasu, head of the ManageEngine Community, takes a closer look at how the role of the IT administrator is changing and how individuals can prepare.

ZDNet – Why moving piece by piece to the cloud will see businesses succeed more

The conversation around whether it’s a good idea for a business to migrate their on-premises legacy infrastructure into the cloud is no longer the focus, according to Bulletproof CEO Anthony Woodward. Rather, many C-level executives are now looking at what are the best ways to use the so-called cornerstone tool to transform their business.

Woodward believes there are two key drivers behind the increasing adoption of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). The first is that businesses believe cloud will give them the competitive advantage to move faster, and the second motivator is that businesses are being required to transform for fear they may be outmanoeuvred by new entrants to the market.

Gartner has predicted the global IaaS market will reach $22.4 billion in 2016, a 38.4 percent increase on last year’s market value of $16.2 billion. In fact, the IaaS market is expected to be the fastest-growing public cloud services segment worldwide.

More of the ZDNet article from Aimee Chanthadavong

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30
Aug 16

Baseline – How IT and the C-Suite Clash on Disaster Recovery

While the vast majority of organizations have a disaster recovery plan, top business executives and IT and disaster recovery managers differ greatly about the prioritization of these plans, according to a recent survey from Bluelock. The accompanying report, “Perspectives on IT Disaster Recovery,” reveals that a great many companies have had a tech-related disruption over the last two years, and these disruptions often impact the ability to deliver products and services. But C-level execs and vice presidents are more likely than tech department managers to conclude that they have “other, more pressing priorities” to pursue than disaster recovery initiatives. They’re also less likely to support an outsourcing or partnership model for these efforts. “Sometimes, organizations don’t realize the importance of IT disaster recovery planning until it’s too late,” according to the report. “With data being the most important financial asset and service being the most important reputational asset, why wouldn’t you protect your business against technology disruptions?

More of the Baseline article from Dennis McCafferty

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29
Aug 16

ZDNet – Delta outage highlights how airline industry needs new IT approaches

Delta blames a power outage in Atlanta for bringing its systems down, canceling flights, and stranding passengers. Southwest’s systems stumbled last month after a faulty router and nixed about 2,300 flights. United Continental grounded flights over a bad router in July and June. Welcome to the world of cobbled together legacy systems and an industry that needs to move toward cloud computing much faster.

IT outages are a fact of life. And now that technology is no longer a separate entity from business, screw-ups hit more people and damage reputations. The big question is why in 2016 airlines are being brought down by single points of failure when cloud services offer resiliency zones, backup options, and redundancy to keep critical systems running.

Delta cancels more flights as it recovers from system-wide outage | Delta Air Lines says power problems are behind computer outage that grounded flights

More of the ZDNet post from Larry Dignan

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25
Aug 16

The Register – Capacity planning in an age of agile and on – demand IT

Have we all been caught asleep at the capacity planning wheel? Business users today want, and expect new IT services to be delivered in the blink of an eye, the necessary resources provisioned instantly, and changes made “on demand”. But such IT flexibility requires that physical resources, server, storage and networking are ready to be allocated when required. The need for capacity planning has never been greater, yet a recent survey tells us that few organisations have the capabilities they need.

Furthermore, ‘overprovision and forget’ remains a common approach that elevates IT procurement and operational costs at a time when money is tight.

Business services at risk

Every organisation relies on instant availability to a wide range of IT services, from relatively predictable essential everyday functionality provided by key business applications to customer facing systems whose usage may be highly variable. In some environments, such as development and test systems, they also have to operate on a more ad hoc basis with unpredictable resource requirements. For some IT solutions, such as DR, the hope is that the resources required will never be used, but the potential impact of them kicking in needs to be accounted for.

More of The Register article from Tony Lock

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23
Aug 16

ZDNet – Cloud computing pricing: Beware the bill shock

Cloud pricing models vary dramatically. Elastic utilization can mean wide variability in month to month. Make sure your financial goals like flat spending or opex versus capex match up with your cloud providers pricing model.

One of the benefits of cloud computing that’s often touted by providers is cutting costs: rather than having the hassle and expense of buying servers and equipping data centers, and paying for staff to maintain them, companies can offload their workloads to the cloud, where economies of scale around the infrastructure mean that costs are much lower.

In theory, cloud users simply pay for the resources they use, as and when they need them, without the burden of paying for hardware, or data center space. That means pricing should be straightforward, right?

Not quite: there isn’t just a single model of cloud pricing.

On-demand allows you to purchase services as and when you need them, while reserved instances work like many other types of bill, where the user forecasts what they’re probably going to need over a particular period — usually in quarterly or annual instances. The user then pays upfront, although their cloud provider may give discounts for buying services in bulk. Spot pricing is where cloud companies sell off unused processing power at a discount: companies can then bid for a certain amount of computing power at a certain price.

More of the ZDNet article from Danny Palmer

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19
Aug 16

WSJ – Failures Like the Delta Outage Are a Fact of Digital Business

Customers are still feeling the fallout from computer problems at Delta Air Lines Inc. that began with an electrical outage in the dark hours of Monday morning. Flight cancellations grew throughout the day to about 1,000 and Delta continued to cancel flights Tuesday – 680 as of 5:15 p.m. ET – as it tried to restore normal operations.

“Following the power loss, some critical systems and network equipment didn’t switch over to Delta’s backup systems,” the company said in a statement. Delta hasn’t gone into detail about which systems didn’t perform as expected or why. Airline reservations, maintenance and operations systems are notoriously complex, made all the more so by layers of technology integrated after years of mergers and acquisitions.

Other industries deal with such complexity but none more publicly than airlines, says Allan Frank, co-founder and chief IT strategist at The Hackett Group, which advises large companies on technology best practices. You have “multiple systems from multiple companies over a period of years, he says. “A glitch can take down the whole house… In the end, people are stuck at airports and there’s a direct, emotional impact.”

More of the Wall Street Journal article from Kim S. Nash

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16
Aug 16

ZDNet – The 7 Attributes of a Comprehensive Cloud Strategy

Whether or not these seven topics comprise a comprehensive cloud strategy, they are all topics that IT professionals should understand as cloud computing becomes more integrated into the business.

We believe a pragmatic cloud strategy will work best, based on your own unique landscape and requirements. Working every day with customers and partners in co-innovation, we quickly realized that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

There is a lot of hot air involved in cloud discussions – and a lot of foggy principles. I happen to believe that a pragmatic cloud strategy will work best, based on your own unique landscape and requirements. Working every day with customers and partners in co-innovation, we quickly realized that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Here are my TOP 7 attributes of a comprehensive cloud strategy that need to be addressed when you discuss Cloud computing in your company – even more so if you discuss with vendors and partners. We found this framework helps to start a meaningful discussion and get everybody aligned – demystifying the cloud and leaving out the hype.

#1 Software as a Service (SaaS)

If we need to take a focus here when we talk about SaaS, it will be the user experience. Cloud solutions start with engaging the end user more than other solutions. Not because they are SaaS, because they can and they are innovating faster and responding to trends like mobility, social, collaboration, etc. Developing or consuming cloud solutions you will most often be the first using the latest and greatest available technology.

More of the ZDNet article from Sven Denecken

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.