Cloud Computing and IT?

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Tags: ,   Share  | Cloud Computing and IT?

During a recent technology conference, I found myself in the middle of a discussion about IT professionals and the impact of Cloud Computing. It was very interesting to see the divergent perspectives from the group that included Software Vendors, Professional Services Vendors and Enterprises. The question is should IT professionals start looking for some other jobs? Does Cloud mean the end of IT?

Absolutely not! And here is my explanation …

IT teams today perform several functions and here are a few:
Infrastructure Management – Acquisition, deployment and management of servers and other infrastructure
Application Life cycle Management – Capacity Planning, Physical Design, Application Deployment, Management and Monitoring
Business Continuity – Ensuring 24/7/365 operation and support of both custom and packaged software applications
Governance – Security, Policy creation, Policy management, Data Protection, Identity, Risk Management
Information Management – Application Integration, Reporting, Backup, Data Mining and Analysis

What are the challenge that Cloud Platforms like Windows Azure, Amazon EC2, Saleforce.com and Google AppEngine address? They address the aspect of Infrastructure Management – removing the need to acquire, provision and operationalize Servers. But that’s only a portion of the functions that IT performs.

Cloud Platforms like Windows Azure make developing and deploying Cloud applications very simple, but the Architects and Developers cannot address management and governance? When we review a typical application lifecycle, management, versioning and maintenance form the long tail.

With the proliferation of the Cloud paradigm, IT can now truly be Information Technology management versus Infrastructure Technology management. As more applications in the portfolio move to the Cloud, IT has to play a pivotal role in ensuring that Cloud is effectively leveraged and critical business needs like Business Intelligence/KPIs are addressed to maintain competitive advantage in this global marketplace.