- Virtualization - We can squeeze more out of underutilized CapEx in hardware by leveraging the ability to oversubscribe the resources across multiple virtual servers
- Infrastructure as a Service Cloud Computing - We can automate the provisioning and de-provisioning of virtual instances to fine tune the utilization.
Before you read on, please understand that I think that virtualization and cloud computing are incredibly important to the next phase of evolution for IT enablement of business. I believe the promises are real and important.
So where are the people gotchas? As a discipline, experienced professional IT leaders recognize that it is not only admirable, but required to take on the Sisyphean challenge of implementing standards and process. Standards and process are the only consistently proven approaches to increase predictability of effort and systems, reduce defects, and the resulting long-term cost of ownership. There are three pressures that impede the implementation of standards and processes. a) It is often difficult to show immediate value to the business (a people/strategy sale/trust issue); b) Most people in the IT organization don't think of implementation of standards and process as the "fun" stuff (another people issue); c) Progress toward implementation of standards and process is driven by indivituals and progress is affected by the natural changes in career and life paths of these individuals.
So what has this to do with Virtualization and Cloud Computing? I believe that virtualization and IaaS cloud computing will tend to act as the grease for all of the counter pressures to implementing standards and processes. The ability to rapidly solve a business problem by adding another server or 10 or 800 in minutes or hours without spending capital will drive people to make changes, just this one time, without implementing or following new standards and processes. The personal challenge of tackling the increased complexity offered by virtualized servers, virtualized storage and virtualized switches will drive some engineers to relax the fight against entropy. There are probably 10x more career paths in IT that will come from virtualization and cloud computing. Who would ever thought that a specialization on how to implement virtualized iSCSI to support a VMWare ESXi cluster would have existed even 5 years ago? So people in IT will move for good personal reasons toward new opportunities and away from tuning the machine.
So it is about people. I believe we have the equivalent of a new atomic energy in IT coming from virtualization and cloud computing. This is a great thing that we will eventually harness the old way, by thinking about how we manage and motivate people. Understanding will come from experience and pain.
5 comments:
In my experience the people issue is really a team issue and effective team work happens through two interrelated drivers: accountability and communication. When everyone understands their role and is accountable to each other for the delivery of their work and clear communication is keeping everyone on the same page, then the magic of implementing innovative new technology happens. Anything short of this creates a custom project atmosphere where each new change in technology takes too much time for the efforts of a few to move the minds of the many.
I agree with the people component, but I think risk - or risk taking - is as big a gotcha as the other people/process/standards issues. IT pros tend to be quite risk averse. Leadership - people - are required to effectively deploy any new technology.
Cloud Computing will challenge standards and processes that cannot be worked around (e.g., sensitive information cannot leave local soil). Therefore, sourcing and vendor management executive will face extensive pressure and challenges as each "new" offering comes along promising greater value than its predecessor only to be handicapped by the requirement to store data onshore (for example).
It would not be the first time that technology drives people to change, especially with the low investment threshold that virtualization and cloud computing offer.
It will be interesting how things develop - I remember offshoring and outsourcing being called the best thing since sliced bread, and we all know where that ended up.
As in many other situations, the issue is the dilemma between quick-and-dirty return now (without thinking about long term consequences) versus an implementation that fits a global, long-term vision. With a CIO average turn-over of 18 months, it is understandable why we are dealing with non-systemic infrastructure growths...
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