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I’ve been traveling a bit recently and wanted to share with you the top 10 questions I’m most frequently asked about right now by IT leadership and executive professionals evaluating cloud investments in 2012.
1. Should I build my own or rent one from someone else?
Your teams are already doing it without your knowledge. Formalize an initiative, do both by building a hybrid model. And do not penalize the early movers. Figure out how to empower them and move your data sets back inside of your governance model at the same time. Inspect your T+E reports for consistent spend on Amex cards to cloud providers if you have any doubt about the usage.
2. Its hype right? I lived through time sharing, the xSP blowup and invested in an IPO for tall building “riser” cross-connects . This is the same thing, right?
You can’t be faulted for being cautious. Its different this time. The tools are better. The access is better. And the return can be measured.
3. My equipment refresh cycle doesn’t start for 24 months and I do not have capital dollars to commit. What should I do?
Scrape together enough to fund a pilot, higher a new numbers person, tell your board you need a plus up or update your resume and consider a consulting gig. Someone else will figure out how to fund it.
4. Risk, compliance and audit hasn’t approved the model.
Build one internally, get your accreditation and certification, teach them why its advantageous.
5. I can’t measure my risk profile today.
Yep. I get it. See #4. Consolidate, build a higher wall and defend deeper. You think your cyber posture is scary now? You don’t even know about the folks who have been thinking about Offensive Cyber in the Cloud for almost 5 years now….
6. It doesn’t make sense for my Tier1 applications where I will get the biggest return — what should I do?
It does but don’t start there. Grab a business partner who has a tier 2/3 app and make a deal. Try an approach like this “lets implement the new model and if you don’t like it we’ll go old school. But when it works I want you on Youtube and at the leadership meeting touting the advantages.” No one will say no.
7.Cloud doesn’t work with my existing authorize/authenticate/2 form factor/cac, etc.
It does. You are asking the wrong questions – should be considering how it can improve upon your audit trail and offer a better concept of operations with continuous monitoring.
8. Me, my boss, our authorizers and my team all have ipads, mobrile devices and I would like to make our data sets mobile enabled but we have a very well respected consultant who says it will take two years and another 24 months of retainers/studies to implement.
If I was hourly billed I would tell you the same. Check out my ipad — 60 days flat from white board idea to roll out. Securely and privately.
9. What’s the method to measure return.
Nothing clever. A bit of elbow work with your own numbers. Cloud investments are typically accretive inside of your existing hurdle rates/thresholds.
10. I believe you but after exhaustive review there is no capital or people but I still want to do this and I want to offer it as a service to my constituency
No sweat — if you are really interested in doing it we can rent you balance sheet, gear and people. Takes about 90 days start to finish to do it the right way.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | Budget, cloud, Economics, Government cloud, Top 10
