Cloud? What Cloud?!

On Wednesday evening I was at a conference/dinner. The prescribed topic of conversation was how to reduce costs and complexity within technology. This is central to what I'm working on at the moment, is an interesting topic to debate and worth finding out what other senior IT professionals think, particularly during this economic period. And to make it very interesting, Paul Colby, British Airways' CIO was there to talk about how he had managed costs down and reduced complexity over the last 8 years. All good, nothing bad

But, why do these things always degenerate in to a discussion about "The Cloud". Every time I've been to one of these events, and I do mean every time, whatever the official topic of conversation we end up arguing about "The Cloud", what it is and whether we need it. Why are we so obsessed? It's all marketing fluff anyway so why can't we leave it alone?

I think I know: it's because no-one really knows what the cloud actually is, whether it's useful, cost effective, safe, capable, reliable or anything else. It's another technical emporer's new clothes and that makes it a gift for the salespeople and consultants! A few years back all the alleged Cloud functionality was already available, just defined separately: Software as a Service, Hosted servers (dedicated or shared), GoogleMail/GoogleApps, Grid Computing, Utility Computing, etc. etc. But now for some reason it's all got bundled up in this Cloud reference and people think we've got a new technology. Well, no we haven't, it's the emporer's new clothes, it really is. And so we argue and we argue and we argue.

Unfortunately for the CTO or IT Director, whilst we argue and ponder and disagree on what the cloud is, the salespeople and consultancies gather around our CEOs like bees round a honeypot and suddenly it doesn't matter what we think about the cloud any more because you're on the back-foot watching your grip on the IT strategy disappear as the CEO derails it with consultant-led fanciful ideas of saving millions by investing in the cloud.

Now, I never like being on the back-foot and I sure don't like surprises either from my team or from the board so this where we need to proactively manage upwards. Some time back I blogged about the CEO needing to trust the CTO and this is a great example of where that trust is needed. If the CEO trusts the CTO to keep him informed about emerging technologies and trends then salespeople and consultants will be redirected to the CTO rather than be listened to because the CEO knows the CTO will be on top of it already.

Building that trust and ensuring the CEO knows you're on top of it needs to be a priority. Briefing the CEO regularly on new technology or the trend-de-jour within the IT world is pretty important. By briefing the CEO, you're more likely to keep things on track, reduce the number of surprises coming from above and have more time to properly decide whether to invest in these new-fangles technologies as part of the IT strategy rather than as a reactive requirement from the CEO which is never a good place to be.

In the meantime, if you fancy a lively discussion on the smoke and mirrors that is the cloud, give me a shout