Mike Lingo Book - Final

LINGO
HEY! YOU!
GET ONTO
MY
CLOUD
HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD
LINGO
HEY! YOU!
GET ONTO
MY
CLOUD
MIKE
LINGO
WITH JON OBERMEYER
ASTADIA PRESS
LINGO
to all those who taught me

that i can do anything and
everything i set my mind to:
First edition
Copyright 2010 by Mike Lingo
Jeanne Kibler, John Doe and Exene, Mike Watt
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Astadia Press.

Astadia is a registered trademark.
dad Helene and Jack Lingo, Michael Marendo,
www.astadia.com
Book design by John Miller
Printed in the United States of America
and D. Boon, Jeanette Guthrie, my mom and

and last but not least my wife Rebecca, who
bears a big challenge in raising three awesome children named Meejung, Minna and
Noah while I traverse the globe servicing
clients every day of the week. Im humbled by
your dedication and perserverance.
Thanks also to John Miller and Jon Obermeyer
for their patience with me. Thank you for
making this possible!
CONTENTS
LINGO
Foreword
The Car Commercial
Drivers
1 A Warning to IT
2 TCO: Total Cost of Onerous
3 Blame the Consumer
4 Time to Rent Again
5 Doing More with More
6 Save the Song and Dance for the Talent Show
7 A Push for Power Consumption
Cloud Rants
1 Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Cloud

2 The Failure of Outsourcing
3 Placing Business First
4 The Core Challenge of the Cloud
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8
11
15
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20
22
27
30
33
35
HEY!
CONTENTS
YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD
LINGO
CONTENTS
Three Stories
1 Tasked
2 Cured: A New Way of Looking at the End User
3 Put My Chart in the Cloud , Stat
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40
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Transformation
1 The Empire Strikes Back, or Unleashing IT

as an Innovation Center
2 The Empire as We Know It
3 Innovation as a Distraction
4 Strip Distraction Away
5 Opportunity for Disruption, or a
New Generation of CEO
6 The Cloud Story is a Human Story
7 Shifting the Spend
8 Engagement
9 The CIO They Love
People
1 The Disappearance of the Slash

2 Process People Prevail
3 Scale Back to Scale Up
4 Tapping into Talent
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45
47
50
52
54
56
57
59
62
Process
1 Own the Room

2 The Clouds Security Advantage
3 Scalability is a Pipe Problem
4 Whip Through the Turns
Tools
1 Vendors with Ripped Abs

2 Beware the Entrenched Vendor
3 Dont Buy the Cloud from a Database Vendor
CIO
1 The Cloud Opportunist

2 IT Spend
3 Creating Value and Vision for your CEO
4 Inside the Cloud Transformed Enterprise
Liberation
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67
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70
1 Retooling for the 21st Century

2 The Tools of Tomorrowland
3 Verne Global, a Green Story
4 Enterprise Software Consolidation
5 Where my Mouth is
6 Im No Oracle
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76
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81
84
86
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93
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101
103
105
107
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LINGO
HEY! YOU!
GET ONTO
MY
CLOUD
The ON-PREMISE Business (Sales, Service,
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LINGO
Foreword
The Car Commercial

For this opening chapter, picture me in jeans and
a dark gray t-shirt rather than my standard white
button-down oxford shirt. And Im standing in front
of gleaming, super-charged hemi muscle car thats
parked at an angle, the fake suburban street behind
me made to look like it just rained...
People ask me, Mike, why the Cloud? Why now? And
I tell them its about having the horsepower theyve
always wanted, with fewer trips to the gas pump
and very little wallop to your wallet.
LINGO
Cut to someone obviously not me, an experienced driver
Cut to me standing in front of a cargo ship unloading
on a closed circuit, taking the car through its paces...
thousands of cars onto the lot at a secure port...
I tell them the Cloud has a higher safety rating than
And this is not just some special offer because youre
standard computing, and you get that safety and
the head honcho; this is available to everybody. You
security without compromising at all on what you can
want fifty for your fleet by this morning? Fine. You
wring out of this baby on the curves in your contact
want five thousand for your global sales force, deliv-
center, or on slick surfaces like you find on the execu-
ery around lunchtime? You got it!
tive floors.
Theres never been a better time to get behind the
Cut to forest canopy layer and lush green tones, tropical
wheel.
birds abound...
I tell them the Cloud is about helping the environment, about reducing or even eliminating your
carbon footprint.
Cut to me, in the showroom, filled with happy people,
sunlight dappling, balloons and cake and streamers...
I tell them its time to act because Cloud deals have
never been better. I tell them that you dont even have
to own anything, you just rent, and if you dont like
the model youve chosen, you bring it back and they
give you another one to try out. Like a test drive, but
all the time.
LINGO
Drivers
1 A Warning to IT
You have sole possession of the secret password and
you enjoy the prestige and the protection of having
specialized knowledge. You have gained the trust of
rulers, and you work in relative quiet behind thick
stone walls in a subterranean environment, bolstered
and funded from coffers that are not of your winning.
Without realizing it, though, youre mired in a maze.
Youre bogged down with the burdens that may or
may not have been of your own making. The very
LINGO
things that gave you the illusion of security have you
be taken apart piece by piece, dug out at the footings,
shackled.
lifted and then rolled on logs across the terrain.

Great changes are at hand. Kingdoms are uniting
Your workers have apprenticed in the centuries-old
around common currency, language and custom.
tradition, in the rituals and folklore of proven practice.

Their productivity is based on hierarchies, on heritage
All around you the borders are in flux, and the territory
and the guilds of governance.
beyond the walls is subject at any time to a change in

rulers. These rulers travel in caravans, depend on light
The friends that have arrived to help you from the
infantry, and when they break camp, they leave you
outside wont leave when you no longer need them.
behind, shackled in the labyrinth within the fortress of
They have too much at stake, and they have bolted
your own making.
themselves into your walls and they inhabit all your tunnels and even in your air ducts. They eat from your food
You have been able to build most everything you need,
stores and deplete your resources, and toast you from
but now youre cut off from the rest of the business, and
flagons of exotic ornament. These same friends have
even if you wanted to move closer, you cant.
erected monuments and monoliths to their legacy, and

created fortresses within your fortress.
When you ask for change, your adjuvant friends are only
able to show you borrowed and stale plans, smuggled in
from the outside from great distance away and at great
expense. As has been custom, they have provided the
mortar for your bricks. They are intractable.
Some of its just the gear, the weighted-down armor and
plating, the fortress-scale armaments and weaponry
of siege-mode and defense. There is nothing light and
nimble to be found. For something to be moved, it must
Youve never
had the time to
really work on
the things that
matter,
the things that
the business
needs to you
to do.
LINGO
2 TCO: Total Cost of Onerous
formation, and I see what can be achieved, things I
Throw out the old metrics. They dont mean any-
Im basing this book on my personal experience as a
thing in the era of Cloud computing.
Chief Technology Officer, with the historical perspec-
never thought possible.
tive from my days as a programmer/analyst in early

Bring down the walls between you and the business,
1990s Silicon Valley, coming out of the housing bust,
rid your house of entrenched vendors, and take imme-
learning my trade in conference rooms and hallways.
diate advantage of the transformation that is at hand
Here, if you didnt understand both business and
and the liberation that will follow over the next five
process, technology was useless. I lived ASP hey-
years as these changes roll out to their full potential.
days of the late 1990s, through the dot.com and its

bubble, where amazingly poor business strategies
You will most likely have to start from scratch because
were masked as innovation. I lived this firsthand in the
the Cloud is so transformational to business process
Silicon Valley and I experienced it from classic brick
that any type of half-step will only drag along an
and mortar companies, software startups, Fortune 100
expense and execution model that is fundamentally
networking, and telephony companies.
flawed.
I want to look at where we are as we close down 2010,
Modern business applications cant be concerned
and where I think were going to be in just a few years
about the network, the data store, and the workflow
from now. That will be as radical shift as we have seen
challenges inherent in on-premise application devel-
so far, perhaps even more so.
opment environments. Users want application features available online, with a simple, intuitive inter-
And heres why: As a CIO, youve never had the time to
face. They will pay per month for it, but they wont pay
really work on the things that matter, the things that
millions for software. Those days are gone.
the business needs to you to do. Youve been bogged

down with onerous stuff all around you and youve
I dont say this as someone who has something to sell.
never had the freedom to operate the way the busi-
I say this because every day I hear the stories of trans-
ness needs you to. You simply cant realize the potential
LINGO
of addressing business process in a fundamental way,

when budgets, personal bandwidth, and technological
3 Blame the Consumer
capacity limit you on all sides.

Pull. Tug. Yank. Feeling that?
Theres going to be a very long list of things that are
suddenly off your mind as you make the switch to
On one level, this has nothing to do with what we in
the Cloud. This is no longer about scan card access
the enterprise IT realm have created. The consumer
to a locked server room, or hiding all the resource
experience on the web is behind the gravitational pull
requirements to keep the infrastructure going in your
of emerging business applications and Cloud solu-
CapEx budgets every year.
tions. Consumers have come to expect free or very

low-cost applications, delivered over multiple mobile
And its not as complicated as your outside helpers
devices on a high-bandwidth utility thats as robust
make it out to be. You wont need a cadre of 20 people
and available as what previous generations expected
to help you understand how you can transform your
from their phone lines and television sets. Yet what
shop. All you really need is an agile internal team and
once took decades to fund and build, is now counted
a couple of strong support and architecture resources.
in years, if not months.
This is no longer about entrenched vendors making this process as complex as possible in order to
The dot.com era unleashed a lot, including free apps
maintain their legacy applications and tools, and their
and ubiquitous access. Fortunately, what didnt last
heritage of sales. This is about blowing up the fun-
from that frontier era were the many overvalued
damentals of how you service internal and external
companies and amazingly poor business strategies,
customers as an IT services provider.
either previously unheard of or incapable of being

understood. The acceleration of the internet and
This is also about freeing your potential from limita-
the venture spending behind the ecosystem left
tions, from solutions based on the narrow availability
us with the beginnings of todays landscape.
of servers, disk, and the people needed to run them in
10
your shop. And from the burdens that limit you and
If you were there in the midst of the dot.com blaze like
the business.
I was, you may not have gotten rich. But one genu-
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inely progressive thing that came from it was how the
Oscar Berg, a Senior Consultant for Acando, has an
consumer web experience rivaled and then outpaced
interesting thought on the growth of this behavior:
desktop applications to the point of rendering con-
The main lesson that I learned from the dot.com era
sumer desktop software completely obsolete.
was that people were not ready for the kind of online
lifestyle that we had in mind when building platforms.
We built platforms and features for people like our-
Thats amazing when you think about it.
selves pioneers who were obsessed and enamored

We literally do anything you can think of online now
with the new technologies and not for the aver-
from our financials and banking, to consumer buying
age person. But, today, the situation is very different.
to vacation planning , and then there are loads of
Most people are very comfortable with using the web
ways we share our experiences via blogs, and tweets
for both private and professional purposes, and they
and Facebook and scads of utilities to tell all our
willingly expose things about themselves that they
friends, coworkers, and loved ones where we are and
wouldnt have dared to think about exposing ten
what were doing at any given time from any elec-
years earlier.
Users want
application
features
trickled to
them over
time, available
online, and
with a
simple,
intuitive
interface.
tronic device.
Now this has extended to the business paradigm,
where users want application features trickled to
them over time, available online, and with a simple,
TIME SPENT ONLINE (per week)
intuitive interface. And they are happy to pay per

month for it. But gone are the days when anyone will
pay millions of dollars for software.
13 hours
Everythings been compressed and commoditized:
software price points, configuration services dollars,
customizing and deployment solutions, and support.
6 hours
12
2004
We all have the dot.com era (the older, bolder but less
2010
FORRESTER
pragmatic brother of the Cloud), to thank for that.
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LINGO
Modern business applications cant be concerned

about the network, the data store, and the workflow
4 Time to Rent Again
challenges inherent in the last generations onpremise application development environments.
There was a time when the CIO was like the Robert
Duvall character Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in the film Apoca-
What is required is a solid set of workflow tools that
lypse Now, on the beach in full battle dress, calling in
are Cloud-configured, and Cloud-deployable with a
air strikes with all the helicopters buzzing overhead.
solid application development and debugging
But instead of a war zone, the setting was a huge data
platform, with solid monitoring tools surrounding
center with hundreds of people tending to the gear,
those applications.
and the CIO proclaiming, I love the smell of servers in

the morning.
Only with this type of infrastructure (virtualized or

Cloud-deployed) can solution architects and technical
But nobody has the budget for that anymore. From
architects design and deploy solutions that will satisfy
the CEOs perspective, the company spent millions of
this new consumer-derived user experience.
dollars and really didnt get what it paid for and pissed
off a lot of users along the way. Theres no compelling
There was a
time when the
CIO was like the
Robert Duvall
character Lt.
Col. Bill Kilgore
in the film
Apocalypse
Now, on the
beach in full
battle dress...
I love the
smell of
servers in the
morning.
reason now for us to build and own the applications

or the infrastructure.
The ON-PREMISE Business (Sales, Service,
You will find that Cloud vendors have created a
network and data security approach that blows away
what you and your internal IT teams can afford to
build. For instance, in the last five years, salesforce.
com on its own has probably spent over a billion
dollars on scalability, security and infrastructure.
Theres a reason that Microsoft, Google and others are
14
building huge utility-style, grid computing facilities that
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LINGO
GOOGLE INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS
5 Doing More with More

Theres a lot of noise out there. Terms like restructuring and downturn and return to profitability
ultimately fail to express the magnitude of what is
occurring economically. Whatever someone might say
$131
$186
$221
$239
$476
2Q 09
3Q 09
4Q 09
1Q 10
2Q 10
million
million
million
million
million
in a press release or an annual report doesnt capture

it, because the shock waves are still coming.
DATA CENTER KNOWLEDGE
Its turned everything we knew on its head. For

cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Its not because
instance, do we really know what were talking about
they cant figure out where to spend their money.
when we say that a business issue is mission critical?
They know there is a wave coming: back-to-the-future
In your organization, can anyone honestly tell me
hosting, application, functionality and infrastructure.
what is mission critical, and what is not mission criti-
And if they dont have investment in the capacity,
cal? And if we can make that distinction, do we really
customers are going to go with a different provider.
have the tools to make sure that whatever is mission
They are building all these facilities because the mar-
critical is a success and that we can benchmark that
ket is there.
success for all the mission critical projects that follow?
As companies focused on our own core businesses,
If you could catalog them in your organization, I bet
we really cant afford to do anything else. Its like the
the number of mission critical apps running on some
housing market. The bottom has fallen out and we
Microsoft Office application would stun you. And its
cant afford to own what we need. We need to start
been that way for 15 years!
renting again.
This new economic landscape means youll have
to clear the decks of most of the strategic planning
16
youve done Youll likely need to deliver a substantial
17
Look, the big

bad wolf, the
well-publicized
plummet of
the global
economy, has
already blown
down the shack
without you,
scattering all
the straw and
sticks and
bricks. But
this mess is
everything that
made your job
impossible.
LINGO
reduction of expense and headcount, scuttle projects
Get ready to inherit a tsunami of powerful services
that may have seemed high priority, and think about
that will blast right through your standard defense,
reshuffling the deck on your resource partners. There
your sandbags of scalability-security-governance.
may be acquisitions and divestitures in combinations
Youve tried to build these yourself, but in the Cloud
you would have never conceived before, and many of
you find that others have already completed it and
the targets you prepared for are no longer viable in
they didnt have to borrow half of an FTE from some-
the new environment. Youre going to have to do
ones team to get it done.
all this while providing even more support for the

business.
Look, the big bad wolf, the well-publicized plummet

of the global economy, has already blown down the
While you may have become accomplished creating
shack without you, scattering all the straw and sticks
a whole series of contingency plans, this new era of
and bricks. But this mess is everything that made your
economic upheaval demands that you become com-
job impossible. Those problems are gone now, but
fortable when more things than ever are unforeseen.
now you have some new ones.
But the good news: the Cloud gives you the tools to
address unintended consequences and inadvertent
events much quicker and at lower cost.
This is really not about doing more with less, youre
actually doing more with more. The new mindset is
to approach each new challenge as a lesson. Its about
learning how to work with fewer barriers to getting
things done, having more tail-wind, and knowing how
to manage the process. Youre going to spend way
less energy from now on routine maintenance, yet
keeping up with the business will demand more of
your process skills than ever.
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LINGO
6 Save the Song and Dance

for the Talent Show
able to stay on pace in pursuit of prospective markets
In the Cloud world, your place at the table is re-
for IT leadership that understands the interconnect-
quired more than ever. Now you dont have to spend
edness and the consequences of removal, the
any time on the song and dance because your CEO
implications at each step and iteration, and which
and your board are sold, they know what you can do.
outsourcing may be required. This is up to you,
Now they just want to know how fast you can bring
because Im guessing your incumbent vendors
up your team and how far you can take this.
havent been thinking ahead on your behalf. Why
and revenue growth.

Core competency means more than just shedding
non-essentials. Carving away all those layers calls
would they, when their own profitability is tied to

The contribution of IT is changing because its
your previous, un-agile operating mode?
being validated every day by the undisputed force

of business investment, the flow of venture capital,
And this goes beyond the vetting and the shedding.
internal infrastructure development dollars, novel
Flat or stagnant growth at the macro level means
product offerings and service business models,
that many will be lulled into thinking that only large
and the pace of strategic acquisitions within the
solutions will produce large revenue growth. But its a
computing ecosystem.
new game: opportunities can be leveraged, because

the cost and time cycles to test and launch have
A stricter regulatory environment will not only
fallen so dramatically. Proverbial low hanging fruit
demand more agile IT shops, but will also create
will be more obvious to spot sooner, and your new
opportunities for those companies that can incor-
set of process tools will help you inform the business
porate new regulations across the enterprise. Those
if it contains the seeds for future expansion.
companies Cloud companies have an advantage, since the new regs arent being queued into
separate legacy silos, with sluggish traditional proj-
20
ect timelines and priority metrics. Theyll be
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7 A Push for Power

Consumption
information technology applications and require-
n Mobile Devices
OK. Forget the downturn and the subsequent
n Data Centers
restructuring and cost-slashing and reactive resur-
n Smart Grid
ments, energy consumption will be a Cloud catalyst

at several levels:
gence of a more restrictive regulatory environment.

From my vantage point, there is an even larger force
Green Tech Media is a New York-based integrated
out there, outside the walls of your IT shop and far
media firm that covers power generation and distri-
beyond the scope of your company, dwarfing any-
bution over the grid, analyzing trends for how power
ones GDP. This one has the potential to become the
is consumed by individuals and the larger enterprise.
most dominant driver of all.

Information technology on the whole consumes
Its the energy story. Theres not enough of it, first off,
about 2% of all energy. So its not really a significant
at least deriving from sustainable sources. The oppor-
sector as, say, manufacturing, observes Green Tech
tunities for IT just in accounting for your companys
Media CEO Rick Thompson. Yet with Cloud comput-
energy consumption is going to fuel a new service
ing growing at 5%, there are tremendous oppor-
sector: energy accounting. Think of the implications
tunities where energy and information technology
for anyone doing business in multiple locations, let
intersect.
From my
vantage point,
there is an even
larger force out
there, outside
the walls of
your IT shop
and far beyond
the scope of
your company, dwarfing
anyones GDP.
This one has
the potential
to become the
most dominant
driver of all.
alone multiple continents, each with its own metering and mix of energy sources. Then think how
Green enterprise not only encompasses helping
each business unit is going to answer for its energy
the financial institutions and mega-retailers manage
allocation, with an entirely new category on the
their large power demand, but more granular tech-
management scorecard.
nologies like advanced LED lighting and the build

out of automation networks for lighting, Thomp-
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Now lets talk about the supply side, the energy pro-
son adds. Green IT goes beyond analyzing power
viders. As the large energy companies intersect with
consumption to novel products and services where
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computing creates more efficient and accountable
traditional networking shops bring on board senior
transmission and distribution of power over the grid.
people from the energy companies, and not just

putting out a press release around green tech initia-
This has far-reaching implications for the Cloud, as
tives. Were talking radical scenarios here as it plays
new players such as well-capitalized utilities will cross
out. The energy market dwarfs the IT market, and the
these borders and barriers naturally and quickly. You
global markets are massive. Weve devoted our entire
can be assured that someone is always looking at
company to this, and it merits serious attention for
power consumption and engineering more power
everyone who has a stake in where information tech-
efficiency and cost savings, from the chip set to
nology is headed.
the router card, to the network and ultimately the

largest consumer of power within an enterprise, the
Beyond generating reliable sources of power, this is
data center.
completely an IT game, with giant energy concerns

crossing swords with technology as they usher in
Think beyond hosted applications and servers. Is it
new energy services to consumers.
possible that the on-premise data center is ultimately

a relic for most companies? Will it be too much to
Its fairly simple, Thompson concludes. Everything
manage from the standpoint of power consumption
beyond transmission is low bandwidth, without
and carbon footprint? Are you better off with some
super high speed, and its all going to need a back-
or all of your enterprise computing in a hosted and
end to an enterprise network. Within the energy
green environment, such as a geo-thermal fueled
companies theres not as much information technology
data center in Iceland?
expertise as youd think, and most of the applications are in separate silos for weather management,
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Thompson of Green Tech offers a savvy scorecard for
field and outage management. Theres so much
monitoring this trend. We left telecom infrastructure
more technology being thrown at them than they
and entered Green Tech. We began watching where
can handle, and that will create large opportunities.
the entrepreneurs were placing their attention and
The VCs see it and the entrepreneurs see it, and the
the venture capitalists were directing their funding.
larger companies are already investing in the talent
And because of smart grid, youre starting to see the
to help them get there.
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Cloud Rants
1 Thirteen Ways of Looking
at the Cloud
1. The Cloud is not about product offerings.
2. The Cloud is not a change agent, paradigm shift
or transformative event.
3. Blogs, tweets and rants are downbursts from the
Cloud, but they are not the Cloud.
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27
The Cloud is
disruptive in
the way that
you wake up
one morning
in your own
bed, and a
really, really
quiet tornado
has picked up
your house and
set it down 50
miles away in
an open field.
LINGO
4. The Cloud has very little to do with technology, let
11. The Cloud will not pull us out of the recession.
alone information technology.

12. Johannes Gutenberg might have invented the
5. The Cloud is not a source of new business models
Cloud, but he got all caught up with his success with
or service offerings.
movable type.
6. The Cloud is not a Cloud computing conference at
13. The Cloud just happened.
the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

7. The Cloud is not disruptive, in the way that someone might disrupt a conversation or a meeting in
progress. The Cloud is disruptive in the way that you
wake up one morning in your own bed, and a really,
really quiet tornado has picked up your house and set
it down 50 miles away in an open field.
8. If you could measure the economic impact of the
Cloud as seismic activity, it would not show up at all
on any local Richter scale until its too late.
9. You can learn as much about the Cloud in Reykjavik
as you can in Redwood City (headquarters of Oracle).
10. Your server at lunch might know more about the
Cloud than anyone who manages the servers in your
data center.
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2 The Failure of Outsourcing
And I also watched that approach fail, and saw folks

move to hosting applications to a co-lo facility,
which had the benefit of being less service-based
The IT industry has talked for decades (my entire
from the provider, and just getting the gear off your
working career!) about business process tools, and
premise. You still managed nearly every service associ-
techniques and systems which can enable business
ated with making sure the gear was compliant with
process re engineering. But just look at the word
your infrastructure standards and processes.
re engineer and you know all you need to know.

Do you think some original engineering discipline
And then theres outsourcing. Outsourcing your busi-
was applied to most of the business processes you
ness processes to outsourcing firms wasnt the silver
support those same ones that cause you the most
bullet that many thought it was. The idea was to find
pain or provide the least benefit?
cheaper options for expensive infrastructure and

people, but the result was the specialization of
Once you are unencumbered of the tasks that are
resources, which turned into increased costs and limited
time sinks because you move those tasks onto
holistic perspectives from new people entering the
Cloud providers or into managed environments such
job market. The result: complete confusion and chaos
as a private Cloud then you have the potential to
from CFOs, CEOs and COOs on what they actually got
address business process in a fundamental way that
from their IT investment .
Once you are

unencumbered
of the tasks
that are time
sinks because
you move those
tasks onto
Cloud
providers...
then you have
the potential
to address
business
process in a
fundamental
way.
budgets, personal bandwidth, and technological

capacity simply couldnt provide.
So on the other side of being re-engineered, co-located

and outsourced, we discover something profound:
I lived through the ASP heydays of the late 90s, and

was always amazed when vendors like Corio would
1. Costs need to be cut.
hand me their PeopleSoft application that was,
30
literally, single-tenant and supremely customized for
2. Resources need to be evaluated, and change man-
my business needs in a way that wasnt trivial.
agement plans adopted.
31
LINGO
3. CIOs need to respond to their Boards and CEOs with

plans for innovation and not plans for operating like
3 Placing Business First
the cost center of the 1990s.

Ten years from now, we will all laugh about how
There is no reason today, this month, this quarter,
hard it was to design, build and deploy applications.
I shouldnt be able to deliver with a team of eight to
All the self-imposed shackles and inventions will seem
ten the same amount as traditional service ven-
antiquated.
dors, using their dated methods and staffs of 30-40

people. Being unshackled from that approach is the
Happily, the Cloud presents a totally different method
most liberating thing that businesses can hope for
of working: Its about real change in how we procure,
with their IT and applications spend.
develop, and release applications. Its a laser focus

on whats required from a business perspective. And
companies are going to spend billions over the forthcoming years to convert their enterprises into the
Cloud Transformed Enterprise or CTE.
So CEOs need to understand what this means for the
role of IT. Today, any CEO you survey will give you the
pat answer that IT is currently important to the business and that it will grow in importance in the future.
Theyll even take it to the tactical level: the demands
are increasing to keep the business competitive. ITs
expanded role includes workforce mobility, cost analysis,
more data to create meaningful metrics around decision
making, and storage and retrieval and e-commerce on
multiple application and electronic device platforms.
32
33
Business
has taken a
back seat to
technology
for 30 years.
This liberation
of business
potential within
the Cloud is
scaring the
pants off IT and
CIOs and ISVs
to the point of
it being openly
condemned,
ridiculed or
ruled as a fad.
LINGO
But do you ever see a CEO asked about the degree of

expectation that IT will actually meet those demands?
You wont, because the priorities and the base of
power have been inverted for decades.
4 The Core Challenge of

the Cloud
Business has taken a back seat to technology for 30
Dont get me wrong. This is not going to be easy
years. This liberation of business potential within the
for everyone. Working in a Cloud environment will
Cloud is scaring the pants off IT and CIOs and ISVs to
be challenging for many individuals and for entire
the point of it being openly condemned, ridiculed
companies.
or ruled a fad. Thats all the info you should need to

understand how liberating this technology truly is.
People will have to work harder and communicate

better, because you are no longer waiting for this
But the Cloud isnt magic. Technology deployment
magic gift for someone to go off and develop
options wont cure poor requirements, bad design
something in a dark corner and bring it back to you,
or poor test cases. What the Cloud does, though, is
and you hope its the fix. The Cloud dials up the
provide a framework for putting the business first.
importance of sitting shoulder to shoulder, working

together and communicating daily, working through
And when business process is king, thats when you
the challenges of each project.
have success.
That certainly shouldnt sound like a challenge, but in
any software project, communication not technology is the point of failure. The Cloud environment
creates a chance to focus on that communication over
the technology.
This will create a lot of risk in companies that have
34
learned to be horrible communicators, especially the

communication between IT and the business, and be-
35
Think about it
like a doctors
office. In the
old IT paradigm, you were
sitting there
in the waiting
room for a long
time, hoping
somebody
was going to
call your name
and then tell
you what was
wrong with you.
Now theres not
even a waiting
room.
LINGO
tween IT and the external vendors. It no longer works

to stick a vendor in between IT and your business,
then let them take the blame for your organizational
dysfunction and inability to communicate internally.
Companies will still struggle until they find communicators who understand process with their systems
developers, IT administrators, even the owners and
management team. Those are the people that you
want. Those are the skills that are important to make
sure the investment works.
Three Stories
If you didnt communicate well before, your dysfunction only gets exacerbated with the Cloud. You no
longer have an environment where one group goes
off to procure the server farm, while another group
talks to users for months and writes a bunch of words
1 Tasked
down that people agree with or dont disagree with.

Its a different cycle.
So heres how it will happen: Youre a senior network architect at a large global company and your
36
Think about it like a doctors office. In the old IT para-
CTO doesnt really appear to know anything about
digm, you were sitting there in the waiting room for
the Cloud. He arrives at your desk and starts the
a long time, hoping somebody was going to call your
same old song and dance, the same one he gives
name and that they could tell you what was wrong
every time hes been asked to research something
with you. Its different now. Theres not even a waiting
novel. He confides that its probably a total waste of
room. The doctor comes to you whenever you need
time, and hes really looking high and low for ways
attention, and its all about open dialogue and treat-
to dispel it.
ment options.
37
It takes six
months to
mount new
storage
on-premise,
and now it
looks as if you
can do that in
minutes!
LINGO
So your CTO has been tasked, and now you have been
attend, but dont anymore because youre burdened
tasked: Deliver a Cloud strategy for the company. You
with getting your projects across the finish line (180
have three months to get it done.
days late is now a good metric. Receiving accolades for

six month lag time just doesnt seem right.)
Its a blank slate. You have to figure out everything,

including the infrastructure challenges. After all, the
Your companys competitive advantage needs to be
way everybody thinks around your shop is: keep up
flawless delivery and reliability, which will be based
with the gear, and the applications, and governance.
on hardcore infrastructure. Job one will be replacing

the servers and managing the virtualization clusters,
You know youre in the sweet spot of virtualization of
finding a way to keep up governance. Your IT head-
your servers, applications and services at 50-65 per-
count is 500 plus, and half the people within the unit
cent, but you still cannot control how and when those
dont know the other half.
services or environments are being setup, scaled and

managed by your app dev teams. Further, you cant
So how is your life going to be better in this new
get the SAN team to install new disks sooner than six
model? How will this help with resources constraints,
weeks, which hamstrings your app dev teams, and
with the bottlenecks you can see coming every time?
your infrastructure group. The list goes on. How do
It all sounds like a world of ideas, but what you really
you gain some control to manage the environment in
want to know about are the technical underpinnings.
a simpler, and smarter fashion?

Start with this: It takes six months to mount new storAs you dig into the Cloud, it resonates right away. This
age on-premise, and now it looks as if you can do that
may be a way to get out of the vicious cycles of capital
in minutes! But theres a lot of virtualization involved,
budgets, cost creep, and slow cycle times on projects.
so how does that work in the Cloud? And what about

my applications teams, where do they fit in?
Then you then notice the word Cloud thrown around
38
in meetings with your on-premise vendors. Its tak-
Youre a busy guy and now youre about to become a
ing a life of its own, popping up more and more as a
poster child for the Cloud. Youre going to need some
topic at user conferences those events you used to
guidance. You need tools. You need a roadmap.
39
LINGO
2 Cured: A New Way of

Looking at the End User
100,000 patients over the next five years, collecting
Sometimes the issues of technology and adoption
lenges of managing IT in a healthcare environment
have serious consequences. Heres one: It involves a
within the rigors of clinical research. How do you keep
major research hospital and thousands of patients
patient data secure in a multi-center environment?
over a multi-year period. This is a case where Cloud
How do you capture, transfer and store data that will
process and Cloud tools could have a direct impact on
be the basis for scientific hypothesis, clinical treat-
saving lives.
ment, and potential disease cures?
This project is off to a good start: The CIO is enlight-
This is not about outsourcing, off-shoring or all the
ened. He knows how to leverage assets, the teams are
nifty flow charts we put in our white papers and
experienced with the Cloud, and the project is based
presentations.
and centralizing it, then getting it quickly to researchers and treatment practitioners.
Now add the patient privacy issues and all the chal-
This is a case
where Cloud
process and
Cloud tools
could have a
direct impact
on saving lives.
in a part of the country where a lot new IT products

and services are conceived, created and marketed.
A Cloud services company has donated the licenses,

service time, millions of dollars in tailwind, and
Now they are looking at new and different administra-
technology that will adopted by the IT leadership
tive applications no one knows or understands. They
supporting the patient study. But will that make a
need to drive 6-12 projects at a time. And these are
difference? Are the legacy process issues going to
big projects, in data collection and analysis in support
swamp the potential for success?
of research, and treatment of a major disease state.

This is a title bout. Its a high-profile project, and a lot
40
Were talking next-gen research and treatment, draw-
of people are placing their hopes on it. Can the Cloud
ing from multi-center medical populations, but the
deliver when lives not just cost containment and
data and the processes are literally from the 1950s
project cycle time are at stake?
and 1960s. Theyll gather critical data sets from
41
Approaching
the Cloud as
a way to
guarantee the
integrity and
reliability of
healthcare data
twenty-four,
seven, also
brought Menefee directly into
consideration
of related
benefits of
flexibility,
scalability and
cost savings.
LINGO
3 Put My Chart in the Cloud,

Stat
system he inherited to support the hospitals in Schu-
So, heres a third story. Its not about thinking about
departments at more than 150 hospitals, and we
what the cloud might do for you operationally in your
would be crippling ourselves and our clients if our
own IT shop, or in helping a research hospital find
data center goes down during a hurricane, or even an
potential breakthroughs in medical treatment. This is
unexpected storm that nobody predicts, explains Me-
about something that is already working, right there
nefee. You just cant compromise the information a
in the emergency room at your local hospital.
doctor has at his or her disposal for treating a patient,
macher Groups service portfolio.

Menefee approached the challenges from the standpoint of business continuity. We staff emergency
nor for that matter the entire team that supports the
Think about this for starters. The emergency depart-
M.D. You dont want to be that patient, either, suf-
ment is the single largest access point to most
fering even more and awaiting the right treatment
hospitals in the United States. A 2007 study published
because of some catastrophic event that happened to
by the National Center for Health Statistics noted
a computer center far away.
116.8 million emergency room visits in the United

States, about four out of every ten Americans, and
Approaching the Cloud as a way to guarantee the
that 18% of emergency patients were seen within 15
integrity and reliability of healthcare data 24/7, also
minutes of arrival and 12.5 percent of all visits to the
brought Menefee directly into consideration of re-
emergency department resulted in hospital admission.
lated benefits of flexibility, scalability and cost savings.

Being able to manage our services over the Internet,
42
A well-managed emergency department is critical
meant we could start right away with 50 percent of
to the success of any hospital, and hospitals wisely
our data-center process hosted in the Cloud, and re-
are turning to emergency staffing partners such as
cently adding the human resources piece has brought
Lafayette, Louisiana-based Schumacher Group. Doug
that percentage up to 70 percent.
Menefee has been CIO for Schumacher Group since

2005, and has upgraded or replaced every enterprise
43
LINGO
When I dont have to focus on the infrastructure

piece, Im not in a maintenance role, and Im able
to allocate funds to innovation, to rolling out new
business solutions and meeting the needs of the
business, says Menefee.
Next time youre in the ER and they ask you for your
insurance card, you might want to ask them if their
patient data is hosted in the Cloud before they roll
you down the hall.
Transformation
1 The Empire Strikes Back,
or Unleashing IT as an
Innovation Center
If you dont innovate, what is the cost to the
business? Not just the financial cost, the
opportunity cost? Who can put a price tag on
what it means to merely keep the servers running,
44
or at best, replace one enterprise application

with an application that is fundamentally no
45
CIOs havent
had the time or
resources to
pursue impactful projects that
could support
the sales,
service or
mobile
applications
that increase
productivity
and
profitability.
LINGO
different than what youre replacing? If you dont have

the time or resources to take the extra step required
2 The Empire as We Know It
for innovation, how can you be expected to move the

dial forward?
Traditionally, the IT department has been an empire

unto itself, with empire-scale assets, budgets without
Yet companies and organizations today are under
boundaries, and a decidedly internal focus. Saddled
tremendous pressure to cut costs, increase revenue
with supporting massive infrastructure, CIOs havent
opportunities and be more in tune with their custom-
had the time or resources to pursue impactful projects
ers. The only way to accomplish all three of those
that could support the sales, service or mobile appli-
goals is by undertaking initiatives that are so pro-
cations that increase productivity and profitability.
found, so fundamentally different, that they turn the

IT function inside out.
Rarely has IT been viewed by the business as a source

of lasting innovation. Until now.
Thats a scary transformation for the traditional CIO,

especially for one who has decades of experience
Beyond the scalability and security issues of moving
in the everything-we-need-is-in-house IT model.
to the Cloud, innovation-driven CIOs are searching
However, were now at a point where that story of
for a new management paradigm that reflects an era
innovation can be told. New models and best
where IT assets are now commodities and the funda-
practices are emerging, and the application of those
mental role for the empire is one of alignment with
models and best practices creates an innovation
business process and business strategy.
platform from which IT can regain mind share within

the business.
Once I accept a Cloud solution as the primary

architecture of my stack, how do I repurpose those
under-utilized members of my team who know the
business and are capable of innovation?
46
47
What is
possible now
that I am no
longer spending 80 percent
of my budget
and most of my
time making
sure the
application
servers,
network load
balancers and
the databases
are up and
running?
LINGO
How do I identify the skills and qualities of those

who are best suited to help?
n What are ways to utilize and preserve our IT assets in
the Cloud, in the face of increasingly complex and

numerous security threats?
n What is possible now that I am no longer spend-
ing 80 percent of my budget and most of my time
Regardless of your approach, IT has an even more
making sure the application servers, network load
important role with the business in a Cloud environ-
balancers and databases are up and running?
ment. CIOs now have at their disposal more power

to increase productivity and profitability across the
n What are examples of this fundamental transforma-
tion from CIOs who have already blazed the trail,
enterprise, more effectively integrated with the

business than ever.
and lived to tell about it?

Not every CIO is ready or willing to tackle this transformation issue head-on or all at once. For that more
traditional CIO considering slow adoption and an
incremental strategy, the questions might be framed a
bit differently:
n How do I build the case for modernization and a
more measured approach to Cloud computing that

doesnt threaten the existing infrastructure?
n If I adopt Cloud solutions incrementally, how does
this affect the management of existing IT projects?

n What are some best practices for structuring internal
IT teams to ensure that our core infrastructure is
48
maintained?
49
LINGO
3 Innovation as a Distraction
ON-PREMISE VS. THE CLOUD
Most will admit that technology innovation has
INFRASTRUCTURE-FOCUS
INNOVATION-FOCUS
LARGE PROJECTS
RAPID PROTOTYPING
management based on a promised ROI, budget and
BLIND SHOTS
BEST PRACTICE ADOPTION
timeline, and invariably the project fails to clear
LOW SUCCESS EXPECTATION
INCREMENTAL SUCCESS
INTERNAL-FOCUS
CUSTOMER-FOCUS
been over-used as a way of selling projects. In the

classic example, the CIO sells a project to senior
those hurdles.
ON-PREMISE CLOUD
Youre lucky if you get a 25 percent return on investment for an IT project. If you come in on-budget with
Youre not able to give your company or organization
a project, youre lucky. If youre on time, youre lucky,
the ability to connect meaningfully with the people
but youre rarely going to get where you promised
who buy your product or service.
youd get to.

Then management has had no other alternative than
to take the hit, or clean house and fire the CIO, which
has a cost associated with it and provides no guarantee of future success. Theres an overall structural
problem that prohibits even the most innovationminded CIOs from having a shot at a breakthrough.
As a CIO, youre so focused on managing all the other
stuff that you dont have the time to think about innovation or how you can meaningfully support the
business. Innovation is a distraction.
50
51
LINGO
4 Strip Distraction Away
This has huge implications for the CIO because there

are new technology initiatives that should be assessed
around governance and compliance, green technol-
The Cloud gives you the ability to strip some of that
ogy, social media tools and mobile productivity ap-
distraction away. You can build a project successfully,
plications, but the mindset has always been focused
from the ground up. You have the time and focus to
on those large monolithic, multi-year infrastructure
build slowly, to create the momentum.
projects that CIOs like to tackle to further entrench

their value to the organization.
The Cloud lends itself to innovative thinking on the

part of the CIO and the ability to incorporate best
The business benefit is that the distraction of innova-
practice expertise, because of those things you dont
tion is removed and IT leaders can contribute time
have to do anymore.
spent on keeping the lights on toward new technologies which further innovation within the business
Some companies cant unburden themselves from
model.
what theyve always done. Theyre so focused on

building and maintaining on-premise infrastructure
When a company moves that infrastructure to the
and the staff to support it, that projects become three
Cloud, it gets to deploy capital in new ways and at a
times as expensive as projected, are horribly delayed,
speed never before experienced.
and dont even accomplish what they set out to do.

I know of instances where a company takes 18
months to complete a project, and in that time they
could have easily had that project delivered two or
three times, and at half the cost, but they cant see
it because they are so mired in the depths of how
theyve always operated.
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LINGO
5 Opportunity for Disruption,

or a New Generation of CEO
or scrap the project, without really spending a whole
The competitive advantage of the Cloud is not just
sequestered from the business.
lot of capital.
And most importantly, everything theyre doing is in
alignment with the business units, not separate and
for the large corporation. Its incredibly enabling for

emerging companies to now afford the broad scope
The challenge for some of these younger and more
of computing applications and scalability
innovative CIOs is they may be managing teams of
heretofore reserved for the giants.
individuals who are used to a culture of creating and

defending large budgets and projects.
Younger
CIOs may not
have the gray
hair and the
credibility
yet, but they
understand
transparency
and the culture
of risk taking...
Thats going to be very disruptive, because the CIOs

of those emerging, more nimble companies have
They may be leading people whose career revolved
more than likely worked on the web their entire
around having everything in-house, the traditional
career, and for them operating in the Cloud is natural.
brick-and-mortar enterprise. Theyre going to be

threatened by any hint of migrating to the Cloud,
These younger CIOs may not have the gray hair and
because they dont know where theyll fit in.
the credibility yet, but they understand transparency

and the culture of risk taking, and with these new
affordable tools at hand, they have a much better shot
at leading the charge for innovation.
They understand what its like to accomplish something amazing in 30 days, not 30 months. Theyre less
concerned with formality and covering their mistakes,
as they are about figuring out quickly if what they
54
think might work actually works. It either works or it

doesnt, and they can move on very quickly to revise
55
LINGO
6 The Cloud Story Is a

Human Story
7 Shifting the Spend
Cloud transformation is ultimately a resourcing story
keeping the lights on. The rest was spent on new gear
with a decidedly human element. I may not need
and new projects. The expectation from everyone
three email administrators anymore. I may need one.
involved was not really high for any return on invest-
How do I repurpose those individuals I no longer need
ment, because any innovation was a distraction not a
to maintain the infrastructure? Maybe it is possible to
priority.
To generalize, at least half of your IT budget (and as

much as 80%) is spent on support and infrastructure,
turn traditional introverts who like to work with new

gear and gadgets, into outwardly-focused weapons of
Adopting a Cloud solution gives the CIO the
innovation?
opportunity to invert completely that traditional

budget formula, so that the IT spend is now on rapid
A prized team member for the CIO will be that indi-
project development instead of maintenance. This
vidual who understands business process mapping
fundamentally shifts the balance of where you put
and business process templates, who knows the busi-
your attention.
ness better than the business people. This might be

someone who used to gate innovation, but with the
Once you accept the Cloud as the fundamental archi-
Cloud, all that falls away.
tecture of your stack, the wind is truly at your back.

Innovation is now a different story.
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57
LINGO
8 Engagement
IT BUDGET COMPARISON
When you think about the traditional power base of
New Projects
10%
10%
IT, it has historically been a vertical model. The intrac-
New Gear
table IT organization has thrived as an entrenched
On-Premise
and deeply-rooted entity, but not really connected in

any meaningful way to the business, or the customers
that give the business its reason for existence.
Infrastructure
80%
The majority of the IT power structure is in the support and infrastructure people, the network, database
and help desk people. And over these functions, you
New Gear
5%
have a thin IT strategy layer trying to shield you from

the business.
This thin layer claims to be in alignment with the busi-
Infrastructure
35%
CLOUD
ness, but is never in real alignment. The problem is

New Projects
60%
that team members that come in at this support level

in an organization were never top-tier consultants.
They arent process people who understand how the
business works.
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59
LINGO
This is now a horizontal story instead of a vertical
The ON-PREMISE Business
story, because the focus of IT is on business process

support and implementation, not infrastructure sup-
Strategy Layer
port. Its shoulder-to-shoulder.
Support Layer
Networks
Databases
Help Desk
Theres an element of delivery and innovation that

didnt exist before, and theres more connectivity than
you have in the older, vertical model. The power base
in this aligned, horizontal model is fundamentally
With a Cloud solution, this thin strategy layer in IT gets
different. In the vertical IT model, even if you could
really transformed into something very different, and
afford a process and strategy emphasis, it didnt really
business process becomes even more important. For
ever get you what you thought.
every component of the business, theres a horizontal

alignment where IT becomes the business process
Yet, when you remove infrastructure building and
partner and a driver of innovation:
support as the primary area of focus, the people who

are more process-oriented and strategy-oriented
become the most important people in your IT shop
for you as CIO.
The CLOUD Business

The Business
IT
Delivery
Business Strategy
Strategy Support
Innovation
Sales
Business Process Support Sales
Innovation
Service
Business Process Support Service
Innovation
R&D
Business Process Support R&D
Innovation
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LINGO
9 The CIO They Love
drop and someone else is responsible for R&D. In the
What youre really trying to do as a business-savvy
This is going to ask a lot of the CIO who has grown
CIO is blur the line between IT and the business.
up in a brick-and-mortar IT environment, the internet
True breakthroughs in technology involve an iterative
arrived at mid-life or mid-career; to some extent this
delivery process, which depends more on conversa-
involves a wholesale conversion. The seasoned CIO
tion and communication ideas, and less on conserva-
may be asked to move beyond almost everything
tion and the protection of physical and personnel
theyve learned, and embrace a new way of working.
Cloud, most of these things are no longer your decisions.
assets. Innovation occurs within a culture of risk, and

the embracing of small failures in pursuit of larger
And beyond your own conversion, youll have to go
successes.
transform your team and optimize them for speed-tomarket delivery. Instead of protecting your powerbase
A CIO must also become a good caretaker of the
of people, youll need to open up and share them.
brand. Given the inside-out transformation of the IT
When the empire strikes back, you will unleash both
role, theres going to be a level of quality and brand-
innovation and value in those critical areas such as
ing that youve never had to worry about before.
service, sales and R&D, ultimately reinforcing the core
Projects are going to land on the CIOs desk that have
importance of IT to the business.
more to do with brand and culture, and will require

greater transparency to the organization.
Think about it. Youve often known the answer, but

rarely do you get credit for knowing it. Youre no
There will always be a technology underpinning, but
longer the guardian of the key card, behind a locked
for the most part its about those primary business
door with all this equipment. Now, youre part of the
drivers: revenue growth, brand value and profitability.
business.
The era of the propeller head is over.

Data centers and network architecture have moved to
62
a realm of commodities, where the prices continue to
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LINGO
People
1 The Disappearance of
the Slash
I remember when I was getting into the technology
space in the early 1990s. I was a programmer/
analyst. I think that slash in the job title might be
telling, because this role has all but disappeared,
removed in the name of specialization. What this job
title meant was that not only did I have to maintain
the technical skills of developing kickass code as a
64
developer, I had to have the panache of a business
65
These process
people are
going to
be logical
thinkers,
good communicators, with
passion and
energy
for problem
solving. They
know the
business well,
and exude
initiative.
LINGO
analyst who could sit in understand the business, its

challenges, and specify opportunities and strategies
2 Process People Prevail
for deploying business models successfully.

Who are these new weapons you have at your
Programmer/analysts have been a dying breed for
disposal? How do you tell your team apart? Which are
years, but we need them now more than ever. Univer-
the ones with larger potential to align with the new
sities, corporate training programs, and private train-
structure?
ing companies need to dig back into the 1980s and

1990s and dust off the training content for this role,
It probably has less to do with skill sets, specific work
update it and get it back in front of their teams.
experience or any type of technical certification,

and much more to do with personal qualities. These
There is no better way to leverage the new, modern
process people are going to be logical thinkers, good
Cloud-enabled deployment capabilities than with a
communicators, with passion and energy for prob-
strong solution architect who has really good techni-
lem solving. They know the business well, and exude
cal chops as well. Those resources are in such rare air,
initiative.
and we better find a way to retrain, recruit and deploy

those resources if we want to leverage everything
They are less interested in tape back-up, and more
weve got to offer.
focused on taking apart a process and examining the

gaps in the delivery and value chain.
There are some in your organization who can be

trained, mentored and deployed in this role, and if
you want to successfully leverage all that the Cloud
has to offer you need to focus on this task more than
any other.
It will be more critical than vendor selection, procurement negotiations, or application developer skill sets.
66
I promise.
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LINGO
3 Scale Back to Scale Up
and billing as well. Your internal customers and their

customers the end users now expect a different experience. Youre going to be much better off
Admit it. Outsourcing your business processes to the
on your own service delivery if you can cover more
outsourcing firms wasnt the silver bullet that you
ground with the smaller and more mobile teams.
thought it was, and it wont be from now on. But thats

not going to stop the big outsourcing firms knock-
The Cloud helps you rethink lean as a luxury. You dont
ing on your door, cloaked in the Cloud, to help you
need a cadre of 20 people to help you understand
transform your enterprise.
how you can transform your shop. I am continually

amazed seeing large firms do with 12 people what
As a case in point, I often see big consulting firms
Ive seen accomplished with an internal team and a
from the previous Big Five firms throw 30 to 40
couple strong support and architecture resources.
bodies at Cloud projects because they cannot understand how to give their customers what they need in
Thats the model. Dont let them convince you its so
a new model. They only understand onsite resources
scary complicated that you cant help figure out your
billing. Nice work if you can get it.
lean roadmap and strategy.
These incumbent providers are locked into a different business model, and the concept of running
enterprise computing at scale on shared infrastructure, troughed and secure, accessible and governed,
remains to them something very exotic. To them,
security means the self-preservation security of locking you down to their legacy models.
You want to help your business units. Automation
targets are everywhere, not just in supporting the
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sales force, but in your contact center, and accounting
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4 Tapping into Talent
seen with a team of 20 in the past. That gives employees a strong sense of worth. This is the fundamental
difference: how much you can do with so few.
Look at the mess weve made. Weve added an awful

lot of expense to IT solutions over the last 20 years.
I go back to my best days in the Silicon Valley, when
As we attempted to cut cost, weve only made things
failure didnt really cost that much because there
more expensive. Some of it has been absolutely
werent huge assets devoted to your project. There
required and supported an ROI story that drove busi-
werent stakeholders and shareholders to worry
ness success.
about; you were answering to the intrinsic value you
One welcome
thing the Cloud
has brought
is employee
retention
and skill set
building.
were creating in the marketplace.

But this has also created innumerable giveaways for
the technology and outsourced solutions to find the
People love to work for that kind of company and I
cheaper options for expensive infrastructure and
suspect that if you can build that kind of environment,
people. Mix in the specialization of resources which
where innovation and inventiveness trumps moni-
has lent itself to increased cost and limited holistic
toring the infrastructure, youll stand a good chance
perspectives. A real quagmire, one that might have
of retaining the talent you have, and stand a better
detracted new people from entering the IT job market
chance of attracting some new minds. And best of all,
since the message was: the people (also known as the
it will be the kind of place where you want to show up
overhead) were the problem.
every day.
One welcome thing the Cloud has brought is

employee retention and skill-set building. Youre not
going to see this prevalent anywhere at your next
Cloud convention, its not going to be out there as a
demo on the expo floor or in the keynote address.
But you do see a lot more accomplished with smaller
teams of solution architects the business drivers
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with a couple technical resources than you have
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Process
1 Own the Room
Once you embrace the Cloud, heres what youre
going to lose: No more scan card access to a locked
server room. No more hiding all the resource
requirements to keep the infrastructure going in
your Cap Ex budgets. No more limiting the potential of the solution based on the narrow availability
triangle of servers, disk and the people needed to
run them.
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We need the
businesssavvy,
technologyoriented
programmer
analyst more
than ever.
LINGO
Now pure, unbridled solution design and process
Now it takes four or five people to do the kinds of
creativity will drive successful applications,
things we did holistically.
business models, partner ecosystems and customer

interactions.
We need the business-savvy, technology-oriented

programmer analyst more than ever. Interestingly, you
Process creativity is your ability to stand at a white-
dont have to be as technologically proficient: All the
board, listen to confusing, complex, but important
things around infrastructure, scalability and security
stuff from the business, put it into context and formal-
have been pushed out a level. While theres risk in
ize it so you can enable it with tools and technology.
that, Id rather have that challenge put onto a vendor,

because I can hold that vendor accountable. I can
If you can do this, you have a chance to own the room
beat him up if I need to. And I can get the vendor to
again, armed with experience and cache. How well
do more than my staff has the capability to do.
you can do this will drive how successful youre going to be. If you dont have process creativity in your
So its easier to attack complex projects now. Of
arsenal and the members of your IT team dont either,
course, this is not holding back your competitors, so
then failure is inevitable.
you need to jump on the opportunity. Put a lever to

the talent and take back the advantage.
But you will be successful if you can sit in room with

the business people, and understand their processes.
Why? Because you also are the technologists that
know how to implement, develop and deliver their
solutions. So, as programmer analysts, we know the
business challenges and the code.
Unfortunately, whats happened over the last 20 years
is that we have taken those skill sets inherent in the
programmer analyst those five or six core compe-
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tencies and made them individual specialties.
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2 The Clouds Security

Advantage
3 Scalability Is a
Pipe Problem
While security issues may appear to be one of the
Theres currently a lot of caution around network
most formidable challenges to Cloud adoption, what
scalability and failover. Ultimately, were going to buy
a CIO should really fear is what internal users and
some utility computing services, and we need to vet
development partners are capable of doing with
that our vendors can handle load. After all, there is
their data.
immaturity in this space. But realistically, for 90%
The Cloud
provides a level
of security by
obscurity.
When the data
isnt on your
computer its
much harder
to find.
applications we will deploy, the real key is to ensure

Almost all security challenges are data breach issues
that our pipes to the internet are redundant, scalable
created by their own employees leaving a laptop on
and have failover options. That way, when someone
a plane or having it stolen with an easily hackable
cuts some fiber down the street (which seems to hap-
password.
pen to every business about every 5 years) you can

still get to the internet and run your Cloud solutions.
When the data isnt on your computer its much

harder to find. Manage the devices, the people, and
Its a total turnaround from five to ten years ago, when
what they are doing and most of your exposure is
the Internet was a nice to have and the internal LAN,
limited.
at high expense, was redundant, fault-tolerant, and

managed by loads of people, tools, and vendors.
And then the vendors: Every industry has its

accepted levels of governance and you have to make
Now were flipping it up, and saying that the local LAN
sure every cloud infrastructure vendor complies with
is about a wireless access point, maybe a printer, and
your security standards.
some VPN if required. The internet connectivity is the

part that needs to be redundant, robust and always-
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on at any business location. Thats a different network
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of scalability.
4 Whip Through the Turns
Now you should still put your vendors through their
In Cloud environments, youll see failure differently.
paces, because thats due diligence. But ultimately
In fact, you wont need to think about failure at all.
you have to worry about your pipe more than you
Theres less worry about having a major meltdown or
have to worry about whether a Cloud vendor can
having a Plan B to address potential problems,
truly scale.
because the tools and the solution deployment land-
engineering problem, and is the most important part
scape have changed so drastically.

If something doesnt work, you just do it again. You do
it again because now its affordable and you havent
burned a lot of money in cycles. Youre in an environment that allows you to fail gracefully, recover quickly,
and get the thing right.
Face it: Youve run into situations where youve
screwed up the configuration. Maybe not in a major
way, but enough that the customer is confused and
irritated. Its the nature of this work.
Youre always going to deal with a certain degree of
imprecision, whether its the words on a piece of
paper or the flow charts on the whiteboard. The
requirements and all the things weve come to know
and love through 40 years of systems implementation
are still important, but ultimately, that imprecision
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is much more likely to be recoverable in Cloud
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Your ability to
take that failed
effort and turn
it into something of value is
much stronger
than it is in the
on-premise
world.
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environments. The tools and the configuration and

deployment are so simple, it levels the deployment
model.
Lets say you did something and it failed. You didnt
have the right requirements or the right data, or the
right people telling you what you needed. Your ability
to take that failed effort and turn it into something
of value is much stronger than it is in the on-premise
world.
Tools
You can chop and change, and make adjustments

quickly. Of course, you still have similar governance
on how you deploy and test. That doesnt go away.
But the design, unit build, and system testing? Now
you can whip through those cycles much faster than
1 Vendors with Ripped Abs
in any kind of environment Ive ever seen. It really

doesnt matter whose tools youre using. One of the
Tools are drastically different from where they
main reasons for these new deployment advantages
were even five years ago. The development tools
is that the vendors have gone on a diet and put the
we now have at our disposal are so much better,
skinny on their product offerings. You now have sim-
mainly because the Cloud-focused vendors went on
ple tools, with the excess stripped out. You just want
a drastic diet. They stripped out many of the non-
the core stuff, right? You want to be able to make the
essentials, the bloated features that drag everything
simple turns to provide what the business needs.
down. Were talking the software equivalent of

having ripped abdominals and zero belly fat .
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Its a resimplification
of the software
delivery model
as well as the
application
development
model that
lends itself to
graceful failure
and quick fix.
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You know this from the basic software you use in
The bottom line is that you get the right answer more
the office. You probably only use 35 percent of that
quickly with less money. You have a fearlessness
softwares features every day, maybe another 15-20
youve never had and that creates business opportu-
percent once a week. When it comes down to it, you
nity. Thats a big differentiator.
actually barely use the product. And some of the more

arcane features make you hate the product. What you
really want are the simple tools, simple deployment
models, to be able to get things done quickly.
So now you have providers like salesforce.com with
three to four releases of their product a year, unheard
of in the enterprise software, on-premise world. Your
traditional legacy vendors would release at that rate
because of bug fixes, because everything was big,
bloated, and broken.
But now its simplified. You have less levers to touch,
but enough to build solutions. Its a simplification of
the software delivery and application development
models that lends itself to graceful failure and quick
fix. Go ahead and screw it up.
Who hasnt worked at a company or in an IT shop
where the development projects were way over
budget, failed to deliver what was expected, and were
late and stressful? Its gone now. You strip that stuff
away, and you take fear and uncertainty out of the
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equation. Now you focus on the solution.
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2 Beware the Entrenched

Vendor
business users and application developers truly need
This will come as no surprise but there are a lot of
architects design and deploy solutions that will satisfy
companies in the IT vendor space who stand to lose a
the consumer-derived user experience that business
lot because of the Cloud. So, many vendors are simply
apps need to deliver today.
to be successful.
Just remember: Only with infrastructure virtualized or
Cloud-deployed can solution architects and technical
taking their existing services and products hosting,

outsourcing and co-location and rebranding them
as cloud products. Their definition of Cloud is translated into our product.
So while Cloud transformation is not incredibly
complex, you certainly will see these entrenched vendors make this process seem as complex as possible.
They desperately will attempt to maintain their legacy
applications and tools, and heritage of sales.
But their solutions will always fall short of whats been
architected from scratch with the Cloud in mind. And
you shouldnt be afraid of their scare and confusion
tactics. This is inevitable and quite normal, actually
but certainly not in your best interests.
What is one vendors flexibility is often a spaghetti-
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mess of production confusion, market chaos, and a

severe lack of understanding regarding what both
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3 Dont Buy the Cloud from

a Database Vendor
Cloud solution offerings. Its a community of people
Dont tie yourself to a provider that is already
also driven by the excitement of how different this is.
that learned from the ASP outsourcing model, from

the dot.com successes and failures, and from the
retrenching into what is now our modern economy.
Theyre seasoned software professionals, but theyre
offering on-premise solutions or software. You want

a vendor that has built its Cloud solution from the
The resolve and understanding of these kinds of
ground up.
professionals is what you want in your solution partner. These people are not confused about their role.
Run the other way if the Cloud is coming at you from
Theyre focused on the things that matter.
a database developer or server vendor. You need to

hold out for a provider for whom customer adoption
The right provider teams now are in execution mode.
and customer ROI are the only metrics that matter.
Theyre not in R&D mode or vision and value mode;
Those have to be the leading metrics by which they
they have solid products and solid process, and they
gauge their business.
are executing on them.
Beware a
cloaked
approach when
Cloud is merely
a mix-in, where
you have three
or four different
ways to buy
what you want:
Cloud versus
on-premise,
versus appliance, versus
hosted solution
versus co-lo.
And beware a cloaked approach when Cloud is merely

a mix-in, where you have three or four different ways
to buy what you want: Cloud versus on-premise,
versus appliance, versus hosted solution versus co-lo.
Look for simplicity of the offering instead of vendors
coming up with myriad offerings. And look for consistent release cycles that represent a good roll-out and
update strategy.
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Today were running into a lot of people from the

1990s in Silicon Valley who are now masterminding
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CIO
1 The Cloud Opportunist
Remember the old guy from the movie The
Shawshank Redemption who was released from
prison and didnt know what to do? He worked in a
grocery store briefly as a bagger and then he
went back to his tiny room and gave up on life
altogether.
Well, you dont have to be that guy. Adopting the
Cloud gives you the green light at your parole
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hearing, and you walk away from cell block IT and
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emerge into daylight from the grim and gray prison
Officer? See above. You get my point. It really comes
of on-premise limitations. And all the outsourcing
down to being an opportunist (lower case) who uses
consultants and gear vendors are up there in the
the Cloud to get at innovation.
guard towers shaking their heads in dismay as you

walk unshackled to freedom, you dont have to worry
Think sports, where opportunists abound: the tennis
about what its going to be like on the outside.
player who poaches at the net, the outfielder who

shades from the normal position, anticipating where
Especially if you take what the term CIO used to
the ball is going to be hit, the linebacker who crouches
mean and give it some new life.
behind the onrushing linemen and then pops up

when the quarterback throws to what he thought was
Chief? Are you kidding me? Squeezed between the
an open receiver. Interception. Touchdown. Contract
Alphas in senior management on one side and your
renewal.
own infrastructure-focused team on the other, you
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were at the mercy of the swirling whims of stockholder
An opportunist is someone who profits from the
voting blocs and the inertia that IT has been encour-
prevailing circumstances. The prevailing Cloud cir-
aging among its ranks for the last 40 or 50 years. You
cumstances I see right now mean you can align your
were more likely fully in charge of things where you
process teams with the business units, lower the cost
really did have control, with appellations like Maintainer
for each cycle, and solve the problems your custom-
of the Gear and Defender of the Line Item.
ers, contact centers, and sales teams.
Information? What is that? Its a meaningless word,
The opportunist who maximizes the Cloud for innova-
unchanged from the 14thcentury when it meant
tion is going to be noticed. This is not about contrib-
something that was a concept or an idea. Information
uting to a few rounds of expense reduction as a slash
is ineffable. Check the box marked N/A please. We
mode play. Youre not a bagger anymore and youre
treat information as if it is a solid, but its not that or
not holing up in a small room. The Cloud redemption
even a liquid, barely a gas. And youre going to track
has much more to do with achieving top-line growth
it, trap it, refine it, distribute it and meter it? Not with
and shareholder value, and if you get that, you just
that infrastructure; no way.
might be chief after all.
The linebacker
who crouches
behind the
onrushing
linemen and
then pops up
when the
quarterback
throws to what
he thought
was an open
receiver.
Interception.
Touchdown.
Contract
renewal.
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Your ability to
please the CFO
with a price
point and an
innovation
layer that
drives revenue
and cost
avoidance is
the key to your
success.
LINGO
2 The IT Spend
Want to be the CIO everyone loves? Then focus on
lower-cost, higher-value solutions that really center
on value, not just spending.
3 Creating Value and Vision

for Your CEO
As you change the value/vision mix for your CEO
or board of directors, you better be pretty closely
These affordable solutions are cost-effective, exten-
mapped to how its going to work day to day.
sible, and provide a level of governance and scalability

often overlooked in the current application stack.
Cloud transformation is like hitting the plunger and

blowing up how IT handles internal and external
The chief technology executive will leverage many
customers. And the biggest bang for your buck will
small solutions to build out an enterprise roadmap,
ultimately come in how quickly you can transform
and will design and deploy solutions that show value
business process and workflow activity.
at every project release. This focus is a healthy and

positive one for business. Ten years ago it wasnt
The key is to find a nimble, innovative strategy that
very glamorous, but being competitive and winning
pares back distractions and creates the cost avoidance
market share is in vogue right now.
or revenue enhancement that drives every business

model decision. And for your CEO, that influence, that
Which means that things are back in the hands of
impact is huge.
the CFO. Your ability to please him or her with a price

point and an innovation layer that drives revenue and
cost avoidance is the key to your success. Fail in that
endeavor in this market? Game over.
End of story.
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3 Inside the Cloud

Transformed Enterprise
While external forces are driving macro changes,
the CIO will be planning and executing from the
CLOUD DEPARTMENTAL ALIGNMENT

Sales
Marketing
IT
inside out. Operational center managers, marketing,
Delivery
Operations
Legal
sales and service, are all going to embrace your focus
Finance
on cost efficient solutions. This is a welcome thawing

of the age-old, totally ingrained divisiveness between
IT and the business.
Remember, the Cloud is not about buying a piece of

equipment. Familiarize your teams with the new sub-
On board is your goal for all departments. For
scription model, so theyre not treating it like its the
instance, making sure that the legal team is on board
same old on-premise, software and hardware procure-
with the vision and the value. Legal teams are go-
ment model. Youll need to understand this to get the
ing to find all kinds of interesting ways to challenge
finance team on board, because there are plenty of
the vision or the strategy. Thats not unusual. Thats
accounting practices that need to be considered.
normal. Youre not going to plop new contracts on

them and not create problems. Remember, back office
Finance, legal and procurement need to understand
functions serve a purpose for negotiation and risk
why the Cloud is non-negotiable for the health and
mitigation.
future of your company. Get them involved in the

story before you need them to execute.
The trick is to stay involved in the conversation and
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make sure that they dont create situations where you
Get them all focused on how the Cloud needs to be
cant go in the direction you want to, where you cant
different from whats gone before. It will help you
get the vision and value tied together.
smooth the rough edges.
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Liberation
1 Retooling for the
21st Century
Some believe the next decade will mark the period when companies fundamentally retool for the
21st century. But you could say that the retooling
began 15 years ago and that we are just now seeing
the results of that retooling, the first lift from these
earthbound technologies.
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I dont know
who this new
company is,
but I do know
it will be
about tools,
browsers,
watchers
and code
optimization.
LINGO
True liberation will occur as forces greater than individual companies drive business process forward,
2 The Tools of Tomorrowland
and the CIO will be there to anticipate and harness

value from this progression of changes.
Today is about making transactions more secure,

environments easier to scale a deluge of
If youre ever lost in the middle of all of this, look to
deployment plays. You can observe them all right now
large companies mergers and talent acquisitions, to
rising on the thermals beneath the Cloud.
what entrepreneurs are paying attention to, and to

where the venture capitalists are forming funds.
Tomorrow someones going to come along with the

next generation of development tools, Cloud-savvy
Its tempting to think about where we may be in the
tools, like Borland did for PC development. PC devel-
next ten years, but I want to pull back and use the
opment took off because of these solid tools.
conclusion of this discussion to look at where we may

be in three to four years, to synthesize both prophetic
I dont know who this new company is, but I do know
and pragmatic views.
it will be about tools, browsers, watchers and code

optimization. Theyre going to come up with a suite of
stuff, a combination of infrastructure and governance
and process mapping. Tools that will get us beyond,
or should I say below, the VP of marketing and the
VP of sales. These will be more powerful, with a wide
spectrum to govern and manage appropriately,
and to drive more effective utilization of assets,
storage and computing powers.
And around those tools youll find a flock of vendors
offering premium services that can accommodate
your requirements, which happen to be 99 percent
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different than other customers. And, following that,
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ing power, or analytics.
3 Verne Global, a Green Story
So it pays to pay attention to where the tools are
When you take the leap and begin to think about
going. There are a lot of us waiting for this, because
your servers and your software residing securely
we know how much more we can do with what
outside your shop, say in Nevada or North Carolina,
weve already experienced in Cloud transformation.
then you might as well push this to its logical conclu-
Whoever comes up with the overwhelming tools will
sion and think of all the strategic places on the planet
quickly separate from the pack.
where you might put a data center.
When Disneyland opened the Tomorrowland part
Rising power costs and server densities have put a
of the theme park in 1955, it offered a vision of the
sharp focus on managing and reducing data center
world as it might be in 1986, including household
energy consumption. In the United States and United
conveniences such as microwave ovens and picture
Kingdom, the supply and reliability of electricity is
phones. But the most distinctive exhibit was the TWA
increasingly in question due to overburdened grids.
Moonliner, with V-2 rocket design, atomic-powered to
The trend toward green policies and government
take passengers into space as easily as we fly them to
mandates like the Carbon Reduction Commitment
Cleveland.
are also pressuring companies to reduce the carbon
youll see something offerings around data, process-
footprint of their power-hungry facilities.

Well, TWA is long gone and were still waiting for the
Moonliner. Im betting these new Cloud tools will
Iceland is now a go-to option for infrastructure. Thats
arrive much sooner. And then youll really see things
right, Iceland. Data centers have grown massively over
take off.
the past decade, becoming a major part of companies core, strategic infrastructures. At the same time,
a confluence of factors are forcing organizations to
quickly search for alternatives to the usual high-cost
locations.
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Data center efficiency goes beyond knowing if servers

are still up. These days, data center managers are
accountable for energy usage, energy efficiency,
compliance, and regulation. Performance must be
monitored and trends must be predicted to ensure
4 Enterprise Software
Consolidation
that the data center is ready for capacity increases at
The coming enterprise software consolidation is
any time.
running ahead of what will be consolidation the likes

of which we havent seen in 100 years.
Iceland-based Verne Global is helping clients untether from high data center rents, high power costs
Companies in spaces like business services, energy,
and massive carbon footprints. Iceland is an excellent
software, construction, telco /media and finance will
place to locate your next data center because it elimi-
find ways to create value via acquisition and organic
nates all three. Icelands climate provides free ambient
growth. And companies with broad-based customer
cooling, and connectivity times to Europe and North
rolodexes will be prepared to offer services to them in
America are more than adequate.
sophisticated ways.
Verne Globals first data center is 100 percent pow-
Imagine the seemingly unholy alliance of GE, Google,
ered by renewable energy resources and 100 percent
and Pacific, Gas and Electric? Or Vodafone, salesforce.
cooled by the natural environment of Iceland, without
com, Cisco and Duke Energy? Huge mergers will start
the use of chillers or compressors.
to happen within 12 months time. Weve already seen
The people
that own the
best security
minds and solid
products will
do well in
positioning the
infrastructure
solutions that
people and
companies
require.
Intel take a shot across the bow with the purchase of

Additionally, Verne Global is reducing overall energy
McAfee.
consumption through optimization of data center
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design and server utilization. The facility, as well as the
Why would they do that? Because security will be es-
design and construction program is centered around
sential in the new world of the Cloud, and the people
LEED Gold standards, while meeting the stringent
that own the best security minds and solid products
requirements of todays computing platforms.
will do well in positioning the infrastructure solutions

that people and companies require.
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While initial Cloud adoption has been driven by cost

factors, the explosive growth will only occur when
5 Where My Mouth Is
security is not seen as the barrier but the reason

why you want to get your data away from the weak
This is not just me jawing about the transformation
barriers of your own firewalls. This is most obvious in
and liberation that the Cloud is bringing and will
industries such as financial services, healthcare and
continue to bring once everyone owns this book
government, where regulation and special require-
and packs it in their carry-on luggage. This is not me
ments abound and where infiltration and leaks cannot
pontificating atop a lofty summit or finger-pointing
occur for any reason. But it applies just as easily in the
from up in first class (I fly commercial, by the way).
private sector where customer lists and trade secrets
Nor is this me going Keith Moon, shot putting servers
are proprietary, and even in the not-for-profit realm
out my hotel window into the swimming pool below.
where donor information is held in trust.

No, this is me on the phone calling my broker and
So now youre starting to see the early movements,
selling (or shorting) all my stock in ERP outfitters and
the overt linkage between hardware providers and
the publicly-traded consulting firms that peddle on-
security software. Wait until you see the first unholy
premise solutions. Dump em, before the bell!
matrimony of a software company and a utility

company and then remember you read it here first.
Better yet, Ill start my own venture fund. If someone would kindly drop $120 million in my lap this
These new companies will own the grid, as well as the
afternoon, Ill go out and launch Lingo Ventures or
smart networks, applications, and security to deliver
Premiseless Partners, and Ill hang my VC shingle on
loads of services, billed through complex metering
Sand Hill Road and get to work finding the entrepre-
and pricing plans. Five years ago commoditized
neurs who are putting together the major plays for
pricing for virutalization and data services seemed like
2015, the year Ill start returning gobs of money to
madness, but Amazons AWS technologies deliver
my limited partners.
exactly that today for pennies -- PENNIES -- on the

dollar of what this stuff used to cost.
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Ill start with investments in smart-grid technologies.

As an investor Id head to very large markets, where
105
LINGO
the large utility players are converging and serial

entrepreneurs are attracted by the opportunities to
6 Im No Oracle
create value.
You can tell from my picture that Im not the guy
Then Ill head over and invest in Cloud-based software
who stands on the mountaintop and hands down
thats focused on billing and product configuration,
prophecy on stone tablets. I dont look at a moth-
and vet some security ventures while Im at it. Ill put
erboard and pretend it has anything Ouija about it,
some advanced network switch and failover product
because youll never find the answer in the gear.
play in my venture shopping cart, and heading for

home, Ill scoop up the most promising application
And Im not the wizard in majestic robes at the front
development and monitoring tool companies, the
of expectant audience craving a miracle. As youve
ones developed exclusively for Cloud apps.
learned already, what I have to tell you is not going to

be very profound; provocative, I hope, and practical
Thats when this will really mean something. When
maybe, but not necessarily profound.
you not only stake your professional reputation on the

liberating qualities of the Cloud, but when you take
I do have two advantages over most CIOs in recogniz-
your piggy bank and your 401k and you place it in a
ing what the Cloud means. I worked in Silicon Valley
Cloud mutual fund.
for many years. Silicon Valley teaches people what it

takes to bring a company to life in a venture capitalfueled environment. How do you navigate to get
something done right? With nimbleness, even with
the rope-a-dope moves you sometimes have to make.
You dont waste any time or energy going back and
solving a problem a different way. Leave the ego aside
and just go back and do it again.
106
107
LINGO
From my standpoint, this Silicon Valley nimbleness is

tongue-and-groove with what its going to take to be
successful in the Cloud.
The other advantage is that in my current role, working all around the world helping companies with their
Cloud transformation strategy, I get to listen to a lot of
folks. Ive seem a lot of Transformations to the Cloud,
and everything Ive been telling you here, is exactly
what I hear every single day.
There is nothing here you cant find out for yourself
eventually, or maybe pick up along the way. But hopefully this book can help you frame it in a way youve
never thought about before.
We all know IT is a moving target, and maybe now
you realize that target isnt on your back anymore.
The bulls eye is out there, and youve been given
better arrows, at less than wholesale prices. Now you
can free up and train more archers so youre not the
only one shooting at the problem.
Im no soothsayer, but if it helps, lets grab coffee and
talk it over. Better make mine a double espresso.
Well definitely be adding some rocket fuel to this
story before its all said and done.
108
109
LINGO
At Mikes day job as Chief Technology Officer and SVP,

Professional Services at Astadia, he helps companies
use the Cloud to transform their businesses.
Scenario planning for Cloud transformation is easy
(and free) online with the IT Transformation ROI
calculator at astadia.com/roi
110
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LINGO

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

WITH JON OBERMEYER

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

to all those who taught me

Jeanne Kibler, John Doe and Exene, Mike Watt

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Astadia Press.

dad Helene and Jack Lingo, Michael Marendo,

and D. Boon, Jeanette Guthrie, my mom and

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

The Car Commercial

1 Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Cloud

1 The Empire Strikes Back, or Unleashing IT

1 The Disappearance of the Slash

1 Own the Room

1 Vendors with Ripped Abs

1 The Cloud Opportunist

1 Retooling for the 21st Century

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

The Car Commercial

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

Cut to someone obviously not me, an experienced driver

Cut to me standing in front of a cargo ship unloading

on a closed circuit, taking the car through its paces...

thousands of cars onto the lot at a secure port...

I tell them the Cloud has a higher safety rating than

And this is not just some special offer because youre

standard computing, and you get that safety and

the head honcho; this is available to everybody. You

security without compromising at all on what you can

want fifty for your fleet by this morning? Fine. You

wring out of this baby on the curves in your contact

want five thousand for your global sales force, deliv-

center, or on slick surfaces like you find on the execu-

ery around lunchtime? You got it!

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

may not have been of your own making. The very

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

things that gave you the illusion of security have you

be taken apart piece by piece, dug out at the footings,

lifted and then rolled on logs across the terrain.

Your workers have apprenticed in the centuries-old

around common currency, language and custom.

tradition, in the rituals and folklore of proven practice.

and the guilds of governance.

beyond the walls is subject at any time to a change in

The friends that have arrived to help you from the

infantry, and when they break camp, they leave you

outside wont leave when you no longer need them.

behind, shackled in the labyrinth within the fortress of

They have too much at stake, and they have bolted

your own making.

You have been able to build most everything you need,

stores and deplete your resources, and toast you from

flagons of exotic ornament. These same friends have

even if you wanted to move closer, you cant.

erected monuments and monoliths to their legacy, and

nimble to be found. For something to be moved, it must

HEY! YOU! GET ONTO MY CLOUD

2 TCO: Total Cost of Onerous

formation, and I see what can be achieved, things I

Throw out the old metrics. They dont mean any-