The Future of Everything As A Service

SPECIAL REPORT
The future of Everything

as a Service
COPYRIGHT ©2017 CBS INTERACTIVE INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING AS A SERVICE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
03 XaaS: Why ‘everything’ is now a service
12 Infographic: Why companies are switching to Everything as a Service
14 SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS: Understand the differences
17 Cloud computing: How to make the move without losing control
20 How one Aussie surfboard business rode the SaaS wave
26 Going to the cloud: When on-premise DIY might be best
28 Event-driven cloud computing: How and when it makes sense for
your organization
30 Find the best talent to drive your cloud and digital transformation
35 How do I evolve my skills for the cloud era?
2
XAAS: WHY ‘EVERYTHING’ IS NOW

A SERVICE
BY CHARLES MCLELLAN
As soon as internet connectivity became widely available at reasonable speed, and offered low enough latency,
service providers of various kinds began offering scalable, on-demand products that were delivered over those
connections.
For many observers, the modern cloud computing era dates from the launch of the first business-class
software-as-a-service (SaaS) application, Salesforce.com, in 1999. But of course, there were precursors,
including application service providers (ASPs) and, before that, utility computing via timesharing on
mainframes.
There are now thousands of SaaS applications, available from internet giants to startups, along with services
from rather fewer providers of the other two key pillars of cloud computing: platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Here’s how analyst firm Gartner characterises these foundational cloud
services in comparison to more traditional methods of IT delivery:
IMAGE: GARTNER
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With SaaS, service consumers control their data, Most of these potential problems can be
but everything else in the IT stack is managed by minimised with good planning and a tightly
the service provider. With PaaS, the application defined SLA (Service Level Agreement), but
layer comes into play, while IaaS consumers businesses will need to remain vigilant in order to
control everything from the OS layer upwards. minimise them—and also realise that public cloud
deployment will not be the answer for every IT
The contrast with traditional on-premises (or
workload or business process.
private cloud) IT is very clear: the capital costs
associated with equipping and maintaining FROM SAAS TO XAAS
data centres full of physical and virtual servers,
Gartner
networking and storage are someone else’s
There’s no doubt that public cloud services are a
problem—and large service providers such as
booming business. Gartner’s latest forecast puts
Amazon, Microsoft and Google can solve that
the total worldwide revenue for 2017 at $260.2
problem far easier than the average business can.
billion, up from $219.6 billion in 2016, repre-
As a customer, you just pay for what you use.
senting 18.5 percent growth.
The fundamental benefits of the ‘as a service’ “Final data for 2016 shows that software as a
model are well known, and include: a shift from service (SaaS) revenue was far greater in 2016 than
capital to operational expenditure (capex to expected, reaching $48.2 billion,” said Sid Nag,
opex), often leading to lower TCO (total cost research director at Gartner, in a statement. “SaaS
of ownership); access for businesses of all sizes is also growing faster in 2017 than previously
to up-to-date technology, maintained by service forecast, leading to a significant uplift in the entire
providers that can leverage economies of scale; public cloud revenue forecast.” Gartner expects
scalability according to business requirements; fast SaaS revenue to grow 21.6 percent in 2017 to
implementation times for new applications and reach $58.6 billion, and at the same rate in 2018 to
business processes; freeing up staff and resources reach $71.2bn.
for other projects and priorities.
“Strategic adoption of platform as a service
Of course there are potential downsides to (PaaS) offerings is also outperforming previous
‘as-a-service’ adoption, which include: service expectations, as enterprise-scale organizations
outages; security, governance and compliance are increasingly confident that PaaS will be
issues; inadequate performance; hidden costs their primary form of application development
(including the cost of integrating and managing platform in the future,” Nag continued. Gartner
multiple cloud services, and of handling potentially expects PaaS revenue to grow 26.7 percent in 2017
large amounts of data); service provider lock-in; to reach $11.4 billion, and 24.6 percent in 2018 to
and customer support issues. reach $14.2bn.
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The highest revenue growth will come from infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which Gartner projects will grow
36.6 percent in 2017 to reach $34.7 billion, and 32 percent in 2018 to reach $45.8bn.
As well as the traditional pillars of cloud computing (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS), Gartner tracks three other broad
public cloud service categories: cloud business process services (BPaaS); cloud management and security
services; and cloud advertising. Here’s how the analyst firm’s current revenue and growth projections look
until 2020:
DATA: GARTNER/CHART: ZDNET
DATA: GARTNER/CHART: ZDNET
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Gartner foresees continuing growth in all sectors (and particularly IaaS, PaaS and
SaaS), reflecting the seemingly relentless march of public cloud adoption. But
although ‘everything’ is increasingly available as a service, there’s a long way to go.
“As of 2016, approximately 17 percent of the total market revenue for infrastructure,
middleware, application and business process services had shifted to cloud. Through
2021, this will increase to approximately 28 percent,” said Gartner’s Nag.
Notwithstanding the potential downsides to cloud adoption outlined earlier, the sheer
scale of the migration task even for organisations that are minded to go ‘all-in’ on
the cloud is huge: multiple apps and business processes must be assessed for cloud
suitability, cloud providers and services compared and selected, services architected
and secured, costs estimated and governance policies implemented, services
provisioned and orchestrated, and deployments managed and monitored.
Spiceworks
Another view of the state of play in cloud adoption comes from Spiceworks’ recent
2018 State of IT report on budgets and tech trends. This survey was conducted
in July 2017 and is based on responses from 1,003 IT professionals from North
America and Europe working in organisations ranging from SMEs to enterprises.
Industry sectors covered by the survey include manufacturing, healthcare,
non-profits, education, government and finance.
Although hosted/cloud-based services are currently third in the budget allocation

pecking order at 21 percent, behind hardware (31%) and software (26%), it’s the
category where most respon-
dents report a spending
increase:
(See Spiceworks’ report for

drill-downs on geography and
company size.)
DATA: SPICEWORKS/CHART: ZDNET
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Spiceworks’ respondents spend their hosted/cloud services budget in a variety of areas, headed by online
backup/recovery (15%), productivity (10%), web hosting (9%) and email hosting (9%). Bringing up the rear are
developer tools, communications and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS), all at 3 percent.
When it comes to cloud-based workloads, the top categories—both now and over the next 12 months—are
communications and collaboration, backup/disaster recovery and productivity apps:
Six of the 11 workload categories have more respondents planning to deploy in the cloud over the next 12
months than are currently doing so, namely: high-performance computing, supply chain management, R&D/
engineering, software development, eCommerce and productivity apps.
The top drivers for workload migration to the cloud, in Spiceworks’ survey, were: providing access to data
anywhere (42%); enhancing disaster recovery capabilities (38%); enabling better flexibility/scalability (37%);
and reducing the support burden on IT staff. Less important drivers were reducing capital expenditure (28%),
increasing storage capacity (26%) and improving data security (26%).
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The final section of Spiceworks’ 2018 State of IT report looks at the adoption of a range of new(ish)
technologies, which includes several offerings in the XaaS arena—IT automation, SDS/virtual SAN, IaaS, PaaS,
SDN and hyperconvergence:
The preceding forecast and survey data give a flavour of the breadth of available public cloud services and
current patterns of adoption. To finish, here’s a (non-comprehensive) listing of IT components and business
processes that are available as cloud-based services, and the key providers:
Service Description Key providers
Adobe, ADP, AWS, Atlassian, Box, Cisco, Akamai, DocuSign,

Software as a service
Applications Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, MuleSoft, Oracle, Salesforce,
(SaaS)
ServiceNow, Slack, Workday, Zendesk (and many others)
Appian, Betty Blocks, Caspio, Fujitsu, kintone, Mendix, Oracle,

App Platform as a service
OutSystems, QuickBase, Salesforce, ServiceNow, TrackVia,
development (PaaS)
Zoho
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Alibaba Cloud, AWS, CenturyLink, Fujitsu, Google, IBM,

IT Infrastructure as a
Interoute, Joyent, Microsoft, NTT Communications, Oracle,
infrastructure service (IaaS)
Rackspace, Skytap, Virtustream
SDN (software-de-
fined networks),
AWS, Cisco, Google, Juniper, Microsoft, Nuage Networks,
Networking or NFV (network
VMware
function
virtualization)
Storage as a service Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Google, IBM (Bluemix), Microsoft,

Storage
(STaaS) Oracle, Tencent, Rackspace, Virtustream
Containers as a
Containers AWS, Google, IBM, Joyent, Rackspace
service (CaaS)
Function as a service
Functions AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft
(FaaS), or ‘serverless’
Desktop as a service
Adapt, AWS, Citrix, Dell Services, dinCloud, Dizzion, Evolve
Desktop PCs (DaaS), or PC as a
IP, NaviSite, NuveStack, The Sixth Flag, VMware
service (PCaaS)
AT&T, Atos, BAE Systems, BT, CenturyLink, CSC, HCL

Security as a service
Security Technologies, HPE, IBM, NTT Security, Orange Business
(SECaaS)
Services, SecureWorks, Symantec, Trustwave, Verizon, Wipro
Aiiria, Altiscale, AWS, BlobCity, Cazena, CenturyLink,

Citus, ClearDB, Clusterpoint, CumuLogic, Database Labs,
Database platform as
Database EnterpriseDB, Google, IBM, Instaclustr, Microsoft, Mirantis,
a service (dbPaaS)
mLab, MongoDB, Oracle, Qubole, Rackspace, Redis Labs,
Salesforce, SAP, Snowflake, Teradata, Tesora, Tieto
Acronis, Axcient, Bluelock, C&W Business, Carbonite,

CloudHPT, Daisy, Databarracks, Datto, Evolve IP, Expedient,
Disaster Disaster recovery as a
IBM, iland, Infrascale, Microsoft, NTT Communications,
recovery service (DRaaS)
Peak 10, Quorum, Recovery Point, StorageCraft, Sungard
Availability Services, TierPoint, Unitrends
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Actian, Adaptris, Attunity, Built.io, Celigo, DBSync, Dell

Cloud service iPaaS (integration Boomi, Fujitsu, IBM, Informatica, Jitterbit, Microsoft,
integration platform as a service) Moskitos, Mulesoft, Oracle, SAP, Scribe Software, SnapLogic,
TerraSky, Youredi
HRaaS (human
resources as a
Human ADP, Ceridian, Infor, Kronos, Meta4, Oracle, Ramco Systems,
service), or Cloud
resources SAP, Ultimate Software, Talentia Software, Workday
HCM (human capital
management)
Cloud CFM Acumatica, Deltek, Epicor Software, FinancialForce, Intacct,

Financials (core financial Microsoft, Oracle ERP Cloud, Oracle (NetSuite), Ramco
management) Systems, SAP, Workday
CRM (customer
relationship bpm’online, CRMNEXT, eGain, Eptica, Freshdesk, Lithium,
Customer
management), Microsoft, mplsystems, Oracle, Pegasystems, Salesforce, SAP,
engagement
CEC (customer ServiceNow, SugarCRM, Zendesk
engagement center)
Adobe, Avaya, Applied Global Technologies, AVI-SPL, Blue

Video as a service
Video Jeans, Cisco, Eagle Eye Networks, Huawei, Interoute, Polycom,
(VaaS)
Vidyo
Unified Unified communi- 8x8, AT&T, BroadSoft, BT, Google, Fuze, Masergy, Microsoft,
communica- cations as a service Mitel, NTT Group, Orange Business Services, RingCentral,
tions (UCaaS) Star2Star, Verizon
Artificial AI as a service AWS, Datoin, Google, IBM (Bluemix/Watson), Microsoft,

intelligence (AIaaS) Noodle.ai, Nvidia GPU Cloud, ServiceNow
This isn’t an exhaustive listing by any means. To illustrate how far the XaaS model has progressed, consider the
fact that malware is now increasingly available, on the dark web, as a service to would-be cyber-criminals.
OUTLOOK
Increasingly, ‘everything’ in the IT sphere can be delivered as a service via the internet. There will always be
pros and cons of outsourcing versus in-house deployment, but given service provider openness and buyer due
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diligence, organisations should be able to allocate their workloads and business processes across these locations
in something approaching an optimal manner.
However, as XaaS uptake rises and the IoT (in particular) makes its presence felt, issues like internet bandwidth
and latency, and data storage/retrieval times, are likely to become ever more pressing—along with the need to
integrate, manage and secure multiple cloud services.
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INFOGRAPHIC: WHY COMPANIES

ARE SWITCHING TO EVERYTHING AS
A SERVICE
BY AMY TALBOTT
There are a variety of reasons a
company would want to shift business
or IT services from an in-house to an
as-a-service model. A new research
report from ZDNet’s sister site Tech Pro
Research examines why businesses choose
the as-a-service option, what services
they’ve shifted, and what outcomes
they’re experiencing.
When asked why their company chose

to use service providers instead of
systems created in-house, half of respon-
dents to the Tech Pro Research survey
cited automatic maintenance offered by
vendors as a reason. Slightly less than
half said that lower cost in terms of
deployment and maintenance, and faster
time to deployment, were advantages of
the as-a-service model.
Because 42 percent of respondents

came from businesses with 49 or fewer
employees, it makes sense that many of
them also said their company chose the
IMAGE: ERIK UNDERWOOD/TECHREPUBLIC
as-a-service model because they didn’t
have the in-house expertise to deploy
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services they use, or that their company needed to free up the IT team for other tasks. Companies represented
in the survey used an average of two to three business functions and two to three IT functions as a service.
This infographic looks at the most popular types of business and IT services, as well as the top positive and
negative outcomes reported by respondents. For more detailed results and analysis, check out the full report,
Everything as a Service: Popular services, reasons for switching, and outcomes after implementation (Tech Pro
Research subscription required).
13
SAAS, PAAS, AND IAAS: UNDERSTAND

THE DIFFERENCES
BY CONNER FORREST development platforms and tools, or you are
Cloud computing is one technology moving faster renting software. That’s IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS,”
than almost all others toward becoming table Bartoletti said.
stakes in enterprise IT. In 2017 alone, the public
Here’s a brief explanation of each layer, and how
cloud services market is predicted to grow 18%,
they impact the business.
hitting a value of $246.8 billion, according to
research firm Gartner.
SAAS
Understanding the cloud can help business leaders SaaS is the often the top-most layer in an
make more strategic investments and remain organization’s cloud strategy. It refers to software
competitive going forward. Cloud clarity starts that is hosted on someone’s else’s infrastructure,
with understanding the model itself. but delivered to a client organization’s end users
as a service, often accessed through a specific web
AS A SERVICE portal.
According to 451 Research analyst Carl Brooks,
“SaaS is packaged software that you connect to,
for a technology solution to qualify as “as a
that looks the same for every single customer. You
Service,” it has to meet the National Institute
don’t get to control updates, or when upgrades
of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition
happen,” Forrester Research principal analyst
parameters, which he paraphrased as “self-service,
Lauren Nelson said. “You get some level of
paid on-demand, elastic, scalable, programmatically
customization, but the entire stack is taken care of
accessible (APIs), and available over the network.”
by a third party.”
In a general sense, the cloud is divided into three
Being that the management of the software is
distinct layers: Software as a Service (SaaS),
offloaded to a third party, it is also the most
Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as
abstracted layer, Bartoletti said. This makes the
a Service (IaaS). The fundamental model of cloud
software easier to consume, as installation and
computing that underpins all three of these layers
support are typically handled by the vendor.
is a service rental model, according to Forrester
Research principal analyst Dave Bartoletti. “You Common SaaS users are business people, including
are renting infrastructure, or you are renting salespeople using a SaaS-based CRM, Bartoletti
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said. Well-known SaaS products include Salesforce for CRM and Workday for ERP. SaaS could be a great fit for
companies that consume a lot of commodity software, but might not be very useful for companies that build a
lot of proprietary software in house, Bartoletti added.
IaaS is what most people

PAAS
PaaS is the next layer down the cloud stack, offering think of when they hear the
platforms upon which apps and services can be built. term “cloud computing.”
Very few, if any, business people will interact with a PaaS,
It’s also the layer at which
Bartoletti said, as it is primarily geared toward developers
and operations professionals. conversation around public
“The benefit of using Platform as a Service to your
vs. private cloud finds the
business is that it lets you build new things faster,” most weight.
Bartoletti said. He also noted that it is a way to “add more
tools in your toolbelt.”
To simplify it even further, Brooks said that “PaaS is a place that you can stick code and it will run without you
doing anything else.”
Common examples of PaaS solutions are Cloud Foundry and Red Hat’s OpenShift. While there are many
general platforms available, there are also other PaaS offerings that are focused on databases, big data, and
other niche areas, Bartoletti said.
Unlike with SaaS, companies that build a lot of proprietary software may look to PaaS first in their cloud
deployment, as a way of changing their hosting and delivery strategy.
IAAS
The bottom-most foundational layer of cloud computing is IaaS, which offers the storage, networking, and
compute resources needed to run a business. Brooks described IaaS as “mail-order computers without the mail
delay.”
IaaS is what most people think of when they hear the term “cloud computing.” It’s also the layer at which
conversation around public vs. private cloud finds the most weight.
“For a business user, the benefit of IaaS is reduced infrastructure cost and more infrastructure flexibility,”
Bartoletti said. It’s important to note that lower cost is an ideal, but isn’t always the case, as there are a lot of
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factors that come into that equation, Bartoletti added. Much like the other layers, most of the value in IaaS
comes from the convenience of letting someone else worry about the infrastructure.
BLURRED LINES
The abovementioned layers offer a rough outline of what is available through the cloud. But these services are
also growing increasingly complex, and it is beginning to change their makeup as well.
“As this complexity grows, people stick to these three categories much less frequently, and they start to blend,”
Nelson said. The lines between IaaS and PaaS, for example, have started to blur quite a bit, she added. Bartoletti
also noted the idea of blended categories, offering the examples that Salesforce is both a SaaS and PaaS vendor,
and Amazon Web Services (AWS) is both an IaaS and PaaS vendor.
In terms of where to start, the answer will be different for each organization. Brooks said that many folks
might assume they should start with IaaS and work their way up, but that isn’t always the best scenario. For
example, past a certain scale SaaS and PaaS might require their own specialized infrastructure to operate more
effectively than if they were run on an IaaS solution, Brooks said.
It’s also important to consider customizability. According to Bartoletti, SaaS is the least customizable layer, PaaS
is more customizable, and IaaS is highly customizable. So, users should choose what to invest in based on their
needs.
Organizations should also consider their corporate data policies, Nelson said. Vendors are only responsible
for maintaining compliance with a policy through their layer, so it’s important to make sure the policies that an
organization adheres to will fit with each cloud vendor and layer that they invest in.
Businesses should research the cloud thoroughly, and vet vendors carefully before beginning their cloud
deployment. Much like the legacy infrastructure before it, there’s no cookie-cutter solution that will fit all needs,
and firms should try to avoid the hype and match their cloud investments to the real needs of their company
before proceeding.
“The future of computing in the enterprise, for the next five to 10 years, is really going to be focused around
identifying the right mix of cloud services for your business,” Bartoletti said. “And that’s a complex thing to
do—the right mix of IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS.”
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CLOUD COMPUTING: HOW TO MAKE

THE MOVE WITHOUT LOSING CONTROL
BY MARK SAMUELS
The shift to cloud computing, though real, is still at an early stage for many companies. Clive Longbottom,
service director at analyst Quocirca, says any claim that the move to on-demand IT has reached a tipping point
should be accompanied by a large pinch of salt. “Everyone is busy saying the cloud is already here, but our
research suggests just 12 percent of businesses are cloud-first organisations,” he says.
His firm recently polled 400 IT directors and strategists on behalf of enterprise cloud company Nutanix. While
a third of businesses run workloads in the cloud, about a quarter of firms go as far as to suggest they will never
move on-demand.
The research discovered that significant concerns persist around integration, total cost of ownership and
security.
“You’ve got early movers who are already on cloud—the mainstream organisations know it’s the future. At
the same time, you still have the laggards that are happy to run legacy technology in-house. But flexibility
and agility is the key going forwards and executives need to embrace the cloud or they will start seeing their
business going south,” says Longbottom.
So, how should your organisation embrace the cloud? Three IT leaders talk about their experiences and offer
their best practice tips for moving on-demand.
1. FIND YOUR BUSINESS CASE AND RAMP UP WHEN

YOU’RE READY
Brad Johnstone, head of ICT at Ayrshire College, is one technology leader who recognises that limitations
around the cloud mean it will not be the perfect fit for every business. While his organisation is making
effective use of on-demand IT, Johnstone says the broad applicability of the cloud remains limited, especially
when it comes to security concerns.
“We use Microsoft Office 365 across our campus and that’s been a very positive experience. Using those
productivity apps means we have very little IT to maintain. The college is starting to use other cloud-based
apps, too. However, our core business will always stay internal because of the sensitivity of data we hold,”
he says.`
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“We have to take our time to make decisions. If Experts believe the
the executives running the college turned around
to me and said they want to run cloud-based best way to prepare
technology across our campus, then I would for fast-moving
have conversations with them about security developments in the
and maintenance. My role is to give our business
people the best possible advice.” cloud is to avoid an
Johnstone continues to explore innovative ways to
over-reliance on a single
provision IT. The college recently implemented a provider.
virtual desktop solution, using Citrix XenDesktop,
and deployed IGEL thin client terminals. business benefit of the cloud, and her firm is
XenDesktop sits on top of a Microsoft Hyper V committed to on-demand IT. Lourens says her
virtualisation platform, running on HP Enterprise aim is to retire unused technology and re-platform
Moonshot servers. legacy elements. Her team are breaking older
systems into a series of microservices that can be
Johnstone says the virtualised setup helps to
run in the cloud.
deliver a modern learning experience. He expects
the cloud to play a key role in this provision, too. “We want to be able to scale to meet business
However, he also believes the best way to use demand and to increase our engineering capability
on-demand IT is to dip in flexibly as business as required,” says Lourens. “We want to make the
requirements change. most of Amazon Web Services. We believe the
public cloud is really moving forwards, both in
“The cloud’s a funny one for me—in many ways,
terms of the capability you can already use and the
I’m still undecided,” he says. “We’ve built our IT
innovation you can start to take advantage of.”
internally, but we can burst out to the cloud. If a
decision is made that we want to ramp up our IT, Experts believe the best way to prepare for
then we can use the hybrid cloud to increase our fast-moving developments in the cloud is to avoid
capacity quickly.” an over-reliance on a single provider. Common
consensus suggests CIOs should be able to
2. WORK WITH A TRUSTED draw on a broad ecosystem of trusted providers.
PROVIDER TO PRODUCE Spreading risk in this way means IT leaders
BIGGER BUSINESS can draw on different resources on-demand as
circumstances change.
BENEFITS
Wonga UK CTO Tarah Lourens is another IT Yet Quocirca’s research suggests the most
leader who recognises that flexibility is the key commonly cited changes that would make
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respondents embrace cloud platforms quicker are related to integration, including application programming
interfaces (APIs) between different platforms and the intelligent automation of workload management. While
flexibility is great, integration is crucial—and maintaining multiple providers to spread risk could be a costly
tactic.
“Running systems across two or three providers would be expensive,” says Lourens. “It also creates complexity.
It’s very difficult to capitalise on the benefits of the cloud without being tied to a single provider. You don’t
have to tie everything in, but by working with one main provider you can take advantage of some of the
scalability and efficiency gains.”
3. FIND A WAY TO BURST REQUIREMENTS COST-

EFFECTIVELY
Ryan Kennedy, academic computing team manager at the University of Reading, is taking a hyper-converged
approach to on-demand technology. He took responsibility for the management of cloud research at Reading
about a year ago. Kennedy discovered an ad-hoc mix of storage platforms and was keen to create a simplified
approach.
His first port of call was the public cloud. Kennedy says the university was keen to go cloud-first, but he
was also aware that researchers were spending too much money spinning up virtual machines without the
knowledge of the corporate IT team.
The university considered a range of hardware elements and hyper-converged platforms for the project.
Kennedy and his colleagues eventually selected Dell EMC XC Series appliances running the Nutanix Enterprise
Cloud Platform. Researchers can configure and manage virtual machines and storage using the Nutanix Self
Service Portal.
“The hyper-converged cloud allows us to buy something physical and know what we get out of it. We have the
capital, we own the infrastructure and it gives me and my team the knowledge we need regarding our expected
costs for the next five years,” he says.
“We still have cloud-like burst requirements. Someone might need thousands of cores for an afternoon and
that creates a huge headache if you’re not prepared. That’s where the hyper-converged approach is useful
because the capacity is ready. We sometimes need to scale quickly and I don’t want to have to run that process
on a Sunday morning.”
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HOW ONE AUSSIE SURFBOARD

BUSINESS RODE THE SAAS WAVE
BY TAS BINDI
image: gsi
Global Surf Industries (GSI) was founded in and distributors of surfboards, turning over
2002 with the goal of being the “biggest small AU$20 million annually. GSI-designed surfboards
company” it could possibly be—a goal that is —including shortboards, longboards, and paddle
more attainable today due to advances in cloud boards—are now sold in more than 70 countries
computing and other technologies of scale. around the world.
Fifteen years later, with just 18 staff members, GSI But the company was not operating as efficiently
claims to be one of the world’s biggest wholesalers as it is able to today thanks to cloud-based
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software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions such as G Suite for email, Nexonia for expense management, Skype for
instant messaging and video calls, Trello for project management, Zoom for videoconferencing, and especially,
OneWorld for overall business management.
OneWorld is a product of NetSuite—which was acquired by Oracle in 2016 for $9.3 billion—that acts as a
centralised ERP, CRM, and ecommerce platform enabling companies to manage multinational and multi-
subsidiary operations.
GSI founder and CEO Mark Kelly told ZDNet that the
company, prior to adopting OneWorld, had multiple
versions of MYOB’s software running for different
jurisdictions, which made end-of-month (EOM)
reporting time-consuming because the company had to
manually consolidate the numbers.
The company then tasked a third-party consultant to

build a SQL database so that it could pull all the data
out of MYOB and create consolidated reports, but it
was still a largely inefficient process compared with
OneWorld.
“The MYOB reporting that we had at the time ...

the level of complexity that we wanted to put in the
business as far as reporting and automation go, it
couldn’t provide it. We basically handcuffed ourselves
to a consultancy life,” Kelly told ZDNet.
“Then as soon as MYOB put out a new version,

we would all be holding hands and crossing fingers
mark kelly, founder and ceo at GSI (image: supplied)
that the latest version would work with all the bits
we’d built the SQL database with. So the very old
version dovetailed into a new one, but a lot of times that didn’t work. Then we would have go to into crisis
management for a day or two to get all our reports running again. That was pretty costly.
“I think when I look at what NetSuite costs us now per year versus what we were paying consultants to
manhandle our databases and do our automation, it’s less now after three years of using NetSuite. We are
actually now starting to save money because of the automation we put in place.”
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It was after a year of

deliberation—and importantly,
after finding that a competitive
product could not support GSI’s
multi-location, multi-entity, and
multi-currency requirements—
that the company decided to
adopt OneWorld, which proved
to be a more suitable solution
for GSI given it has four tax
entities in Australia, New Zealand,
Hong Kong, and the US, with
distributors all over the world.
image: istockphoto.com//Bannosuke
Kelly said the cloud-based SaaS
model is also more suitable for the
company given its mission to be the “biggest small company” it can realistically be. GSI does not have an IT
department, so all tools need to be simple enough for non-technical staff to use; a SaaS model also means that
an internal IT department is not required to build, manage, and update proprietary software, he explained.
Additionally, GSI’s staff are scattered all over the world, each working from home, which makes cloud-based
technologies a necessity within the business if it wants to operate collaboratively and efficiently, Kelly said.
He admitted, however, that GSI had not initially chosen NetSuite because of OneWorld’s user interface (UI),
which at the time he thought made the product difficult to use. But within six months, NetSuite significantly
changed OneWorld’s UI, making it a lot simpler and intuitive, Kelly added.
“When you’re training people, the user interface is really really key. I’m training them from one side of the
world to the other, and we managed to do our implementation in 28 days partially-assisted,” he said.
Three years on, Kelly said OneWorld has been about 20 percent cheaper than the old systems the company was
running on, and has allowed it to further decrease operational costs by improving efficiencies and providing
greater visibility into the business.
One of his favourite aspects of OneWorld is the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) functionality; GSI was
able to build a platform on top of NetSuite OneWorld that has allowed the company to streamline the order
entry process, Kelly explained.
22
“The customer or the salesperson enters their order online and the order goes automatically into NetSuite. At
that point, the salesperson within GSI for that account is advised there’s an order in the system,” he said.
“He then looks at that and can approve that order straight away and it can go to our 3PL (third-party logistics).
Or he’ll ring the customer back and say, ‘Hey, that blue one that you bought, you sold 10 of those, you only
have one left, do you want to up the order?’
“The warehouse people take the information, run that through their system, then ship the goods ... That
information from the 3PL is sent back to NetSuite, and [the salesperson] also goes back into NetSuite and goes
to billing. Then our customer service manager at the end of every day or a couple times a day hits the button,
sends the bill, and then the customer is notified
that the order has left and the tracking number is
“Data entry and errors have
XYZ.”
pretty much been eliminated.
While it may not seem like much, Kelly said this
used to be a bigger and more complex process,
We know everything that has
therefore NetSuite addresses a significant been shipped and billed, and
pain-point for GSI. the correct tracking number ...
“[Orders] used to revolve around people getting It’s just perfectly streamlined
reports ... Now the only order entry is ever done
and really really efficient.”
by the first person who put the order in. They’re
the only person who touches the keyboard —Mark Kelly
through that whole process,” he said.
“So data entry and errors have pretty much been eliminated. We know everything that has been shipped and
billed, and the correct tracking number ... It’s just perfectly streamlined and really really efficient.”
Using OneWorld, GSI is also able to generate comprehensive reports more easily, Kelly said.
“I’ve got reports that I look at a lot that has what we did last year, what our budget was, what our actual is this
year ... And I have that all on one page so I can see by product category, what our revenue is, what our cost is
pretty much live. I can see what expenses have been run into the system on a daily basis as well,” Kelly added.
“So it just [provides] us a really good level of comfort. Where beforehand, building those reports would have
been time consuming and messy, now you build them once and you know the data is always correct ... and then
[have] the confidence that when you make a decision, you’re making the right one because the numbers are
supporting it.”
23
Kelly admitted that top line growth has shrunk “NetSuite has been a great reporting tool for
since adopting OneWorld, but bottom line profit that, seeing how products get distribution ...
has increased roughly 150 percent over three years. [OneWorld] can show distribution down to
In the next few years, he expects to generate 50 the sales territory level ... so you can do a good
percent more revenue with the help of OneWorld. analysis of that, and then you can talk to the
people who are running those territories and say,
“What NetSuite has done is it’s made me much
‘Hey look at this account, why are they not buying
more astutely aware of the bottom line number
this?’ Before it used to be a bit of a mission to get
and made the top line number more relevant. A
that information.”
lot of people are chasing revenue, but at the end
of the day, it’s about bottom line profit. If you The aim is to bring SKUs further down to 450,
don’t have good reporting tools and you don’t Kelly added.
have good systems in place, then money just falls
“The goal is really to have the least amount of
through the cracks,” he said.
inventory in-house ... Before we just wanted to
Additionally, staff productivity has improved by have lots of products. But then we went, ‘Hang
cutting annual accounts and tax reporting hours on, what are we doing?’ When we go back to our
by at least 50 percent, while time spent on EOM manufacturers, if we can have 80 products instead
reporting has been slashed by at least five days. of 200, then it’s easy for them to order, it’s easy for
them to produce,” he explained.
“Our aim was to get monthly reporting done by
the 15th, and now the 10th is the latest day we get “We’re doing around about the same volume in
it. It’s usually by the 8th of the month. If you’re numbers but they’re producing half the SKUs, so
running a business and you’re looking at reports the consistency of making products is really good
and you’re making decisions from those reports, and helps [the manufacturer’s] efficiency as well.”
you can’t have your reporting in the second half
GSI has come a long way since its inception.
of the next month. You’re behind the eight ball all
In the initial years, like many other companies
the time,” Kelly said.
at the time, GSI was reliant on dial-up internet,
Using OneWorld, GSI has also been able to cut fax machines, printers, photocopiers, and
down its stock keeping units (SKUs) from around old-fashioned telephones. Kelly said the company
900 to less than 640. was spending somewhere around AU$30,000
annually on telecommunications alone -- including
“We have 636 live products in multiple sizes and
AU$1,800 for every US-Australia toll-free number
colours, and our goal is to always analyse those and
per year.
make sure that they’re all selling. If they’re not, we
kill them off or invent something else,” Kelly said.
24
But telecommunications costs have come down to about AU$2,000 as a result of GSI transitioning to cloud
products that operate on subscription-based models such as Skype for Business and Zoom, Kelly said.
The company has gone completely paperless, meaning that data is no longer buried in printed documents.
Kelly acknowledged, however, that there is more automation that can be introduced to the business; it’s just not
clear yet where. He also said changing or introducing new software systems is a big decision for any company,
likening it to “getting married”, so it needs careful consideration.
“A little bit of that learning is coming from other NetSuite customers about what they do, so going to those
NetSuite customer days and forums are really important for us ... I would say on those days we probably learn
15 percent from NetSuite and 85 percent from other people. We go to those events to meet and talk to a lot of
people in a similar industry to us -- not as far as the products we sell, but as far as distribution, wholesaling, and
product development,” Kelly said.
“I don’t know where or how ... but I think our efficiencies will just continue to grow which will allow us to
spend more time working on the business than working in it. There’s quite a good distinction about that.”
25
GOING TO THE CLOUD: WHEN

ON-PREMISE DIY MIGHT BE BEST
BY CHRISTINE PARIZO
Cloud computing isn’t going anywhere. And “Working in the cloud
for many organizations, moving applications,
infrastructure, and other IT or business functions
inherently means that you’re
makes perfect sense. However, even as cloud paying more per computer
computing matures, organizations still have resource than you would be
legitimate concerns when it comes to letting go of
their own in-house infrastructure, including data
by purchasing hardware. The
archiving, loss of control, and uptime. variable cost of managing
IT leaders usually cite concerns over security when
and maintaining your
making the decision to keep their IT functions operations is where cloud
on-premise. However, if companies conduct due offerings shine.”
diligence and keep security risks and regulatory
standards in mind when choosing a cloud provider,
— Todd Millecam
that can be a non-issue. Sometimes, experts will
even say the cloud is more secure than on-premise deployments.
So if cloud security is basically a non-starter, what other factors keep functions from being moved to the cloud?
DATA ARCHIVING DIFFICULTIES

Losing control of data archiving is one reason why companies may hesitate to move their operations to the
cloud, according to Robert Douglas, founder and president of PlanetMagpie IT Consulting. “It’s too easy to
lose data in the course of the workweek, without active archiving taking place.”
For example, a company might move business functions to Office 365. Then after a user leaves the company,
their account could be deleted – and along with that, email archives. In addition, deleted emails from multiple
providers, including Office 365 and Gmail, may remain for only 30 days. Without active archiving, that infor-
mation can be lost forever, Douglas said. To protect the company long-term, a separate archiving server
on-premises or in a private cloud would be needed. And even if the cloud service does back up the data, there
is always the question of where it resides.
26
The end-user experience can be a huge barrier to

SCALE AND LATENCY OF
cloud adoption, particularly for infrastructure-as-
APPLICATIONS a-service (IaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
“Working in the cloud inherently means that
applications, according to Chris Sousa, vice
you’re paying more per computer resource than
president of solutions and strategy at Dataprise.
you would be by purchasing hardware. The
“This experience is due to additional layers of
variable cost of managing and maintaining your
complexity for accessing the application in the
operations is where cloud offerings shine,” said
cloud,” he said, citing remote desktop and VPNs
Todd Millecam, CEO of SWYM Systems, Inc.
as potential problems.
However, some companies won’t see cost savings
by moving to the cloud. For example, midsize APPLICATIONS THAT
businesses that already need to pay IT staff to
handle a lot of workstations, and large companies
AREN’T CLOUD-READY
Some applications just may not be suited for the
with ready access to DevOps talent don’t need
cloud, based on their architecture and support
the management services from cloud providers,
requirements, Sousa said. “If an organization has
Millecam said.
business-critical applications without an approved
“When your projected labor costs are less than cloud version, migrating to the cloud may cause
double your hosting costs, cloud tends to not be a unnecessary risk and expense.”
cost-effective option.” Organizations may also have built custom
The latency tolerance of an application is also applications on-premise, and these would require
another consideration, Millecam said. Companies extra time and effort to make them cloud-ready.
that are using low-latency applications, like “For custom applications, it puts additional
scientific and medical applications, risk possible strain on the development team that may not be
lag. “By moving to the cloud, you are sharing a equipped to handle management and support of
computer with an unknown neighbor and are these applications in the cloud,” Sousa said.
using an ever-changing network. That neighbor
In these cases, moving to the cloud may not make
can be noisy—or take up a lot of resources on the
sense for companies. If they don’t want to give up
computer, and the path to get to your cloud server
control of data archiving, or if low latency is an
can get slightly longer unexpectedly.”
issue, staying on-premise could be better. Some
While cloud providers do meet SLAs, it may take applications may not even be ready to move to the
a couple of seconds for the cloud system to detect cloud, and re-architecting them might yield little
the latency issue. If a company can’t handle a one- in the way of ROI. For companies considering
or two-second delay in applications every so often, moving to the cloud, cost and security aren’t the
the cloud may be a bad choice, Millecam said. only issues to consider.
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EVENT-DRIVEN CLOUD COMPUTING:

HOW AND WHEN IT MAKES SENSE FOR
YOUR ORGANIZATION
BY JAMES SANDERS
The advent of traditional cloud computing services—like Amazon EC2—presented a business case for
offloading maintenance of physical servers onto a third party, eliminating upfront costs of provisioning
physical hardware. In so doing, organizations gained the ability to scale their computing capacity seamlessly to
meet their computational demands. For specially engineered workloads, event-driven computing promises to
do the same. Rather than maintain long-lived EC2 instances for computational tasks, event-driven computing
allows for functions to be executed on arbitrary servers when triggered, and companies are billed only for the
duration of time it takes for the function to complete.
USING EVENT-DRIVEN COMPUTING EFFECTIVELY

Obviously, event-driven computing services like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Microsoft Azure
Functions are not suitable for mission-critical, always-on tasks. Core business operations such as mail or CMIS
servers and websites, among others, are poor fits for event-driven computing.
However, for routine computational tasks that are not greatly time sensitive—making thumbnails of images,
structuring streamed data from IoT devices, using OCR to extract text from an image, for example—event-
driven computing can be effectively utilized without leaving an EC2 instance idling as it awaits the next task.
From an engineering standpoint, this reduces the amount of structural support needed to perform the task, as
it negates the need for a queuing system. A minor security benefit also accompanies event-driven computing:
As the instance performing the computation is deactivated rather than left idling after completing a given task,
the potential attack surface is reduced.
Particularly long-lived tasks, such as video transcoding, database maintenance, and complex report generation,
are not well-suited to transitioning to event-driven computing services, as limitations exist on the runtime
length of functions. For Lambda, the default is three seconds, though this can be extended to five minutes. For
Google Cloud Functions, the limitation is nine minutes. For tasks intended to run longer than these limitations,
programmatically spinning up an EC2 instance is a better strategy, particularly as Amazon has recently moved
to per-second billing for EC2 instances.
28
on these machines. As such, tasks that have

KEEPING AN EYE ON
dependencies on specific libraries may need to be
CLOUD COSTS re-engineered to remove these dependencies or
Major event-driven cloud computing vendors
deployed on traditional cloud services like EC2.
use a billing system that relies on two factors: the
number of computations performed and the time For Lambda, functions are separated into hot
it takes to compute each task, in units of 100ms. and cold. The VM instance used to execute the
Event-driven computing can easily scale to meet function is deactivated if a function has not run
the demands of a given computational workload, for 10 minutes, requiring spin-up time for a VM
so it can be used to decrease the cost of cloud to be created to run a cold function. Relatedly,
deployments in cases where variable workloads because there is no guarantee that each execution
can be offloaded to Lambda, reducing cases where of a task will occur in the same environment as
high capacity instances are idling. the last task, environmental differences can occur
between each run of a function.
For extremely variable workloads—imagine a task
that would be performed only at a specific time
of day, but that would suddenly need to be done
IS EVENT-DRIVEN
hundreds of thousands of times in succession so COMPUTING RIGHT FOR
that the computed result would be quickly available YOUR ORGANIZATION?
for consumption—both Google and AWS have a For existing projects, utilizing event-driven
default safety throttle for concurrent use that can computing likely requires extensive modifications
be disabled on request. Nominally, this is intended to existing code, as functions must be converted
to prevent processes from using large amounts of for external processing with your cloud provider
resources for extended periods of time, thereby of choice. Assessing which tasks can be usefully
limiting the ability of malformed apps to run up offloaded and weighing the potential cost savings
large service bills. of event-driven computing versus the programmer
time to implement these changes should be the
ROADBLOCKS TO first step.
IMPLEMENTATION For new projects, event-driven computing can be a

The ‘stateless’ attribute of on-demand computing powerful tool for increasing the scalability of your
leads to some limitations in how individual applications, when used in appropriate contexts.
compute tasks can be customized. Because of the
time-limited nature of event-driven computational
tasks, it’s not possible to install custom packages
29
FIND THE BEST TALENT TO DRIVE YOUR

CLOUD AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
BY MARY SHACKLETT
IT as a service (ITaaS) is an operational model where the IT service provider delivers an information
technology service to a business. That service could come from internal staff or from outside resources. The
key is that this service is so seamless, the customer never really knows where it originates from.
To run IT as a service successfully, you need talent in service and talent in technology. Nowhere is this
more apparent than in digital transformation and cloud-based IT, where most companies are making major
investments. Unfortunately, the talent isn’t always available.
In a 2017 CFO Research Survey of 123 US mid-market company financial executives, almost half (49%) said
the inability to attract and retain qualified technology talent was adversely affecting their businesses.
When these executives were asked about the strengths of their internal IT staffs, they said that 40% of their
talent challenges were in finding the technical and service skill sets internally to do the projects IT was being
asked to do. Another 36% said that their internal IT lacked strategic planning and vision, 34% said that internal
image: istock/peshkov
30
IT lacked knowledge of the business, and 33% said Many companies use talent
that IT was lacking project management skills.
management systems that
Solving this talent challenge isn’t easy. To meet it, CIOs
consider a variety of strategies that range from direct
help them forecast their
hiring, contracting, and renting to sharing talent. The staffing requirements and
most coveted IT skills are in digital transformation and assist them in determining
advanced skills in cloud-based technologies.
how they’re going to fill
The technical skills needed for digital transformation talent acquisition and
are not necessarily difficult for IT to provide;
rather it’s the set of soft or interpersonal skills that development needs—
facilitate digital transformation that IT lacks. Digital whether it’s through
transformation projects require significant interactions outside hiring or
with users as they learn how to master new digitally
based technologies, like document management. internal cross-training of
Working in a collaborative and sharing service context
personnel—so they can fill
doesn’t come easy for many IT professionals, either. new roles.
They may prefer to be engaged in the technical details
of their work and might be protective when it comes to sharing their knowledge and skills.
At the same time, a new set of core technical and service skills is emerging in cloud computing. These skills
include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and IoT. Resident IT staffs don’t always have these skills.
Digital transformation and advanced cloud management techniques are areas that CIOs must address to ensure
that their staff can meet technical and service needs. Here’s a look at some of the talent acquisition strategies
that companies are using.
HIRING
In a 2016 Harvey Nash and KPMG survey of more than 3,000 IT leaders, 65% reported difficulty hiring IT
talent and said it was hurting their businesses. Data science, security, and cloud computing talent were among
the most difficult areas to recruit for. All of these skills bases are directly related to digital transformation and
cloud technology.
Companies have to offer attractive compensation, positions, and career paths to successfully compete in these
tough talent markets. They must also provide pleasant work cultures and working conditions. Many companies
31
use talent management systems that help them this benefits both Tongji and ourselves. We are
forecast their staffing requirements and assist them delighted that the university has already initiated
in determining how they’re going to fill talent a series of actions to implement the educational
acquisition and development needs—whether it’s concepts we have discussed.”
through outside hiring or through internal cross-
training of personnel—so they can fill new roles. CONTRACTING
Some companies also use the “farm system” Contracting is another approach IT takes to solve
approach, where they partner with local colleges talent shortfalls in digital transformation and
and universities. In this approach, companies serve cloud-based work.
on college and university advisory boards, assisting There are websites where you can seek IT
in the design of IT curriculum. More aggressive contractors, but the best avenue for securing high
companies don’t stop there: They provide senior caliber tech contractor talent is through word
staff to deliver lectures in classrooms on relevant of mouth or by contacting contractors you have
topics and sponsor college-credit company already worked with. For one thing, you already
internships for students. By interning students, know the type and level of work the contractor
the company gets to know young grads in advance can provide. A second reason is cultural. The
of deciding whether to hire them. If a company contractor has likely already demonstrated that
does decide to make an offer, it is making it to a they work well with your team.
known quantity individual who has already formed
professional relationships with staff. This improves When you employ a contractor, you pay top dollar
the odds of a successful hire and provides a way to for services and expect that the individual will
get new grads into productive IT roles faster. be highly self-sufficient, with no learning curves.
Accordingly, agreements with contractors should
“Our working relationship with Tongji University be structured to allow you an easy out at the
in Shanghai, China, focuses on moving forward beginning of an engagement if you discover that
with some of basic System z mainframe skills they aren’t measuring up.
development, and this is done by correlating
course content with on-the-job internship and Companies also use the contractor approach when
permanent employment requirements,” said they need to fill an important position, like data
Wei (Martin) Jiang, manager of DB2 for z/ scientist, but haven’t been able to push it through
OS Development at IBM’s China Software as a permanent hire in their budgets. In such
Development Laboratory-Information cases, they might hire a contract data scientist and
Management. “By actively cooperating and decide to offer permanent employment later if
exchanging ideas with the university, we feel that the contractor’s work is excellent and the budget
32
opens up. This happened to an acquaintance of mine who was consulting on IT to a major league baseball
team. The team liked his work so much that it offered him a permanent position.
RENTING
Although the terms “renting” and contracting” Agreements with contractors
are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not
the same. When you rent, you are using more of a should be structured to
permanent outsourcing approach than when you allow you an easy out at the
contract. Companies rent call centers (and call beginning of an engagement
center agents). In IT, they might even opt to rent
help desk staff who provide service and support if you discover that they aren’t
for digital transformation. measuring up.
Renting is more broadly utilized in advanced cloud
technology. Software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and other cloud-based offerings are
rented via subscription or per-use prices. The understanding is that you will be using the cloud resource for the
long term.
One of the most popular cloud-based rental services for IT is in application development and testing because
the cloud-based vendor furnishes the hardware and systems and you don’t have to buy them.
SHARING
Resource sharing is another approach to talent acquisition that can be used effectively in both digital transfor-
mation and the cloud. It is most often used by smaller companies, especially in the not-for-profit sector.
Here’s how it works in the credit union world:

Four small credit unions can’t afford their own IT departments and specialists, so they band together to fund
an IT budget and hire the IT’ers they need. They fund cost and resource-share data center and personnel
expenses, which are facilitated because they all use the same systems. IT becomes a service center, as it now has
four “customers” whose needs it must serve. The challenge for the CIOs is to make sure that the individuals
assigned to the cloud service have service and support skills that can match their technical skills. Sometimes
this is easier said than done.
“We made the transition to a cloud-based service for multiple financial institutions several years ago, and one
of the cultural changes we had to make in IT was a move to a service culture,” one CIO acquaintance told me.
“We experienced casualties along the way. Three of my top technical staff opted to find employment elsewhere
because they didn’t want to do the customer service.”
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FINAL REMARKS
No single talent acquisition strategy fits all companies, and most companies today use a combination of talent
acquisition techniques to get their digital transformation and cloud work done.
That isn’t likely to change soon.
Defining a clear vision of what you expect your workers to do--and a vision of where they can go and grow--
helps enormously, whether they are permanent employees, contractors, or rental vendors. So does showing
them that you care about their welfare/partnership, that you are committed to service in your culture, and that
you appreciate the efforts they make for your company.
34
HOW DO I EVOLVE MY SKILLS FOR THE

CLOUD ERA?
BY ALISON DENISCO RAYOME
The vast majority of businesses have migrated some critical applications and IT infrastructure to the cloud in
recent years, but only 5-7% of the world’s workloads have moved to the cloud.
“What’s holding them back, generally speaking, is a combination of cost and also skillset changes,” said
Forrester senior analyst Chris Gardner. “I was in an enterprise for 15 years, and the skillsets were very
traditional. It was more about monitoring, stacking, and keeping track of applications that are all monoliths—
moving the the cloud was a completely different skillset.”
Here are five areas where IT and business professionals can work to evolve their skillsets to meet the
demands of the cloud.
35
1. UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS PROCESSES

IT is no longer only responsible for equipment maintenance and management, but rather implementing the
technology so it meets business goals, said Seth Robinson, senior director of technology analysis at CompTIA.
“They have to understand that business goal, and how it is going to be achieved throughout the different
departments by understanding the routines and workflow of that department, and how all of this fits together,”
Robinson said. “And they’re proactively suggesting the best technology and approach.”
This typically requires cross-departmental work, said Ray Wang, principal analyst and founder of Constellation
Research. “The reason this is important as a cloud skillset is because you have a chance to implement a new
system, and add new functionality,” Wang said. “You don’t want to waste it.”
2. SECURITY SKILLS “If you’re doing any

Moving from internal, on-premises data centers to the
cloud means moving outside of your established security
commodity work everyday,
perimeter, Robinson said. “Companies have to think more automate it. If the human
about actually putting security within the application or is not adding value to
within the data,” he added, “Whereas before, they probably
just left that application or data within the secure perimeter
something, automate
of their company.” it. What that allows
This also means learning what data is in the cloud, how it is people to do is shift the
encrypted, and what set of firewalls and security measures value proposition of an
are in place to make sure it isn’t accessed by outside parties,
IT organization from
Wang said.
monitoring to analysis.”—
3. AUTOMATION Chris Gardner
IMPLEMENTATION
Learn to automate everything you possibly can, Gardner said. “If you’re doing any commodity work everyday,
automate it. If the human is not adding value to something, automate it,” Gardner said. “What that allows
people to do is shift the value proposition of an IT organization from monitoring to analysis.”
Many IT professionals have difficulties giving up control in this way, Gardner said, and worry that doing so
increases risk. However, the opposite is true, he added. “When you have fast fingers typing in things or logging
into servers, that’s what increases risk,” Gardner said.
36
As this grows in complexity, automation offers people that focus on a particular product release,
many companies a better option for security, including infrastructure experts, developers, archi-
Robinson said. As enterprise technology grows tects, security professionals, and business sponsors.
more complex but IT staff sizes stay the same,
“When you move into the cloud, that makes a ton
automation can fill in some of the gaps.
of sense,” Gardner said. “You really shouldn’t be
But automation has to be implemented carefully, focused so much on who spun off this instance.
Robinson said. IT workers need to know which You should be focused on application availability,
pieces to automate, and be able to set notifications performance, things of that nature.”
so that if something breaks, they can take care of
it immediately, or know that it can solve problems 5. DEVELOPER DISCIPLINES
on its own. “Even setting up that automation
Professionals who want to successfully venture
requires a lot of knowledge of how things are
down the cloud path should learn some of the
supposed to run,” Robinson said.
disciplines developers have, Gardner said.
4. EMBRACING “I don’t just mean scripts—I mean learning the

APIs, learning how to tie into configuration
GENERALISM management toolsets and continuous delivery
Until recently, IT has been very specialized
toolsets,” Gardner said. “For some folks that
in certain areas. “What we’re finding is, as
were traditionally the rack-and-stackers, this is
people move to the cloud, you don’t need that
hard to do. But all the things a developer would
specialization—in fact, you need to know more
traditionally do to deliver an application meets the
about everybody else’s specialization,” Gardner
curve for everything in the cloud, including the
said. “This is the drum that’s been beaten for years
infrastructure.”
about siloes crashing. Now it’s finally becoming
real, because there should not be a need to focus All of these skill sets “are typically gained by
on these mundane, under-the-hood tasks, when business folks who have a technical background or
you should be focusing on product delivery and technical folks who’ve been serving stakeholders
acceleration.” in the field,” Wang said. “They cannot be done in
isolation.”
Don’t lose your specialization, but take time to
learn about every aspect of managing applications,
Gardner said. Forrester uses a concept called CONTINUOUS LEARNING
“integrated product teams,” which suggests that A lot of IT pros—especially those who
rather than focusing on projects in individual silos, experimented with the cloud early on—have
companies should form a cross-functional team of gained many of the needed skills already, Robinson
37
said, including managing virtual machines and resources. And in dealing with the APIs from the cloud provider,
they may already be learning to monitor systems better. “That eventually translates into really careful, precise
monitoring of all the systems that you have across the architecture,” Robinson said.
Credentials and certifications offered by IT organizations and vendors can also help teach some of these skills.
However, “it’s not really necessary to learn specific APIs for one cloud vendor, because increasingly, enterprises
aren’t leveraging one—they’re leveraging multiple,” Gardner said. “It’s more about knowing the general
concepts.”
Business employees must also pick up IT skills, just as IT teams are picking up business skills, so the two
groups can work together more fluidly. But this requires a cultural change that takes time, Robinson said.
38
CREDITS
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The Future of Everything As A Service

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The Future of Everything As A Service

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SPECIAL REPORT

The future of Everything

COPYRIGHT ©2017 CBS INTERACTIVE INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

XAAS: WHY ‘EVERYTHING’ IS NOW

DATA: GARTNER/CHART: ZDNET

DATA: GARTNER/CHART: ZDNET

Although hosted/cloud-based services are currently third in the budget allocation

(See Spiceworks’ report for

DATA: SPICEWORKS/CHART: ZDNET

DATA: SPICEWORKS/CHART: ZDNET

DATA: SPICEWORKS/CHART: ZDNET

Service Description Key providers

Adobe, ADP, AWS, Atlassian, Box, Cisco, Akamai, DocuSign,

Appian, Betty Blocks, Caspio, Fujitsu, kintone, Mendix, Oracle,

Service Description Key providers

Alibaba Cloud, AWS, CenturyLink, Fujitsu, Google, IBM,

Storage as a service Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Google, IBM (Bluemix), Microsoft,

AT&T, Atos, BAE Systems, BT, CenturyLink, CSC, HCL

Aiiria, Altiscale, AWS, BlobCity, Cazena, CenturyLink,

Acronis, Axcient, Bluelock, C&W Business, Carbonite,

Service Description Key providers

Actian, Adaptris, Attunity, Built.io, Celigo, DBSync, Dell

Cloud CFM Acumatica, Deltek, Epicor Software, FinancialForce, Intacct,

Adobe, Avaya, Applied Global Technologies, AVI-SPL, Blue

Artificial AI as a service AWS, Datoin, Google, IBM (Bluemix/Watson), Microsoft,

INFOGRAPHIC: WHY COMPANIES

When asked why their company chose

Because 42 percent of respondents

SAAS, PAAS, AND IAAS: UNDERSTAND

IaaS is what most people

CLOUD COMPUTING: HOW TO MAKE

1. FIND YOUR BUSINESS CASE AND RAMP UP WHEN

3. FIND A WAY TO BURST REQUIREMENTS COST-

HOW ONE AUSSIE SURFBOARD

The company then tasked a third-party consultant to

“The MYOB reporting that we had at the time ...

“Then as soon as MYOB put out a new version,

It was after a year of

GOING TO THE CLOUD: WHEN

DATA ARCHIVING DIFFICULTIES

The end-user experience can be a huge barrier to

EVENT-DRIVEN CLOUD COMPUTING:

USING EVENT-DRIVEN COMPUTING EFFECTIVELY

on these machines. As such, tasks that have

IMPLEMENTATION For new projects, event-driven computing can be a

FIND THE BEST TALENT TO DRIVE YOUR

Here’s how it works in the credit union world:

That isn’t likely to change soon.

HOW DO I EVOLVE MY SKILLS FOR THE

1. UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS PROCESSES

2. SECURITY SKILLS “If you’re doing any

4. EMBRACING “I don’t just mean scripts—I mean learning the

Senior Writers The information contained herein has been obtained

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