As one of the stakeholders of the Cloud ecosystem, I persuade, motivate and encourage decision makers in my circle to take a serious look at the Cloud. I want to share my experiences of having these conversations with the audiences.
Off late, I came across a few IT Managers and technology decision makers whose thought process is clouded about Cloud Computing. Some of them are carried away by the hype (which most of the new technologies tend to create in their early days) that Cloud has been generating while others are absolutely cynical and believe that they are better off without the Cloud. There are three different personas that I frequently encounter. Let me elaborate more on these personas.
- Cloud Fan Boy – These are individuals (decision makers) who believe that Cloud Computing is the magic pill for most of the problems that they face in their IT departments. They want to move their Line of Business applications, ERPs, Business Workflows and everything else to the Cloud and take credit for being an early adopter. They jump to a conclusion that Cloud is the remedy very early in the discussion. They don’t mind deploying a Private Cloud to run a departmental application which could have been otherwise run on a cluster of just 2 servers. Though they don’t accept it, the reality is that they are confused about making the right choice of the implementation model based on the Private / Public Cloud and the choice of service delivery model based on IaaS/PaaS/SaaS. These fan boys need to understand that not every application is Cloud ready and there are scenarios where Cloud is not an option at all.
- Cloud Fence Sitter – This persona typically represents a matured CIO. They take a neutral view of the new technology and don’t easily buy into the hype. They know that it is the future but delay their decision to observe the trend before jumping onto the bandwagon. They need strong evidence before investing in the Cloud. They are confused about where to start the evaluation. It is easy to convince this persona to embrace the cloud through facts and figures and a solid proof-of-concept. A staggered approach of adopting the Cloud will work really well for them. By staggered I mean consuming the Cloud Storage services and then eventually moving non mission-critical applications. This will enable the fence sitters to confidently defend their decision.
- Cloud Skeptic – These individuals do not carry an optimistic view of Cloud. They believe that Cloud is old wine in new bottle. They glorify the outages of some of the vendors in the recent past. They highlight the security concerns and prefer not to use Cloud Services. They argue that Cloud is a marketing jargon for Grid and High-Performance Computing that has been around for decades. They tend to snub off PaaS as vendor lock-in and IaaS as an administrative overhead. They go any length arguing that Cloud is not ready for the prime time and there are many regulatory issues and policies that need to resolve before the adoption happens.
Cloud Personas and Their Concerns
There are a few common concerns that I noticed in all the three personas.
- How much do I save if I partially / completely move my business to the Cloud?
- Who needs to be involved in the decision making – MIS / IT, CIO, CTO or even the CEO?
- Which implementation is right for me – Private Cloud, Public Cloud or Hybrid Cloud?
- Which service model should I choose – IaaS, PaaS or SaaS?
- Where do I start my evaluation – Invest in a test bed for the Private Cloud or use an existing Public Cloud?
- What are the key parameters for comparing the quality of service from Cloud Service providers?
- Can I partially adopt the Cloud – Should I consume Compute, Storage or both?
- What key benefits do I realize when I move one of my apps to the Cloud?
- What happens to the on-premise investments?
- How about security and privacy? What level of a compromise do I need to make?
In the future posts, I will try and address each of the concerns.
Have you been a part of a similar conversation? If yes, please share your thoughts.
