Clouding the Real Value of IT

Recently we went through a migration from one version of a cloud service to another version (an upgrade) with the same cloud provider.

This is supposed to be the glory part of the cloud.  As a CIO I didn’t have to staff up, invest $ in testing environments, and all those good things that “just happen” when you are in the cloud.  Well…guess again.

The funny part is, our IT organization has enough grizzled vets to know that it doesn’t matter what it is, it needs to be tested.  We asked the cloud provider ten ways from Sunday how to test the environment.  What came back was – it was tested and everything is ok.  Fool me once, shame on me.  I won’t get fooled again.  What I learned in this process, and am seeing elsewhere is that, unfortunately, the cloud providers don’t have the same grizzled-IT mentality.   Maybe the cloud provider just doesn’t want to invest in the test environments necessary to test properly.  I can tell you that within our organization we spend on average 10 times the dollar amount of the original software in testing (additional hardware, software, people, processes, etc.).  Until the cloud provider proves that they have a true IT mentality, I can never trust them again.

I now laugh twice as hard as I did before at any of the so-called guru’s that say that you won’t need IT because of the cloud.  You need IT people because they have been through the grinder, they know what life is like when you don’t plan, test, evaluate, plan, test again, do a mock, then UAT it and then move it to production.   IT people understand the criticality of planning, mitigating risks, planning for disasters, understanding the nuances of the data to be migrated, the api’s that have to be tested, etc.  And as for the platform itself, just because it’s in the cloud doesn’t mean that it’s been thoroughly tested for your needs.  So long as there are humans involved, you have to plan for the worst.

The long and short of it is this – no matter how big or small that cloud solution is – do not trust the cloud provider when they said “they tested it”.  As an old hero of mine once said – “Trust but verify”.

Skating to where the puck will be…

I don’t watch a lot of TV. No time really.  But there are two shows that I watch when I can. “Person of Interest” and “Hawaii Five-O”.  If you are in the tech space, I suggest you check these shows out.  Why? Because I think they give you a sense of where two major tech trends are headed.  Naturally, Hollywood takes liberties with technology realities, but the potential for Big Data in Person of Interest and the use of surface technologies (ie tables and walls as tablets) in Hawaii Five-O are reasonable examples of where those technologies are headed.

We are talking a lot about Big Data these days.  The Person of Interest show reveals a what-if scenario for the good and bad in harnessing Big Data.  But, in addition to the TV show, the concepts of Big Data highlight two discussion points.  First, with reference to Gelernter’s Mirror Worlds and the concept of LifeStreams, it seems that the cornerstone of this concept will be the harnessing of Big Data.  By “harnessing” I mean the software intelligence necessary to collate and correlate your personal, professional, private, public and social information in a manner that is relevant and contextual as needed.  Not just from a PC or a tablet, but from a myriad of devices that over time have more intelligence incorporated into their existing objects (back to the Internet of Things).  Obviously this requires more intelligence “printed” on to more objects (see previous post for a crazy idea), but the Person of Interest show begins to give you a sense for how that might naturally evolve.

Second, In a recent forum, I suggested that the “cloud” that everyone is talking about is not the end game in and of itself.  Yes, it drives down IT costs.  Yes, it creates agility for corporations.  But that is just the beginning. The cloud is that aggregator of chunks of big data, borne from the internet of things, that once intelligently harnessed can – potentially – become the breeding ground for the next wave of technology induced economic growth.

That brings me to the next TV show – Hawaii Five-O.  Putting aside for a moment that I cannot comprehend how a police department could afford the technology shown in Hawaii Five-O, the use of surface interface technology is impressive, and intriguing.  We know today that most of what they show works.  For example there are wine bars in NYC (e.g. Adour) that are using surface technologies today.  Moore’s law, among others, will drive down the cost, but why not come from the other direction.  Why not take the concept of the tablet today, and apply the technology to more surfaces, not just tables in a wine bar, or conference room tables in a police station.  Yes there is a huge opportunity for tablet growth, but I find it intriguing that it appears everyone is “chasing the iPad” rather than leveraging the tablet technologies (hardware and software) into more of the everyday devices that are part of our everyday lives. Perhaps an interim step between today’s tablets and tomorrow’s augmented reality?

So, can Person of Interest and Hawaii Five-O give us a flavor for what Big Data and next gen tablets/surface technologies will be doing for us in the next year or two?  Is that where the puck will be in two years, and should we be skating there, instead of where the puck is today?

HP Printer PC consolidation and the Internet of Things

Just a thought…could the consolidation of HP’s printing and PC business be considered a very early step towards fulfilling Gartner’s vision on the “internet of things”.  Will the printing business take on more intelligence in what they actually print, thus enabling devices to have intelligence (internet, location, etc.) “printed” on them?

Or is that just dreaming way too far ahead?

Westcon Security Forum (Part II)

As an update to my previous post  the Westcon Security Forums held last week were a great series of interactions amongst vendors, resellers, partners and Westcon.

The first 2 hours were presentations primarily covering two areas – Security Technology Trends and Executive Relevance Selling.  The Security Trends discussion covered 4 of the major security trends that we at Westcon are seeing in the market today:

1. Server Virtualization Security & Compliance
2. Cloud Security
3. Big Data and Security
4. NAC & BYOD

An introductory video here discusses 3 of the 4 topics, and I will get into the 4th – NAC & BYOD – in a followup post.

The second part of the presentations was on Executive Relevance Selling (ERS).  If you are not familiar with the concept, the guy to talk to is David McNicholas (David.McNicholas@westcon.com) who pretty much invented the concept as it relates to the channel.  David has created a comprehensive customer engagement process and platform that enables the reseller to talk to the customer about solutions from an ROI and business value perspective as opposed to just a technology discussion.  If you have not yet learned about ERS, I encourage you to reach out to David.  I am sure we will discuss it further in upcoming posts, but any of the posts you have previously read here regarding the process and approach of engaging the CIO and selling into IT is exactly aligned with what David teaches.  But, David makes it specific and actionable.

Will catch up further with you soon!

Westcon Security Forums

Just finished a great week of Westcon Security Forums.  The first one was held at the Testerossa Winery in Los Gatos, the second at the Old Red Museum in Dallas.

The Forums were broken into three parts – presentations, vendor discussion forums, and then “vendor speed dating” wherein attending resellers could visit, one on one, with their most important security vendors for exactly 7 minutes.  Then, the reseller would rotate to the next table for the next seven minutes.

I’ll update the post later with details on the presentations and the major topic of conversations throughout the sessions.

Books we have been reading

At a recent customer event, we were asked to list a few of the books that we have read recently.

• The Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue-Baluja, Shumeet
• Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast-Tabarrok, Alex
• Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy-Brynjolfsson, Erik, McAfee, Andrew
• Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman, Daniel
• The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better-Cowen, Tyler
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail-Christensen, Clayton M.
• Doing Both – How Cisco Captures Today’s Profit and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth-Sidhu, Inder
• The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google-Carr, Nicholas
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable-Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
• Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World-Michael A Cusumano
• Cross the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers-Geoffrey A. Moore

Westcon Goes “All-In” on Cloud Distribution

Recently, we’ve been talking to our vendor partners and customers about the cloud and the impact cloud-sourced IT services will have on the channel. There’s a lot of noise about cloud, and we’ve been working to harmonize that noise into a cloud services distribution strategy.  — one that will benefit all channel stakeholders, including Westcon Group.

In June, we deployed a cloud services aggregation portal in the UK, through which we began transacting cloud services business almost immediately. During this process, we learned a lot about what’s necessary to operationalize a successful cloud services distribution strategy. First, operational heavy lifting is required. Tacking this onto our existing business and expecting it to flourish is not an option; tight alignment with our sales, marketing and product management operations is a requirement, as is alignment with our procurement processes and IT systems. Second, the target keeps moving: new business models are emerging, new needs arise, and everyone (vendors and channel partners included) must figure it all out. The plane has already departed on cloud and there’s no time to stop and hit the reset button.  In striving to remain relevant to our channel partners, we’re changing the airplane’s navigation system in mid-flight!

At Westcon, we’ve been focusing on three key areas:

1. Identifying and investing in mature cloud markets
2. Helping resellers transition to one of any number of cloud-based business models
3. Developing new capabilities that (a) help vendors bring their cloud services to market, and (b) help resellers make the aforementioned transition to cloud

 Identifying and investing in mature cloud markets

As a VAD, Westcon knows we’re not able to be all things to all people.  Rather than simply filling our cloud services catalogue with all available services, we’re focusing on the most mature cloud services (i.e., market-ready), under the assumption these are easiest for partners to market and sell to customers. As other cloud services reach maturity, we’ll add them to our catalogue. This iterative approach maximizes our investment and forces Westcon to stay close to markets as they develop.

Helping resellers transition to one of any number of cloud-based business models

Partners all over the world continue to ask for our help. They want to know how to leverage their existing investments, whether those investments be in managed (data, voice) networks, security operations centers or systems integration capabilities. They want to know how cloud services can be added  to their portfolio of offerings, quickly and easily, and with minimal capital outlay. They want to know how Westcon Group lowers their barrier to entry, either by providing access to best-of-breed cloud services from across our global vendor portfolio they can resell to customers, or by providing converged infrastructure solutions (hardware and software) they can use to build IaaS platforms, enterprise private clouds or virtual private clouds. We are and will continue to provide this value to our partners.

Developing new capabilities to help vendors bring cloud services to market while enabling resellers make the cloud transition

Westcon is investing in the development of new capabilities that have not typically been considered the domain of “distribution. We’re doing this to lower our partners’ and customers’ barriers to entry to the cloud. Frankly, this is what’s most exciting about the opportunity. After all, how many times do you have the opportunity to define a market in the midst of such a fundamental shift? We’ve integrated some of these new capabilities into our cloud services distribution ecosystem, with more to follow  

Distribution is inherently a conservative industry. The cloud, however, enables us to explore new, uncharted territory. Our goal is to be the best and easiest distributor to transact business with, whether that business is cloud services, infrastructure products, professional services or a mix of all three; to realize that goal requires boldness of vision and expert execution of strategy and tactics. At Westcon, we’re “all-in” on both fronts.  Stay tuned to this blog for more on our cloud vision in the months to come.