Application case: How cloud computing changes the world's oldest newspaper

I spoke at a recent meeting of the World Forum on Cloud Computing in London. From the author's point of view, this is an ideal meeting: large enough to have a large number of interested vendors and participants, small enough to support quality talks. If you've ever visited a large American cloud computing exhibition, you know how difficult it is to achieve the quality of the latter. These exhibitions are very crowded and the conversation is reduced to a very small extent. Of course, the meeting was held in London. This is not allowed to exaggerate the story and marketing propaganda, give people a refreshing feeling.

I attended a panel discussion hosted by Mike Spink of Gartner. The topic of discussion is to convert cloud computing providers. The Panel concludes that cloud computing migrates the lock point, but locking is the reality of life in it. The author's own contribution is to make a suggestion (this is certainly not a unique point of view, nor is it a hyperstratus point of view), that is, by dividing the application and encapsulation interface of good software engineering methods to reduce the lock.

The most fascinating display of the conference is the speech delivered by Toby Wright, the chief technical Officer of Telegraph Media Group, publisher of The Daily Telegraph, the world's oldest successive newspaper. Wright demonstrated a strategy for cloud computing applications. The strategy is at least seductive.

As a background, it is no secret that the newspaper business is in dire condition. The author's local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, has lost 30% of its circulation in the past five years. The Daily Telegraph's circulation also declined continuously. So when Wright was in charge of it, his first task was to cut costs. His second task was to change the way it works in the Daily Telegraph. Cloud computing is the central part of the process.

The Daily Telegraph's it approach can be summed up as "let others run the business." Wright briefly describes the use of SaaS (software as a service) application in his company:

@Salesforce for customer interaction

@ Google Apps for email and collaboration

@Ooyala for Video Publishing

@Disqus for Blog comments

@Cordys for Business process management and workflow

The Daily Telegraph also uses AWS to run the analysis.

In fact, Wright wants to get out of the business of running tools. He realizes that professional providers run less cheaply than they do in a managed data center. Moreover, he felt that security had improved. The higher standard of security practices used by cloud providers is much higher than the security standards being applied by The Daily Telegraph, and the Daily Telegraph cannot afford this high standard.

The Daily Telegraph has also implemented an IT strategy that helps SaaS development by giving priority to paying for application services rather than leveraging ISSS (infrastructure as a service). IaaS still requires him to manage the infrastructure, even though it is not a physical infrastructure. Wright called it "virtual can."

Wright briefly describes the following benefits from cloud computing from his IT organization:

@ Cloud computing has turned his IT department from running to delivering customer-facing value. Wright shows a chart showing changes in the IT staff composition and how cloud computing supports delivering business value. During a 4-year period (from 2008-2011), IT staff changed from "90% using business skills/10% to changing business skills" to "20% using business skills/80% changing business skills". Migrating to an asset-streamlining, SaaS-driven strategy allows the Daily Telegraph it organization to focus on providing application functionality to help The Daily Telegraph provide more value to readers (or more accurately, content consumers). In fact, The Daily Telegraph's IT strategy is that 100% of new business investments are based on cloud computing. Hardware and software procurement is unlikely to be possible in the future.

@ Cloud computing makes it a part of business strategy development and technological innovation. Wright points out that there is no need to ask why ABC apps are running poorly, and he is now asking "how do we use XYZ to provide a new service to our readers or advertisers?" Business Unit Dialogue. Cloud computing has changed the role of it and offered it a seat at the business Meeting table, rather than a seat at the cost center table for children.

@ Cloud computing supports the Daily Telegraph's business in a changing way. Wright described the work of a journalist who had been preparing a digital camera to test the Daily Telegraph. She first began to post photos of the delivered digital camera box. Over the course of the next few weeks, she continued to post the latest developments in assessing the digital camera, with a lot of photos and comments about her experience. When she finally finished writing the test, she had created a fan base that wanted to buy the digital camera. This participation is a feature of social media. Social participation is a necessary condition for the future business environment. Using comments and online video to make it easier to publish and support rich participatory applications will help The Daily Telegraph play an important role in changing media, content and community participation.

The author was moved by The Daily Telegraph to enjoy the level of cloud computing life. While other companies are conducting cloud computing strategy assessments or implementing pilot schemes, The Daily Telegraph is aggressively moving into an asset-streamlined, cloud-computing future.

What experience can people get from The Daily Telegraph experience?

First, quote the famous British poet Samuel Johnson: Sir, according to this situation, when a person knows he will be hanged within two weeks, this will make his brain more concentrated. Or quoting more modern observers, US President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Mr Emanuel: "You never want to have a serious crisis to waste." "

To some extent, The Daily Telegraph has no choice about how to change the calculations. The poor economic environment it faces forced it to reassess its IT practices. It can't go down the same road, so it changes direction. If it does not face such a financial crisis, The Daily Telegraph may gradually make small changes. The traditional approach is to cut travel expenses, train, see if we can ask our manufacturers to reduce the cost of a little contract, hoping that the situation will always return to normal in the future.

"We are looking at cloud computing and think cloud computing may play a role in the future, but we are now doing little things in a small department using cloud computing," he said. "In other words, we don't want to interrupt our practice too much because it's really hard and difficult." The Daily Telegraph does not have enough money to take this approach, because doing so would bankrupt it.

Second, The Daily Telegraph experience provides evidence of how cloud computing supports the IT department as a value provider rather than a cost center. As long as it is focused on infrastructure capital investment and most of its budget is dedicated to "running the business," it will be put together with other internal services and excluded from discussions on how it can help frontline business units provide more value.

Many seminars on the role of it in the enterprise cite the term it consumerism. This is synonymous with easy to use intuitive equipment. A different way to explain this consumerism is the fact that it is now injecting new consumer products. That is to say, our world is developing a data-centric view, even if we consider it in different ways, describing it as a digital music or tabular application or something. The reality is that all consumer programs (and the business plans that reflect these plans) cannot exist without it. IT departments that cannot quickly support these changes (in part because of the reliance on specialized applications and infrastructure providers) will be expelled to the enterprise hell.

Third and last. The Daily Telegraph has provided a useful lesson in the rapid change in the business arena and the inevitable shift to an IT tool to support it. Ten years ago, the newspaper industry was one of the largest in the industry, with net profit margins exceeding 20% per cent. The newspaper industry is now a wasteland of loss, dismissal and mergers. 10 years from the best into the worst. How fast the speed is. It is wrong to think that the loss of users and confusion in the newspaper industry is irrelevant. Growing digital and it injection (i.e. it consumerism) will affect every industry. It organizations must be prepared for more drastic changes in the next five years than in the first 50 years. It is very important to keep a clear mind when changes occur.