CIOs are trying to discover what's beyond the efficiency and agility of cloud computing

At the CIO Symposium held at MIT Sloan in March, CIOs discussed the complex issue of "CIO roles evolving in cloud and mobile computing." Global Crossing CIO and CTO Anthonyd.christie, VMware CIOMARKEGAN;EMC Corporation CIO and COO Sanjay Mirchandani and Iron Kings, executive vice president and CIO Tasos Tsolakis, commented on how best to use cloud and mobile computing. They agree that cloud computing starts with efficiency, but it should bring other benefits quickly. When it comes to migrating legacy applications, the prevailing view is caution.


　　


in the internal debate over cloud and mobile computing, should CIOs lead efficiency or agility, or both?


　　


EMC's Mirchandani says that the view of the cloud is always "beginning with efficiency", but should be focused quickly on quality of service (QoS) and it agility. EMC's cloud journey dates back to the 2004, and when asked about internal users, if they could choose, they would choose internal it as their supplier. Clear response: It needs to be improved. His team started to drive efficiencies from server virtualization. Virtualization evolves into cloud products, which increases the quality of IT services across the organization and ultimately leads to greater it agility.


　　


VMware's Egan said he also saw three stages of the journey to the cloud. The first phase is familiarity with technology and its impact on the business. (What are the risks to the business?) Do you want to save money? What kind of governance is needed? The second phase is to use the cloud for critical applications, such as CRM and e-mail. The third stage is agility. He said: "You don't want to let go of those savings, you want to have the right monitoring process in place, so you don't waste resources, but to get speed." ”


　　


Global crossing Christie says the CIO needs to have a clear understanding of the business issues to be addressed before debating efficiency or agility.


　　


About a year ago, his team saw the "great value" of putting selected communications and collaborative applications into the cloud. The group began with "Simple things": Audio conferencing. The cloud-based audio conferencing system has been in operation for six months and provides a better user experience while saving 25% of it costs. "Don't tell my CFO that I'm saving money on savings," he said. Christie says efficiency is the driving force to go to the cloud, but audio conferencing products quickly "become a platform for other IT services" such as instant messaging, directory services, and telephony. Where should it start: private, public, or mixed cloud? Bottom line: This is not an either or a theorem.


　　

60% of the global applications of
Global Crossing are now in the private cloud. About 90% of all new jobs are transferred to the private cloud, Christie said: "Not because I force people, nor because my team forces people, but because it works." ”


　　


Iron Kings's Tsolakis says the global storage company is taking a hybrid approach to providing customers with solutions that use their own private cloud. In addition, for internal users and some relatively small customers of the ERP system solutions, it leverages the "corporate external private cloud." However, the best combination application is now available through the public cloud, and the company has decided that the transition to these applications is more meaningful.


　　


Mirchandani says EMC also hosts many of its best portfolio applications in the public cloud, but it also acknowledges that these applications cannot run in isolation. "If you have a CRM application, there must be links to ERP and other systems," he said. Data must flow back and forth. ”


　　

What are the thumb rules for migrating
legacy applications to cloud and mobile computing (based on empirical methods alone)?


　　


to act cautiously. Christie says the migration of legacy applications in Global Crossing is "specific case-specific analysis." "I went back to the business rules. If we have a legacy application in place where there is a lot of human capital tied to the application and there are a lot of specialized features that are hard to export into any cloud, then I will do my best to maintain the asset as long as I don't compromise the company's business. ”


　　


Tsolakis agrees that migrating legacy applications often requires a fee, and in most cases it is "very difficult". Instead, his strategy is to "give the business access in a different way, so they don't even know that there is a legacy application" behind the new interface.


　　

First, the application should be easy to use,
Christie said. For example, for a cloud-based recording system, the Christie team must develop mobile application features in order to initiate an audio session from a PDA. To make the access simpler, it embeds the system in Outlook, allowing the user to press a single button instead of connecting with a different number-and seeing an increase in the amount of system usage.


　　


when faced with a replacement for a support system in VMware, Egan also tends to be user-accessible. "We can upgrade it or put it into the cloud," he explains. He said that the existing system has a high function, but the user experience is very unfriendly. "We tend to choose cloud solutions," he said. The adoption is very high, and once we are on that platform, we can make changes faster. ”


　　


What skills does the IT department need for the next step in cloud and mobile computing?


　　


is a good communicator, business analyst and Enterprise Architect on the recruiting list. However, assuming that the pace of technological change is accompanied by a lack of standards, "future test" work skills for cloud and mobile computing are hard to do, Christie said. Tsolakis added: "Complexity can get worse, not better." ”


　　


EMC's Mirchandani agrees. Over the years, it has had a well-defined skill track, he said. "Now, we don't know where it will go," he said. "For example, EMC Corporation now employs cloud architects, who did not have this role two years ago." EMC also has a chief architect's office-the spiritual leader of the architecture team, he said.


　　


CIOs should identify and nurture "change agents" within and outside their organizations. "Traditional It structures do not make interdisciplinary work easier," Mirchandani said. But cloud and mobility demand these crossover capabilities. "Give them room to make mistakes because the script hasn't been written yet," he said. They need a little iterative time. ”

(Editor: Liu Fen)