Cloud opportunities: From embracing clouds to adopting clouds

IT managers like to control their own territory, which tends to be a stumbling block to cloud strategy. Cloud providers should be aware of this and let IT managers understand that cloud services will not let them lose their jobs, but rather make them work better. This approach makes cloud providers a strategic partner of the enterprise, rather than a cloud service contractor that can be replaced at any time.

"IT staff like to maintain control of infrastructure facilities and be able to see and touch them," said Jeff Kaplan, founder and managing director of cloud consulting firm Thinkstrategies.

Kaplan says IT managers can easily turn into stubborn "server keepers" and refuse to use cloud services because they are worried about not being able to control the environment after entering the cloud. The server keeper is the technology version of the "tree-hugging environmentalist", fearful of outsourcing their servers (or their work) to the cloud.

"Often, cloud providers don't pay attention to these questions about people's minds," he said. "They are simply convincing IT managers of the speed of their cloud services and the ability to meet the needs they imagine." This is easy, but what they need to do is to lift the psychological concerns of IT managers. ”

As a cloud provider, how do you shift the focus of IT managers from a physical server to a cloud service? How to ease the IT pros ' concerns about their career status? The key is to be a trusted partner, not just a technology provider, and to help IT managers recognize the great opportunities to focus on more strategic work, Not just the technical details involved in the management framework.

"Building a solid trust requires everyone's tireless efforts to allow reluctant IT managers to voluntarily abandon the actual manipulation of IT infrastructure facilities." Through long-term cooperation, personal communication and continuous support, cloud providers will surely gain the trust of IT managers. IaaS (infrastructure services) service provider Cloudsigma chief executive and founder Patrick Baillie said.

"Our clients don't just depend on themselves," Baillie said. "We help them plan migrations, provide them with information about how to deploy to the cloud and recommend best practices to them." For more complex deployments, we provide professionals and resources to help customers understand problems and the benefits of migrating to the cloud. ”

Provide performance metrics report

Unfortunately, unlike many aspects of cloud services, building and maintaining mutual trust cannot be done automatically; it needs to rely on human behavior. It also includes implementation of the process to ensure that a given cloud service performance meets the needs of each customer's business.

Many IaaS (infrastructure-service) providers measure cloud computing performance only by monitoring and reporting CPU usage and uptime, while vendors of PaaS (Platform-Service) and SaaS (software-as-services) can provide customers with more performance metrics. Sharing this data with the customer can deepen the customer's trust in the supplier's service capabilities and ultimately increase the likelihood that the customer will move to the cloud.

IT managers outsource the server to the cloud provider, not only by not threatening his own work, but also by freeing him from management details and elevating himself to a more strategic position within the organization, which is both a benefit to both sides.

Rackspace's product and software director, Josh Odom, said: "Your IT team will not be dismissed because of cloud service intervention, but instead it teams will be freed from their day-to-day work to do more valuable work." It team work is very stressful and if we can afford to manage IT infrastructure it will be a great partnership. We believe that when a professional IT company helps manage your IT needs, they provide excellent business experience to reduce your company's fear of something unknown. ”

For customers, the important aspect of examining cloud providers also includes the ability to transfer their applications from one cloud provider to another, Odem said. Rackspace is to reassure customers by adopting an OpenStack open application programming Interface (API).

Shared data analysis

But just describing the vision of tomorrow will not allow sceptical IT managers to relinquish control of the physical servers. Thinkstrategies's Kaplan best advice to cloud providers is to discourage IT managers from worrying about cloud service nights by facilitating peer-to-peer communication. Trust is gradually generated by letting customers tell their customers.

Cloud providers can also demonstrate their own value by actively encouraging customers to share best practices and performance benchmarking tests, Kaplan said.

"Almost every IT performance metric and typical benchmark statistics are collected and provided through multiple it user communities," Kaplan said. "Good cloud providers are constantly capturing user data, which provides a lot of resources for data analysis." These data can be extracted and analyzed in multiple dimensions without violating privacy regulations and ultimately benefit the user. ”

(Responsible editor: Liu Fen)