Tom Peruzzi's thoughts on digital, innovation, IT and operations

I had the chance to present some general thoughts on cloud computing on an aicooma and Microsoft event yesterday.
While being in general a pro cloud geek especially for operations I got some more hints to cover:

• scrum & cloud really cooperate well on a very high level (aicooma will present some whitepaper regarding that topic soon)
• the deeper you look at all potential hidden costs the less interesting a cloud offer looks like in the first, but keep in mind that you always have to take care on a service lifecycle perspective
• Moving from Managed Services to a real cloud offering is quite hard, on the one hand side for the moving organization to get an understanding and feeling for the cloud, on the other hand side for the partner, right now nearly all major outsourcing parties claim to offer cloud but the contract looks quite different afterwards …
• Even cloud vendors now tell the truth: a cloud will never ever fit into each setup

Dealing with that topics it shows that there is still some FUD in regarding how cloud computing could help me, my department my organization and whether it fits or not. A quite good way would be like I do in general:

1. Get your service catalogue and your service portfolio up
2. Include lifecycle infos into portfolio (time of reinvest …)
3. take the 5 out where reinvest should occur within next 18 months
4. have a very deep look (organizational, technical, financial) on those 5
5. find a potential cloud substitute
6. compare in depth

After doing this once or twice it’s getting quite easy to deal with, it is not that much work as it looks like in the beginning but it offers you a very transparent view on your portfolio and on the potential of cloud offerings being out and stable right now, more or less it demystifies cloud offerings and makes them compareable to your internal or external managed services like comparing apples with apples, and that’s the goal, nothing about emotions, coolness or hype, realistic and transparent decision taking is king.