What About the Public Sector?

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We are all aware of the, often glacial, progress of the public sector. Bigger, usually means slow lumbering progress, and government is usually about as big as it gets. Chris Chant, head of the the Government’s G-Cloud programme, addresses the problem in this blog post, calling the current IT infrastructure unacceptable.

With little first-hand public sector experience, I cannot comment on the current situation regarding IT, but if a senior-level insider is calling it unacceptable, I am prepared to accept that. Charges of money wasting are often levied at the public sector, but with IT there is a huge grey area when it comes to making good choices that will stand the test of time. Since time never stands still in the world of IT, and since the contracts we are discussing are so costly, playing it safe has long been a public sector default, hence Chant’s charge of out-of-date technology.

Though there is less of a problem with public scrutiny, the technological challenges encountered by the private sector are not dissimilar to those in the public sector. As we have discussed previously, resistance to change, or inertia, is endemic in many large organisations, particularly those in long-standing, traditional sectors such as financial services. Concerns about the security of the cloud are equally valid in both the private and public sectors, though not an excuse for the level of resistance to this now-pervasive technology.

As a consultant, I do not necessarily see the use of single suppliers as wholly negative; a one-size-fits-all approach does simplify the procurement and servicing processes. However, it is clear that if these valuable contracts do not live up to expectations, reliance on a single supplier over a long period of time can cause numerous problems for the buyer. Better then perhaps, given the enormity and scope of many public sector agencies, to pilot different products and services in particular areas of the country, and use the results of this to decide on a national IT strategy.

Ignoring IT is simply not an option, and it would appear, with the G-Cloud project, that the Government is taking the initiative (better late than never) of providing a marketplace for cloud products that are available to the public sector. This gives individual agencies and departments more independence from centralised contracts, whilst at the same time utilising the economies of scale available to an organisation as large as the UK Government.

I am sure there are some lessons and key points here for businesses as well as governments. Cost effectiveness in the future will need to adapt to evolution of the cloud marketplace. Departments in businesses are already changing the way they consume their IT whether with cloud or web based services. If big central organisations are allowed to succumb to their own inertia, it is likely that they will eventually fall irredeemably behind the times. Better to give individual departments some autonomy, and allow change to occur organically, than risk the chaos that could result from indecision and failure to invest.

Do we need more analogies for cloud development?

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In a previous blog article here, I discussed how buying a coffee machine for the office versus the cost benefit of buying in the ready made coffee from the professionals, and how the decision to move to the cloud can be seen as a similar investment, either do-it-yourself, or using the specialists on a pay-as-you-go basis.

In buying a new washing machine last week, I realised we can use this as a similar example, but for the standardisation involved in a transition to the cloud rather than a financial and quality-based decision. Some of you reading this may not be as old and grey haired as I am, but I can certainly remember the maturing processes the washing machine has been through over the past years. If I remember the market in the 1960s and 70s, the offerrings for machines were far from standard – twin tubs, mixed with front loaders, mixed with small or large, wide ranges of attachements fit to the tap, plumb in, separate driers etc etc. However, looking at the offerings today, we see a commodity device, offerred in a restricted range, by a diverse set of manufacturers. Today we have washing machines that come in a standard size across all suppliers, yes there is a choice of built in or under the counter/free standing but looking at any machine there is barely a difference even in look, and even in the differences in features such as power of spin or load capacity – these are pretty much the standard menu between the various suppliers – 800rpm vesus 1200rpm, wash only, wash and dry etc. etc.

So how does this relate to the cloud. Well, take that sentence above on today’s offerings “we see a commodity device, offered in a restricted range, by a diverse set of manufacturers”, this can also be applied to the cloud.  When we have owner-managed servers or systems today, we have a multitude of builds, a multitude of configurations, a diverse set of almost customised requirements. What we can expect, is that the cloud will consolidate the computing market. Like the evolution of the washing machines into a standard set of sizes and powers and functions, and the choice between manufactureres of different quality to price ratio, in the cloud we can expect a similar menu of services on offer for different purposes. We can already see the convergence of commodity services, driven by a restricted set of menus of options for both machines and capacity/power, creating clear quality versus price choices from the large vendors. As the market grows these one-size-fits-all will become more and more standard.

I believe that changing cloud vendor, will one day be as easy as the simple replugging I had to do to install my new machine – quick, clear, easy and minimal risk. Standard services at transparent prices available on a plug and play basis. The market is closing in on that, yes, it has a little way to go, but it is inevitable, and we cannot ignore it.

The Changing Role of the CIO

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Once a bastion of technical experts, in recent years the CIO role has evolved into a more business-focused position. According to a survey in CIO Magazine, many now feel that their cloud experience has provided sufficient commercial nous to prepare CIOs for the CEO position. This is yet to be realised, with few CEOs coming up from the ranks of CIO, but with increasing reliance on the cloud, it seems a significant shift is occurring.

The shift towards commercial over technical skills can be seen throughout the IT sector, with increasing specialisation of programming skills alongside the gradual integration of business processes into the IT landscape. Attaining proficiency in multiple coding languages is no longer as lucrative as it once would have been, with many tasks being offshored by all sizes of organisation, while a UK-based team focuses on strategy. Although a good understanding of the working of a system is useful, it is return on investment that is critical to the business.

There is also an element of fear that is rapidly evaporating, as executives and members of the board have come to understand the basics of IT. On being presented with a simple bill for supposedly essential products and services, they are now asking for the IT department to justify its outlay, and can ask for them to look for cost-saving alternatives to traditional solutions. Now that technology is no longer revered in the same way it once was, organisations are beginning to treat it like any other commodity. When vying for the CIO position, those with a purely technical background will increasingly find themselves losing out to those with a more rounded skill set. At the same time, it is becoming less and less acceptable for CEOs to be ignorant of the technology driving their business.

To standardise or not to standardise that is the question?

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Firms looking to move their infrastructure and processes to the web, are faced by the key questions of how and when should they standardise both their environments and processes. Those working in the industry will cite the mantra ‘never outsource something until it is efficient and well documented’. Does this apply to the cloud as well?

We all know the problems associated with inconsistent processes, system builds and versions. Industry practitioners will give examples of tests on systems that work perfectly but fail when moved to a live environment and the root cause is either different processes, inconsistent and incompatible versions of software, or their configuration. Perfectly good tests are invalidated when the environment does not match the true target.  A move to cloud provision, whether SaaS or IaaS, removes this pain and risk immediately the transfer is complete, the management of environments is now industrialised and, when done correctly, assured by the same service and build for all customers. However, it is worth noting that the whole concept of private cloud invalidates some of this assurance.

BUT, and it is a big BUT it does not remove the pain of the transfer to the cloud service in the first place. Clearly the more homogenous the starting environment the less the pain and risk of the project to move services to the cloud. So, we return the the rhetorical question at the top. There is a clear cost benefit and risk assessment needed of when to standardise, before you move, or when you move. This is separate to, but supplements, the overall cost-benefit of the move.  So we are back to project disciplines and good financial management again, the recurring theme of this blog perhaps.

Cleaning Out and Cleaning Up: cloud offers the chance to standardise

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We have mentioned in recent posts, that a move to externalise services, whether outsourcing or cloud based, represents a major opportunity to clean up the assets on the IT balance sheet. This is a chance to rigorously go through the data centres and find all those servers running barely used legacy applications, unused environments that need to be archived, or purely redundant kit. Any IT manager who has overseen a large data centre move knows just how much “rubbish” can be cleaned up during a move… for non-IT specialist readers, just think about what was binned the last time you moved office or house.

Cleaning out and cleaning up does not just apply to hardware assets, but also to software, storage and processes. A well run project to move to cloud based services will also take the opportunity to improve and standardise operations throughout the IT stack. The starting point is a rigorous inventory – it is surprising how poor the inventories of assets are in organisations and how mixed up the balance sheet can be on what is owned by IT. The inventory must go beyond the physical assets, to the entire stack of software and versions, the larger the operation, the more likely that the software stack will be running multiple patch levels and versions in all the environments. Transferring or outsourcing a diverse estate is possible, but will be complex and likely costs more, so it is an excellent opportunity to converge on a reduced complexity level and move to some form of standard build or standard software operating stack. In fact this need to standardise is both an opportunity, but also a major contributor to the inertia in the market when it comes to cloud adoption or even traditional outsourcing.

Even when there are standardised hardware and software stacks many organisations will suffer from disparate and varied processes for managing the environments, whether monitoring, administration or other support processes. These will clearly change and adapt with any move to use cloud based services, the enforced governance and improved processes are a major benefit from any move. This standardisation of the entire IT value chain is why the cloud brings such major benefits to organisations. The providers have to standardise to remain cost-effective and keep the environments in line with the market, which, in turn, means their customers are both disciplined but also future-proofed. Initially this may feel like a burden and challenge, but once the organisation has adapted the rigour of one way of working, it can major benefits to the end user business customer.

Can IT Clean Up its Act?

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Working on the proposals for high level IT strategy and cloud propositions, not to mention other more specific IT projects, we are often met with a big problem of what I call “inertia” – namely that IT is never seen to switch anything off.  A proposition to move, say, servers out of a data centre and onto the cloud, then replace them with IaaS services can be met with a serious disbelief at the Board level, simply because IT has traditionally been bad at explaining what it does and what it has done. The Board, perhaps rightly, believes the space will not be relieved, and the servers that were to be “moved” will actually never leave the building. Instead they will be reused, whether for expanding business or new opportunities. Real savings and efficiency opportunities can be missed because of this past reputation, and it is certainly one of the causes of the inertia in the market.

Anyone working in the industry can tell stories of data centre moves where servers have been found running something, but no one knows what, or why, or of machines sitting nearly idle because nobody is brave enough to pull the plug. We can all remember a time when promised decommissioning projects and the implementation of business applications have failed at the last hurdle to finally switch something off and remove it because of fear whether of operation or regulations. There are so many projects that after freeing up hardware, they just end up giving it to another new project, or to expand an old system – simply because IT and business governance controls overlooked the hard need to track realised benefits, or have the controls in place to prevent the grabbing of newly free capacity. Too many times freed up environments are plundered as a source of “free” hardware where in fact it is not “free” it is robbing the benefits of another project.   We should not then be surprised then, when the CIO approaches the board with a proposal to free up costs and transfer assets that is rejected, not because it is not possible, or seen as too risky, but simply because the wider management team are wary of whether the move out to the cloud will just result in even more costs, as existing capacity and costs will not really be transferred.

So, even if the savings opportunities out there are very real and achievable, as I have mentioned time and again in the this blog, IT simply needs to get better at the financials. That means putting in place the necessary efforts and processes to really track benefits and govern the (often wayward) prcoesses of reallocation of assets in the IT infrastructure.   IT departments need to show that, with discipline, the projected benefits can, and will, really be realised. Perhaps with a cleaner act, better discipline and processes in place that intertia to act will be overcome.

Why Nothing Ever Gets Switched Off

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Following on from Katie’s post on Friday, the inertia problem stems from the fact that IT departments simply will not turn anything off, for fear of losing important data.

Going into companies as a cloud consultancy, I have seen all sorts of manifestations of this reluctance to let go of old systems. From servers kept in broom cupboards, personal databases operating outside of the main corporate framework, through to racks of servers in data centres still running ancient hardware. It is likely that nobody knows exactly what is in there.

This could all be seen as a hinderance to your cloud project, but at the same time it is also a great opportunity to tidy up the loose ends of your IT. Moving your business to the cloud will entail a full audit of all of your systems, and it is likely that among all of this you will end up finding a huge amount of data you didn’t even know you had. Being forced to clean up your data, will, in the end, prove to be a good thing, but it is a headache to trawl through. This is why, year in, year out, businesses avoid the complex and tedious business of cleaning up their IT portfolio, despite knowing full well how much streamlining will save them in the medium and long term.

More complexity = more inertia

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The Cloud Business blog has now come full circle, we are returning to the subject of cloud inertia.

As discussed back in September, big businesses and banks are particularly sticky when it comes to rolling out new technologies. Fear of regulatory compliance is often used as an excuse to keep servers up and running (and costing money) long after the majority of the information on them has become redundant. Yes, there are legitimate reasons why you might need to keep emails from 5 years ago, they act as a modern paper trail. However, data does not have to remain where it is originally put, just as you can move a pile of papers around from, say, Head Office to a storage facility, it is possible to move data to somewhere less obtrusive and costly.

The more people in an organisation, the more likely it is that someone will dig their heels in and refuse to cooperate whenever there is a project that affects their precious status quo. If these are senior players or even just a vital cog in the wheel, a lack of cooperation can jeopardise the whole project, and end up costing your business a fortune, and cause a huge headache for consultants and sponsors alike. These protected assets can often be the cause of projects appearing to fail, when tracked over the long term, when in fact they have been successful by all other measures.

When embarking on a cloud project, be sure to take this inertia into account, and try to ensure that these protected bits of data are part of your solution. It may be difficult to work with these special interests but it is not impossible, this is where your skills as a consultant will really be put to the test.

The Humble Photocopier and IP

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Following on from Katie’s posts on the current debate raging in the US on IP rights and the internet, it is worth thinking about the implications in a wider sense. Personally I see the dilemma in terms of “old technology”…..the way things are heading, the law may as well allow authors of copyrighted material to sue photocopier manufacturers, hire companies, businesses with copying facilities or photocopier owners because they facilitate the copying of material. When the copying mechanism is a website it is no more than a machine, it is just faster and easier. There are laws on copyright, and we can all see the case for protection, but let us protect the material and not stymie the tools that can have other very legitimate uses. It may be reasonable for users of sharing sites to be warned of copyright issues in the same way as print shops and companies now have warnings on photocopiers stating the laws on fair use of materials under copywrite, but to ban the whole concept is clearly not the right direction.

As business owners in one form or another, we all have produced material whether it is is research, ideas, software, papers that we do not want other people to plagiarise, but equally we have all produced material, especially marketing material, that we would love to be copied and distributed as widely as possible. So clearly, it is the act of copying material not intended for free distribution, that is the issue, and we should ignore the mechanism or tool for the copying, whether that is old-school photocopy or fax, or new tech internet site or scan.

So what are the lessons in the wider context of business use of the internet and the cloud?   First, I think we have to examine our web presence and consider what we are showing to the world, then ask, is it clear what is copyright and and what is not, make it clear what can be used and what cannot has to be a good starting point. Secondly, we have to examine what material, that was obtained from wider sources, is directly or indirectly being rebroadcast on the web. Is this following the general rules for copying material or is any of it infringing rights (even with a photocopier it is illegal to copy more than a few parts of a book for personal use). Thirdly it is critical to consider the IP you are placing on the web and how it is protected, this is particularly important with any software and data IP that might be running in the Cloud, diligence in checking third party contracts for usage licenses, IP rights and data security is vital.

So perhaps overall all this noise in media is perhaps good it will make us all check our web presence and contracts and make sure our businesses are protected to the right level.

SOPA, PIPA and your Business

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If you happen to have looked anything up on Wikipedia on Wednesday, you may have noticed the internet blackout protests against the SOPA and PIPA bills that are being considered by the Senate and House of Representatives in the United States.

SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA, the Protect IP Act, are essentially equivalents of the same thing, but with slightly different emphases. The aim of the bills is ostensibly to prevent abuses in intellectual property such as filesharing or the streaming of pirated content. However, the way the bill is written, placing the onus of responsibility on websites and domain hosts to police content and links posted by users, means that many user-content-heavy websites such as Facebook and YouTube would become too costly to monitor and would have to shut down or risk prosecution. The bills are said to essentially turn the tables on the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ premise and adopt the opposite standpoint with regards to internet piracy. This means that your site could be shut down if, say, a comment on a blog post contains a link to a site that contains any form of filesharing or allows streaming or downloading of content that belongs to anyone else. I don’t know about you, but this potentially puts us in the firing line. How many times have you innocently linked to other people’s sites, or posted a video on your Facebook page, without knowing the IP situation of the content or the full scope of the site you were linking to?

From a business perspective, IP protection is crucial, but remember to choose your fights wisely to avoid hefty legal costs. There is no point trying to sue a couple of teenagers, for using your music to make a skateboard video of their mates. Even if the clip were to go viral, it would be more likely to make you some money than cost you anything, for example if the viewers decide to buy the music. It is also important to remember that it is not only media companies that have cause to worry about IP infringement, how much IP does your company have on the web? How do you control access to corporate research or software? Moving with the times is key to future-proofing your business. Think about how you sell your products and services, do consumers really need to own it? Many companies have switched from a purchase to a subscription model in recent years. This is not the answer to everything, it may work well for Spotify, but has proven problematic for the Times.

SOPA and PIPA are likely to become law in some form or another, this could fundamentally alter the way the internet operates. Only time will tell how this will affect business, so in the meantime, protect your IP, avoid infringing on the IP of others, keep an eye on what is happening in the United States, as they are still the dominant force in global business, for now.