Wider Canvas Blog

Check out my new blog at widercanvas.com

I'll be posting there for the foreseeable future...

Kevin

The Cloud just got even more powerful

Amazon just announced an extension of their VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) service to include virtual networking and Internet access capabilities. So what, you might ask? One of the criticisms previously of cloud computing for some companies was the inability to segregate your servers, data and applications from all of the other shared services on the cloud providers infrastructure.

This new capability from Amazon now allows this segregation. Set up a whole private network on the Amazon Cloud with public facing and private servers, powerful network configuration around IP address ranges and subnets and routing, and even protected access to data on Amazon S3.

It begs the question: "Why would you NOT consider moving services into the Cloud?"

See Amazon announcement.

Kevin
WishfulThinking.tv

The incredible power of slow change

Read this if you have any interest in how change happens. Puts things in perspective and makes you think about what really causes major changes.

Article from Seth Godin here.

Extract:

...Cultural shifts create long terms evolutionary changes. Cultural shifts, changes in habits, technologies that slowly obsolete a product or a system are the ones that change our lives. Watch for shifts in systems and processes and expectations. That's what makes change, not big events.

Don't worry about what happened yesterday (or five minutes ago). Focus on what happened ten years ago and think about what you can do that will make a huge impact in six months. The breaking news mindset isn't just annoying, it may be distracting you from what really matters. As the world gets faster, it turns out that the glacial changes of years and decades are become more important, not less.

Kevin

Structured Analytic Techniques

#analytics

I'm reading a great book by Richards Heuer and Randolph Pherson on Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis.

From the Amazon product description:

This book takes the relatively new concept of structured analytic techniques, defines its place in a taxonomy of analytic methods, and moves it a giant leap forward. It describes 50 techniques that are divided into eight categories. There are techniques for:

• Decomposition and Visualization
• Idea Generation
• Scenarios and Indicators
• Hypothesis Generation and Testing
• Cause and Effect
• Challenge Analysis
• Conflict Management
• Decision Support

Each structured technique involves a step-by-step process that externalizes an individual analyst's thinking in a manner that makes it readily apparent to others, thereby enabling it to be shared, built on, and easily critiqued by others. This structured and transparent process combined with the intuitive input of subject matter experts is expected to reduce the risk of analytic error.

Although this book is mostly targeted at Intelligence professionals, it provides some fantastic techniques which can be utilised by analysts in all fields. Well worth a read.

Kevin

Big Data - new strategic asset

#analytics

I saw this post a while back in the NY Times. Dealing with Big Data effectively is becomming a huge challenge for many organisations. It's also becomming a huge growth industry for both technology and services.

Comment by Usama Fayyad [emphasis is mine]: "In the past, Mr. Fayyad noted, data was regarded as a byproduct of doing business, often a backward-looking record of little value. But today’s vast oceans of data, combined with tools for instant analysis and prediction, Mr. Fayyad said, are a “new strategic asset” that can be used to build “new revenue streams and new businesses.”

Kevin

OpenStack.org

#cloudcomputing

In case you missed it before, check out OpenStack.org for an interesting Cloud Computing initiative.

Kevin

Analytics Institute

#analytics

I haven't posted in a while now but the reason was the time required with the creation of an exciting new organisation I have the pleasure to be involved with. It's called The Analytics Institute (AI) [www.analyticsinstitute.org]. We've been working on it for a while now and this week we officially launched. See some coverage here on SiliconRepublic.com.

So what's it all about? At AI, our focus is to improve the world we live in using Advanced Analytics in resolving real world, critical problems.

A non-profit, AI collaborates with industry sponsors, public sector bodies, professionals and academics to transform the way organisations derive value from Analytics. By uniting these interest groups, the Analytics Institute collaborative network aims to optimise the business value of Analytics and Analytics Practices to enable better decision-making – so whether you want to know the best place to put a hospital, how to reduce risk, or how to help the planet - Advanced Analytics can help you do just that.

Established in 2009, the Analytics Institute has several key objectives

• Use Predictive Analytics to solve real world problems
• Secure AI as a global Centre of Excellence in Advanced Analytics
• Promote Analytics and prove its value to modern business and public sector organisations in improving efficiency and effectiveness
• Develop professional recognition programmes
• Optimise innovation and collaboration in education to improve Analytics

Check out our website to see more about what we're up to. www.analyticsinstitute.org

Kevin

The 7 stages of tech industry development

#cloudcomputing

Geoffrey Moore wrote the bestselling book Crossing the Chasm a few years back now which focused primarily on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period. It is closely related to the Technology adoption lifecycle where five main segments are recognized; innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

This post from Eric Norlin on CloudAve gives a different perspective on the stages of development in the tech industry. In this case using the evolution of Cloud Computing as the example.

The 7 stages of tech industry development

His summary:

What does that mean for the “cloud computing” industry? That there’s probably 4 years of REALLY explosive growth ahead of it, followed by 2-ish years of steady profitable stuff.

Kevin
ZeroTouch

Cloud-Powered High Availability and Disaster Recovery

#cloudcomputing

I came across this article on the Amazon Web Services blog. It describes a really interesting and powerful implementation of a disaster recovery solution using the Cloud.

Go to article

Once configured, CloudStation can fail over from local processing to the cloud, from one cloud region to another, or even from one cloud provider to another. It can also be used as a migration tool, or what is sometimes calls P2V (Physical to Virtual) or P2C (Physical to Cloud).

Kevin
ZeroTouch | ZeroTouch.tv

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Enterprise 2.0

Reposting this from CloudAve (by Hutch Carpenter). Definitely worth a read for anybody working in the tech business.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Enterprise 2.0 ROI



Kevin
ZeroTouch

Microsoft's Secret Stealth Data Centers

A view inside Microsoft's global data center strategy. Some nice photo's and videos courtesy of Gizmodo.

Click here to go to article.

Kevin
ZeroTouch

Predictive Analytics

#analytics

I came across this article from Raj Nathan and Joydeep Das which gives a good overview into the world of Predictive Analytics and how it is becoming a game changer for many organisations and industries.

From the article:

...It is, however, an advanced analytics activity that differs from conventional analytics and BI activities in that it focuses not on what happened or how it happened, but what might happen or could happen. It's not simply about uncovering insights, but gaining foresight.

In short, predictive analytics is primarily about examining data through a future-facing lens in order to predict future trends, behavior patterns, external forces and other factors that will determine future business results. It is a natural extension of many analytic capabilities we now have, all of which are ultimately intended to help us design innovative business strategies that will lead to improvements in all the key metrics - revenue, profitability, customer retention, market share, etc. - that define success.

Also check out our ZT.Analytics page.

Kevin
ZeroTouch

The Cloud and Vendor Relationship Management

#cloudcomputing

In a previous post from Nov 2009 (The Big Rethink) I expanded on a post from James Urquhart about the effect Cloud Computing will have on IT. In that post I mentioned several areas in particular which I believe will be impacted. One is:

How Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) will become a key discipline in IT organisations...

I came across this document [PDF] from 2000 by Eric Clemons and Elizabeth Gray which discussed the role of shared history and the value of return on trust in relation to Vendor Relationship Management. It's worth a read if you get some time.

To paraphrase some of the key points I took from it in relation to VRM:

A 3rd party relationship management / outsourcing program should consider at a minimum the following:

• Creating and retaining economic value over time while
• Controlling exposure and strategic risks.

Setting strategy for outsourcing is principally a leadership issue, not a technical issue. Managing sourcing is principally about setting a strategy, based on economic objectives, communicating those objectives within and between firms, and managing expectations if the high economic stakes cause communications to break down. Successfully managing expectations and maintaining effective communications leads to trust, which produces great and measurable economic benefits in strategic sourcing relationships.

For companies considering the use of Cloud Computing and/or SaaS (Software as a Service) they need to view their evolving IT environment like an Eco-system consisting of both in-house resources and external suppliers working together in harmony to create the best IT environment for the organisation. With that in mind they should consider the following around managing vendors -- I came across a version of these a number of years back (can't remember where) and adapted and enhanced them over time based on my own experiences.

Establishing relationships with vendors and making sure they are good relationships:

• Establishing and maintaining good vendor relationships takes time but helps mitigate many of the risks associated with integrating products or services
  
• Strive to establish a relationship built on mutual trust, which is not without cost, but the derived benefits can more than justify the cost
  
• The better the relationship, the better chance to influence the vendor product roadmaps or get them to work harder to deliver the services required
  

Motivation of vendors:

• Vendor relationships vary depending on the presence the vendor has in the market, the maturity of the vendor's product, how large a part you are of their customer base, and the importance of their product or service to you
  
• Strive to find out what motivates your vendors

The challenges around establishing and maintaining good vendor relationships:

• Vendors whose products work together today may become competitors in the future as they add features to their products or new products into their portfolio. Other customers who are willing to pay for changes (and who may not share your needs) may drive product evolution in a direction contrary to your best interests
  
• You must stay on top of the dynamics in the marketplace

This isn't a comprehensive vendor relationship strategy by any stretch of the imagination but it will get you started and thinking in a way that most IT organisations don't - but should.

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT

Where do you start with Analytics?

#analytics

Interesting question. Came across this post (from James Taylor) which gives a pretty good answer.

Quote:

With analytics – executable analytics, business analytics, predictive analytics or any other kind of analytics – begin with the decision in mind. Figure out what it is you are trying to do, which decision you are trying to improve and work into your analytics and data from there. Be driven by your business needs, not by the data you have. You may find that you don’t need to integrate this data source or clean that one to improve the decisions that drive your business. You may find that you don’t even own the data you need and will need to go shopping for it. But if you don’t start with the end in mind, you will never know.

Kevin
ZeroTouch

Cloud Computing Economics

#cloudcomputing

For anybody interested in the economics of Cloud Computing compared to traditional IT infrastructure environments you should check out this site from Amazon Web Services. Of course, it is biased to the AWS environment but still makes a strong point about how Cloud environments compare to traditional IT environments. This will be similar with all Cloud infrastructure providers (plus or minus a few $). GoGrid have a similar(ish) page around cloud scalability.

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT Ltd

A new kind of platform

#cloudcomputing

Redefining Software Platforms - How PaaS changes the games for software vendors. This is the title of an interesting report sponsored by Intuit published back in Oct '09 which is definitely worth a read.

From the report:

The rise of software as a service over the past decade has opened up new opportunities for independent software vendors to develop new applications hosted and delivered via the Web. But until recently, any ISV creating a SaaS offering has had to build its own hosting and service delivery infrastructure. That has all changed in the past two years with the rise of platform-as-a-service. PaaS is the online equivalent of conventional computing platforms, providing a ready-made infrastructure on which an ISV can rapidly build and deliver a SaaS application.

While many ISVs are understandably wary of binding their fate to that of an emerging platform provider, those who have stepped forward to become early adopters of PaaS have experienced dramatic reductions in development costs and timescales. By lowering barriers to entry and foreshortening time-to-market, PaaS supercharges SaaS, accelerating the pace of innovation and intensifying competition.

The advent of PaaS will change the game for ISVs – not only those who choose to introduce SaaS offerings, but also those who remain wedded to conventionally licensed, customer-operated software products.

The emphasis above is mine because this is a very powerful and important statement and should be heeded by all software vendors. Read the report if you get some time.

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT Ltd

The Big Rethink

Cloud Computing creates a fundamental paradigm shift for all actors in the technology business: buyers, software companies, service providers, infrastructure providers etc.

James Urquhart wrote an interesting series of articles recently on how the technologies encapsulated as Cloud Computing "...are enabling IT professionals to rethink the packaging, delivery, and operation of software functionality in extremely disruptive--and beneficial--ways". Read it here.

However, I like his 5th article in this series the best because it looks to the future - always my favorite topic! He considers several areas which are likely to significantly change. This includes:

1. How software is packaged...
2. How Enterprise IT will begin to bend technical architectures to align better with the cloud...
3. How new organizational structures will need to emerge within the IT department...
4. How the changing landscape of software development platforms will result in new philosophies of software architecture, deployment, and operations...
5. How the need for tactical systems administrators will be reduced...

Read the whole series if you get a chance.

I also want to add a few areas I believe will be severely impacted:

1. How IT Services companies need to evolve to embrace the Cloud...
2. How software companies need to turn themselves into services companies...
3. How IT management tools should change to allow for a holistic view of IT (internal and Cloud)...
   
4. How Vendor Relationship Management will become a key discipline in IT organisations...

I will discuss these areas in more detail in upcoming posts.

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT Ltd

Great Service is Hard

One of the hardest things a business can do is provide great service. For software companies moving into providing services in the Cloud, this is a big paradigm shift. It's not good enough any more to just throw out a new version of your product a couple of times a year. Now you have to engage in continuous improvement and engagement with your customers. That's not easy, especially if you haven't ever provided Services like this before.

Seth Godin has another great post on some of the balance required to provide great services. Read it here.

On a separate point, I don't really like the term SaaS (Software as a Service) for the simple reason that it should be less about the software / technology and more about the services. I would like to see this acronym fade over time and get replaced simply with Services. That's what it's really all about for customers.

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT

The Return on Investment of SaaS

#saas #cloudcomputing

Want to know if software as a service (SaaS) really has a long term economic benefit? Well, Forrester Research issued a nice report in July 2009 covering this very topic. Click here to go to the report (subscription required).

Firms almost always consider SaaS as a cost-advantage over on-premise software in the short run due to its quick implementation times and pay-as-you-go pricing. But many firms question the long-term value of SaaS, wondering if the rent-versus-own model necessarily has a cost crossover point and if so, when? As SaaS continues to move into a broader range of applications and into larger, more strategic deployments, Forrester examined client decisions across a range of SaaS solution areas and found that firms obtain long-term value with SaaS solutions.

In the report Forrester considered three key questions:

1. Benefits. How will your company benefit from SaaS?
2. Costs. How will your company pay, both in hard costs and resources, for SaaS?
3. Risks. How do uncertainties change the total impact of SaaS on your business?

If you get the opportunity you should read this report, especially if you are considering investing in SaaS or even if you are skeptical about the whole concept.

Here's what Forrester says are the key benefits of SaaS:

• Reduced cost of adoption: SaaS helps by reducing the licensing, training, and support costs of adding additional users.
• Quicker adoption: SaaS helps by decreasing the time to ramp up new users, maximizing their productivity from using the application.
• Improved adoption: SaaS helps by enabling more users to use the application.
• On-premise cost avoidance: SaaS helps by eliminating maintenance costs; reducing full-time help desk and server support, and transferring staff to higher value, proactive roles.
• Improved flexibility: SaaS helps by reducing spend on excess capacity.

There is one extract from the report I particularly like:

"...Many of the firms that Forrester interviewed talked about the significant effect that user adoption has on the usefulness of analytics and reporting on data contained in solutions and therefore the ability to drive useful business decisions from solution information."

The power of Analytics to drive your product and company strategy cannot be underestimated. I wrote about this previously. For end user companies the ability to utilise analytics should be a major factor in the move to SaaS models because this type of analytics is much harder (not impossible) in the on-premise world. For software companies they need to seriously consider the design of the user interface of their Services because it has been proven over and over again that high user adoption rates correlate to a well designed user interface and if you want to really exploit analytics to understand your customers more, you need to achieve higher adoption rates.

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT Ltd

What is Cloud Computing?

#CloudComputing

I've written many posts about this over the last few months. Check out my Blog archive.

Here is a great presentation compendium about what Cloud Computing is all about. It was created by Ben Kepes and uses the Cloud itself to show the presentation and some relevant videos.

View it here

Kevin
ZeroTouch IT Ltd