Are People Really Delivering Private Clouds with a Self-Service Catalog? YES. Embrace the Special Agent in You

The future arrives with a bang. First it's coming, coming, coming, then it's past and we are behind.

This week I've been talking or been in conversations where some very good news were shared.

1) A large government agency went live with their private cloud using newScale.

2) A large manufacturer told us they have close 100,000 people ordering services from their newScale catalog and they will expand it.

3) I'm requested to urgently fly out to finalize a project w/ a company that needs to go live with their cloud by February and could I be there hmm... tomorrow? (No, but I'll be there next week).

4) Meeting w/ the head for cloud of a large financial services firm (and existing customer) today to talk about their strategy plans. What's amazing is that there was no "Cloud" position a year ago. 

So there's a lot of activity, build out. We will exit 2011 with an altered landscape. 

Which brings me to this post from another a customer who is building a cloud. This is a very useful post on the personal journey of adopting a cloud operating model. This is change and that means it's alwasy fearful.  But let's listen to him....

If enterprise IT is truly going to benefit from the today’s embryonic but tomorrow’s immense value proposition of all forms of cloud, then I believe we are going to need an army of change agents, at many levels of a change-able organization to influence and drive toward the desired result.

I am under no illusion that in the coming months (or years) that automation, in the guise of the much heralded public and private cloud services, will render large parts of my current role and responsibility defunct. I am under no illusion that futile attempts to keep hold of areas of scope, sets of repeatable tasks or, for that matter, the knowledge I’ve collected over the years will render me irreplaceable.

Will I shed tears ? Yes. But they will be tears of joy.

As a not-so-Smart Guy who comes from a very deep technical infrastructure background, I already see the assembly line robots beating a path to my door in the shape of orchestrators and directors….I welcome them with open arms.

via blog.theloosecouple.com

I take three valuable insights from the post:

1. The need to be the agent of change, rather at the effect of change.
2. The need for a change-able organization.  Who hasn't hit the wall sometimes. If it happens enough times, maybe it's time to look for the door. 
3. The certainty while whole parts of IT will disappear (I agree), whole new challenges will arise that require new roles, know-how, etc.

But this requires we embrace change early, lead it, learn the good and the bad. Because cloud is happening.

Comments

[The IT Skeptic]

Rodrigo, you are THE man to talk to about Cloud and self-service catalogue. If Cloud was really "happening' and the landscape was altering and the future was going bang, I'd expect you to have 100,000 requests to talk to you right now from the millions of IT shops around the world.

You wound me up enough that I blogged on this http://www.itskeptic.org/few-swallows-cloud-are-not-altering-landscape