You get what you get – and you don’t get upset
IT hasn’t necessarily had a tradition of extraordinary customer
service. Typically, requests took too long – and the black box by which
the technology was delivered was a mystery to all but the most
entrenched individuals. Technology takes time. That was the message.
Enter cloud computing. Whether or not your company is virtualized or automated or even living in the modern age, business users are now seeing alternatives in the market that promise speed, agility and lower costs. All of a sudden they see a credit card paying for a web server, and the system is ready in minutes. Technology is instantly available.
So the business is beating down the walls of IT, rightfully demanding their long overdue service. And many IT groups are responding admirably, setting up cloud environments that deliver fast, standardized chunks of cloud that look.. well.. like operating systems. Faster Linux. Faster Microsoft Windows. Cheaper too. But somehow, this isn’t quite meeting the business need. Why?
a) No one really wants more Operating Systems. Can you think of a single business use case that wants a nice naked OS? No one needs that. That’s just faster virtualization – on speed. A real business user wants a real business service. SharePoint. Their Business Intelligence environment. A web server. An app server. A fully configured development environment.
b) It takes too long to configure and load applications. And, let’s face it, most of our users can’t do it. IT has taught them for years how to NOT do this, since we harp on standard configurations and change management – but now we are giving them a bare OS and tell them they are on their own.
c) They will never give it back. The whole point of cloud is that services are provisioned, and ultimately retired. Someone wise told me recently – if I’ve gone to all the trouble of installing my applications and configuring my environment, I am not giving it back. Sure, you might provision me another OS in 5 minutes flat – but that doesn’t help my time-to-value.
The clear need: Full business services in the cloud. Those are full-stack, multi-tier applications, configured to deliver value right away. And customers need configurable options – since not every instance of SharePoint is the same. Some are bigger, smaller, compliant, external, etc. To deliver real business value in cloud, you have to deliver real business services to meet real business needs.
BMC feels strongly about this. As a company that hung its hat on the Business Service Management vision, we are extending this vision to our cloud management capabilities – bringing the full weight of business value to the domain of cloud computing. But that’s our vision. I’m curious what you see as alternative approaches and what more we could be doing to make the cloud a reality for your operations. One thing we know for sure, the days of telling users “You get what you get” are over because if you do… they will get upset.
Enter cloud computing. Whether or not your company is virtualized or automated or even living in the modern age, business users are now seeing alternatives in the market that promise speed, agility and lower costs. All of a sudden they see a credit card paying for a web server, and the system is ready in minutes. Technology is instantly available.
So the business is beating down the walls of IT, rightfully demanding their long overdue service. And many IT groups are responding admirably, setting up cloud environments that deliver fast, standardized chunks of cloud that look.. well.. like operating systems. Faster Linux. Faster Microsoft Windows. Cheaper too. But somehow, this isn’t quite meeting the business need. Why?
a) No one really wants more Operating Systems. Can you think of a single business use case that wants a nice naked OS? No one needs that. That’s just faster virtualization – on speed. A real business user wants a real business service. SharePoint. Their Business Intelligence environment. A web server. An app server. A fully configured development environment.
b) It takes too long to configure and load applications. And, let’s face it, most of our users can’t do it. IT has taught them for years how to NOT do this, since we harp on standard configurations and change management – but now we are giving them a bare OS and tell them they are on their own.
c) They will never give it back. The whole point of cloud is that services are provisioned, and ultimately retired. Someone wise told me recently – if I’ve gone to all the trouble of installing my applications and configuring my environment, I am not giving it back. Sure, you might provision me another OS in 5 minutes flat – but that doesn’t help my time-to-value.
The clear need: Full business services in the cloud. Those are full-stack, multi-tier applications, configured to deliver value right away. And customers need configurable options – since not every instance of SharePoint is the same. Some are bigger, smaller, compliant, external, etc. To deliver real business value in cloud, you have to deliver real business services to meet real business needs.
BMC feels strongly about this. As a company that hung its hat on the Business Service Management vision, we are extending this vision to our cloud management capabilities – bringing the full weight of business value to the domain of cloud computing. But that’s our vision. I’m curious what you see as alternative approaches and what more we could be doing to make the cloud a reality for your operations. One thing we know for sure, the days of telling users “You get what you get” are over because if you do… they will get upset.
Categories:
CLOUD COMPUTING
0 comments:
Post a Comment