I just penned a guest post for Parallel’s Enterprise blog. It talks to the impact BYOD and CoIT has enabled Apple in the enterprise market. You can view the post here:
Shadow IT is a good thing for IT organizations…and here’s why…
It is important to first understand what Shadow IT is and why it happens. Shadow IT is commonly referred to when non-IT organizations delve into the delivery of technology solutions…without IT’s involvement. It happens for a number of reasons. But the most common is when there is demand for a technology solution and it is believed (right or wrong) that IT is not able to assist or deliver the solution. This could be due to timing, availability, experience, bureaucracy, or a number of other factors. The bottom line is that the non-IT organization believes they can address a need better than the IT organization can.
In general, is Shadow IT a bad thing? Yes, but has the opportunity to evolve into a very good thing. Shadow IT (as it is often implemented today) is a reaction to a problem with a solution that is not ideal. The solution is a non-IT or trying to provide IT services. Unfortunately, this is often not their core competency and furthermore distracts from their core mission.
So, why is this new? In the past, it was hard for non-IT organizations to leverage technology without the assistance of IT. People were also not as familiar with technology. In the cloud-based world, leveraging technology is far easier. In addition, knowledge workers today are more familiar with technology than in past generations. For those that build shadow IT organizations, the believe is that it is the path of least resistance; build yourself or leverage IT. While not an ideal situation, it is often the only choice.
At the Forrester CIO Forum yesterday, 79% of business decision makers say they rely on technology to innovate in the business. 42% say IT is too bureaucratic and 11% of those business decision makers are bypassing IT.
The move to shadow IT is a good thing for IT. Why? It is a wake-up call. It provides a clear message that IT is not meeting the requirements of the business. IT leaders need to rethink how to transform the IT organization to better serve the business and get ahead of the requirements. There is a significant opportunity for IT play a leading role in business today. However, it goes beyond just the nuts and bolts of support and technology. It requires IT to get more involved in understanding how business units operate and proactively seek opportunities to advance their objectives. It requires IT to reach beyond the cultural norms that have been built over the past 10, 20, 30 years.
A new type of IT organization is required. A fresh coat of paint won’t cut it. Change is hard, but the opportunities are significant. This is more of a story about moving from a reactive state to a proactive state for IT. It does require a significant change in the way IT operates for many. That includes both internally within the IT organization and externally in the non-IT organizations. The opportunities can radically transform the value IT brings to driving the business forward.
Shadow IT is a turning point for IT. Embrace it and leverage the best that it can deliver while transforming how technology solutions are delivered. Look for ways to embrace the amplitude in change of technology, process and organization. Embrace change and look for ways to transform IT to better serve the business. Cloud is a significant opportunity to leverage for this change. Shed the ways of old and adopt the new. Opportunity awaits.
The Under The Radar (UTR) Conference (http://www.undertheradarblog.com/) is tomorrow, April 26, 2012. UTR is the intersection of hot up-and-coming startups, investors and judging. If the reception tonight was any indication, the conference and presentations should be very interesting. Here’s a sneak peak of my take of the hot areas and companies to watch:
Application Development Solutions
A few companies are presenting their solutions in the mobile and security space. In the era of cloud computing, these are two hot buttons that enterprises and service providers alike need to be keenly aware of. The move of the information worker from a stationary device to a mobile device is in process. CoIT and BYOD are both serious factors to the movement. Likewise, using traditional security paradigms in the new model run into serious complications. Tools are needed to help organizations make this move while managing and securing environments.
Companies: BitzerMobile, Cabana, Duo Security, Fabric Engine, Framehawk, StackMob
Platforms and Infrastructure
Building applications on top of infrastructure is nothing new. In the cloud era, the architecture…and options open up quite a bit. The cloud market is starting to mature and value is moving from core infrastructure to platforms and on to applications. Leveraging hosted platforms does require a different paradigm to succeed. In addition, when considering apps at scale, automation and orchestration become even more important. This is a very broad area with quite a bit of specialization. Moving forward, integration in the space will be the key to success…along with some consolidation.
Companies: Appfog, AppHarbor, CloudBees, CloudScaling, Drawn to Scale, ionGrid, Iron.io, MemSQL, MongoLab, Nodejitsu, NuoDB, Piston Cloud, Puppet Labs, Sauce Labs, ScaleArc, Zadara Storage
Monitoring and Analytics
One of the most interesting areas is how data is used and analyzed. And then taking action based on the information gleaned from the data. Players in this space range from aggregating data to understanding and analyzing it. Value increases as the data is moved into analytics and ultimately business actions taken based on the intelligence. While there is quite a bit of specialization in this area at different levels (application monitoring/ performance management to analytics and intelligence), added value will come when these can be tied together to drive business decisions.
Companies: Chart.io, Cloudability, Cloudyn, Datadog, DataSift, Infochimps, Metamarkets, Nodeable, Sumo Logic, Tracelytics
Interesting Areas to Watch
In today’s marketplace, there are the future-state solutions and concepts. And then there are the real-world solutions that solve today’s problems. Both states need to be understood and the ball needs to be moved forward…and fast! The increased amplitude of mobile devices along with cloud computing bring applications at scale into the forefront. Orchestration and automation becoming hallmarks to success to up-level the conversation and value IT brings to organizations. Ultimately, the play will be with data and analytics. But today, there are more fundamental issues on the table.
Of course, that’s just a cursory review of the upcoming presentations from the UTR conference. Look for more details in the UTR Twitter stream (#UTRconf) and posts after the conference.
Ok, so you’re selling technology products, solutions or services. You’re looking for the largest buyers and typically look to the enterprise market. You develop the strategy and start going to work. You setup a sales team, check. You setup a channel and partner program, check. Then you start leveraging the relationships, check. But how do you cover the consumer angle? Huh? Yes. Using consumers as a sort of ‘Trojan Horse’ into the enterprise space.
In just the past few years, we’ve seen an uptick in the impact of Consumerization of IT (CoIT) in the enterprise space. The movement shifts the power pendulum away from IT and toward users. BYOD is also making an impact on the movement too. For more info on BYOD vs. CoIT:
http://timcrawford.org/2012/02/10/the-difference-between-coit-and-byod-and-the-impact-for-it/
In the case of Apple, they’ve attempted entry into the enterprise market a few times. Each time, they’ve been unsuccessful in creating a beachhead and establishing momentum. In the past two years, their attempt to enter the enterprise has largely succeeded. According to Apple’s latest quarterly earnings call, “94% of the Fortune 500 and 75% of the global 500 are testing or deploying iPads”. Others are also in the testing phase (see link below). And that doesn’t take into account the number of devices already in play via the consumer angle. So, is Apple changing their strategy to enter the enterprise environment? Regardless of the specific answer, they are progressing. The move gives Apple an interesting beachhead into the enterprise space…whether they intended to or not.
Interestingly, if consumers are used to using a given technology, they’re more supportive of using it in their professional life too. And that is a good thing for IT organizations from an adoption standpoint. The question is how providers can help enable this process. Apple is a good use-case of a different approach.
The point is: If you’re a provider looking to make a beachhead, there are options to sell into enterprises beyond the traditional approaches. Consumers is one way…but doesn’t fit every company’s solution. If your solution does fit, it might be an interesting model to consider. And this doesn’t cover the other targets open to most providers. But more on that later…
Additional Links:
CIO Magazine – Is Apple changing Its Enterprise Tune?
http://blogs.cio.com/leadershipmanagement/17022/apple-changing-its-enterprise-tune
Many folks want to look in a crystal ball and magically profess what the future looks like. In the land of technology, it’s not that easy. Or is it? Sure, we do have the ability to control our destiny. We are limited by our own boundaries…artificially set or not. This may seem fairly straight forward, but it’s not. Businesses are looking for technology organizations to evolve and change. Even if that means they shift how they use services and applications on their own. Hence shadow IT.
Over the course of my career, I’ve seen many data centers in various countries. Even today, the level of sophistication varies greatly with Switch’s primary Las Vegas data center at one end of the spectrum and a 20-year old data center from a top data center/ cloud provider at the other end. I’ll leave them unnamed to avoid any potential embarrassment. To contrast, I’ve toured newer data centers in their portfolio that are much more innovative.
The advent of cloud computing has flipped the way computing resources are used on it’s head. How data centers are used is changing quickly. And what’s inside is becoming more relevant to those that manage data centers, but less relevant to those who use them. Let me explain.
Operating a data center is complex. It is no longer just four walls with additional power and cooling requirements. To add complexity, the line between facilities and IT has blurred greatly. How does an organization deal with this growing complexity on top of what they’re already dealing with? Furthermore, as the complexity of the applications and services increases, so do the expertise requirements within the organization. How is every company that currently operates a data center expected to meet these growing requirements? In reality, they can’t.
Only those that are able to bring the scale of their applications and services will warrant the continued operation of their facility. General purpose IT services (core applications, custom applications and the like) will move to alternative solutions. Sure, cloud is one option. Co-location is another. There are many clever solutions to this growing challenge. Are there exception cases? Yes. However, it is important to take an unbiased view at the maturing marketplace and how to best leverage the limited resources available internally.
In summary, unless you are 1) operating applications or services at scale or 2) have a specific use-case, possibly due to regulatory or compliance requirements, or 3) do not, realistically, have a viable alternative… then you should consider moving away from operating your own data center. The future data center for many is an empty one.
Over the past year, I’ve observed a concerning trend about workloads. It seems that with the advent of cloud computing, the idea of a workload has been confused a bit. The fundamental concern is a misguided view that all workloads are the same or similar. Specifically, I’ve heard general IT professionals making decisions around cloud computing by following those of Netflix, Zynga, Facebook and Google. This makes some very large and flawed assumptions that are fundamentally based in a misunderstanding of the business drivers and workload requirements.
What is a Workload?
First, let’s start with what a workload is. A workload is a characterization of the work that applications perform. This includes the applications, systems, storage and network infrastructure. It’s a holistic view of the type of “work” being performed with the entire system. The nature of the work is the load being placed on the infrastructure systems. The work being performed is governed by the application, systems, configurations and specific use of the applications or services. At a macro level, this is fairly unique to each company. There are exceptions, which I will discuss in a minute…read on.
Workload Modeling
For well over 20 years, organizations have modeled their workloads to better understand performance characteristics of systems. Others may refer to it as Web Testing, Software Testing, Load Testing and the like. When I was at InfoWorld in the early 90’s, I participated with BAPCO to model performance of systems based on the 10 most popular applications at the time. At the time, we used scripts to perform functions in each app similar to popular actions taken by typical users. It was very cool for the time. The idea was to create a “typical” load by characterizing typical application use on systems, storage and networking devices. Today, the level of sophistication of workload modeling has increased significantly. And many tools like TPC target a specific application or service. I’ve listed a number of more popular ones in the references section.
Two Fundamental Types of Workloads
At a high level, when you consider the different types of workloads, there are two fundamental categories. One is the monolithic application/ service while the other is more generalized. These are very different.
Monolithic Applications
The monolithic application is often a single-purpose custom-built application (or application suite) and runs at scale. In addition, it’s commonly a dedicated application separate from general business IT functions. Examples would be Zynga’s gaming platform or Google’s search platform. Both Zynga and Google’s environments also run at an extreme scale. Because of the scale, it’s even more important to understand nuances around workload characterization that are less critical (and harder to pin down) with mixed workloads. For example, Google can fine-tune the different aspects of their search platform to decrease the time to present results. In addition, they can create custom infrastructure components, architectures and configurations. Why? Because they clearly understand the myriad of possible tweaks to the application and their impact. In addition, applications at scale bring a whole host of unique challenges on their own. This is a very different environment from their internal core business applications that run their business. It is also very uncommon for most businesses to have this type of workload with the exception being the aforementioned or possibly a Line of Business (LOB) application. Arguably, one might consider Google, Facebook, Netflix or Zynga’s apps the company’s LOB application.
Mixed Workloads
The second type of workload is a mixed workload that combines a variety of core business applications. Internal core business applications are great examples of a mixed workload (email, ERP, HR, Financials, custom applications, etc). Each company will have a different combination of applications. They may also be a combination of off the shelf and custom applications. And each application does not typically run at a very large scale. These are classic IT workloads and found in just about every organization. The amount of effort to characterize and tweak this workload at a granular level vs. the value gained is often hard to justify.
Comparing Apples and Oranges
It’s important to clearly understand the type of workload you are comparing. Comparing what Zynga does with your own decisions is not the wisest of choices. Meaning, the demands and specifics of a monolithic workload are very different from a mixed workload. In addition, this does not taken into account the business factors that each type of workload brings to the forefront. All of these should be considered in the decision making process.
Following, Learning and Thinking
So, simply following Zynga, Google or Facebook’s decisions with cloud computing should not be happening without further consideration. Unfortunately, it is. Yet even Netflix and Zynga have taken very different paths for their applications/ services. Can we all learn from these industry leaders in the cloud computing space? Absolutely! But we need to consider what factors and aspects compare with our own needs. Getting to the answer is more complex than simply saying “Facebook went right, we should go right too!”. It means we need to think more and understand our own needs.
And as if understanding your own workload is not complex enough, comparing workloads across companies is very challenging. There are so many variables to consider that the value may not be worth the effort. For most it will still be an apples to oranges comparison. The best advice is to understand the factors that go into your decision-making process and compare common attributes across workloads. That way, you can learn from others while making good decisions about understanding your own workload.
Leveraging the appropriate tools can also assist in the decision making process.
References:
TPC Benchmarks: Transaction Processing Performance Council (http://www.tpc.org/)
SYSmark/ MobileMark/ WebMark Benchmarks: BAPCO (http://www.bapco.com/)
Cloud Testing: SOASTA (http://www.soasta.com/)
HP LoadRunner (http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software/software-product.html?compURI=tcm:245-935779)
Building data centers in specific areas is nothing new. Data centers are large consumers of power. That’s not news either. Typically, data centers are located near sources of low-cost (and hopefully renewable) energy. Energy is a large portion of the overall data center operational costs.
But power isn’t everything. Two other major considerations are connectivity to a variety of major backbone providers and people. Yes, people. How many skilled workers are willing to take the risk and relocate to a rural area? If the job doesn’t work out, where do they go? There is a premium to relocate people, which factors against the power savings.
Two ways to address the people issue are 1) locate the data center in close proximity to other data centers and 2) architect for a truly lights-out operation to limit staffing requirements. It seems that both are not only possible today, but also being encouraged.
Major companies such as VMware, Intuit, Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell along with commercial providers have build data centers in the Wenatchee/ Quincy area of Central Washington State. The combined data centers comprise more than two million square feet of data center space. That’s quite a large footprint for such a rural area. More recently, Facebook located and Apple is locating a data center in the Prineville, Oregon area.
If your company does not have the scale for large data centers, there are still options. Commercial data center providers are locating data centers in the Wenatchee/ Quincy area. There is also a growing trend in the creation of data center “parks”. These are locations that are specifically built to take advantage of power, cooling, tax implications and connectivity options. In addition, they’re close enough to metro areas to attract the talent required for operations.
Reno, Nevada
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/11/15/large-reno-project-to-generate-its-own-power/
Colorado
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/03/09/energy-park-proposed-at-nexus-of-fiber-power/
I would expect to see an increase in data centers popping up in these data center parks and away from metropolitan areas where rent and power is expensive. In addition, cloud computing will only increase the movement of data center functions away from traditional approaches to commercial offerings in remote areas.
There is quite a bit of confusion between CoIT (Consumerization of IT) and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). While these two subjects are related, they are not the same. To make things more confusing, the two terms are often interchanged. Yet, they have very different contexts and definitions. And the impact for IT organizations is significant. Read on…
Consumerization of IT (CoIT)
The consumerization of IT refers to a fundamental change in ‘how’ people use technology. It does not specifically refer to the devices they use, but rather how they work.
As people become more familiar with technology, they tend to use it in everyday life. The reciprocal is true too. Two common examples CoIT are Mobile and Social. In the mobile space, just about everyone has a mobile device. It could be a cell phone, tablet or laptop. Over the past 10 years alone, the number of mobile devices has increased astronomically. Today, there are over 5 billion mobile phones in the world and more than 80% of the world’s population has a mobile phone. Two factors contribute to this change: 1) The cost of the device has reached a point where many more people can afford to own them. 2) Devices are much easier to use. In the past, an IT person would need to configure the device and perform training for the user. No longer is that the case. Even a 4-year-old can operate a device today. In the social space, everyone is using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Users do not need an instruction manual to reach the site or operate the service. In fact, Facebook has over 800 million users today. It would take a large army of IT professionals to train 800 million users using the traditional model.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
On the other hand, BYOD is all about the device. Everyday users are more likely to use these devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop) today. The combination of price drops and ease of use contribute to the change. Due to the familiarity with these devices, users prefer to use them in their everyday work environment. The trend to use personal devices in a corporate environment started several years ago with the mobile phone. People preferred to use their own mobile phone rather than carry one for personal and one for work. With the advent of smartphones that evolved to checking email, surfing the web and the plethora of other applications available today. Tablets and laptops followed in the wake of smartphones.
Today, some corporate entities have fully embraced the concept by providing employees a stipend for their device(s) rather than issue a company-owned device. In other cases, companies pay the bill for the smartphone voice and data plans. The expectation is that the user is checking the device more frequently than they would a company issued device.
From the CIO perspective, I wrote about BYOD in: What the CIO Needs to Know About BYOD
http://timcrawford.org/2012/01/10/what-the-cio-needs-to-know-about-byod/
Changes in How We Work
There is another factor that directly affects this evolutionary change. The organizations and people that belong to them are changing. There are two fundamental drivers: 1) The new workforce and 2) Changes in the technology solutions. By new workforce, I mean the employees that are entering the workplace today. Employees entering the workplace in the past couple of years are the first ones that grew up with a computer from birth to adult. Prior generations picked up computing somewhere along their upbringing or career. That single change provides a workforce that is far more comfortable with computers and electronic devices. They are much more adept at technology change and evolutionary shifts than prior generations too. This milestone is not one to underestimate.
Changes to the IT Paradigm
The general user base is not the only group that is changing. With the changes to CoIT and BYOD, the IT Paradigm needs a significant overhaul. The days of ‘command and control’ are over. The technology paradigm has reached a point where it can no longer be ‘controlled’. But it can be managed! That is where the paradigm changes. Today’s technology world is about setting boundaries, guidelines and frameworks. It is less important to create walls and fortresses. This applies to both the culture we set within the organization and the technology solutions we put in place. One example might be how to protect data rather than the device itself. If you can’t control the device, what are you going to do? You can’t just throw your hands up and give up. There are solutions.
Interestingly, this fundamental change to the way IT operates has significant ramifications beyond just CoIT and BYOD. Yes, making the shift is hard. We have spent 30 years building the methodologies and paradigms we work within today. Change is hard and takes time. But the opportunities for those that make the change are significant.
Bottom Line: CoIT and BYOD are different, but related. Both require changes to the fundamental operations of the IT organization. Those changes, while challenging, can provide significant value moving forward.
Could they? Could it be out of Vogue to operate your own data center? Current developments in Corporate Social Responsibility and a maturing data center marketplace are starting to drive these changes.
For many, this could be a discussion about the pink elephant in the room. Data centers have been, and continue to be a requirement for businesses around the world. We rely more heavily every day on systems and the applications they run. Those applications run on servers and use storage subsystems; all of which are connected with networking devices. Collectively, we call this the “IT Load” for a data center.
The root question is not whether a data center is required. The obvious answer is: Yes! The real question is: Do I need to operate my own data center? But we will get to answer that question in a minute.
Data Center Energy Consumption
Data centers are consuming a larger percentage of the world’s energy every day. Our growing appetite will continue to take a toll on natural resources. In 2007, the EPA issued (for some) an eye-opening report on data center consumption and potential areas of efficiency.
While the report is a bit dated (2007), the core data still holds true today. The majority of the report is focused on projections and potential areas of efficiency. In 2011, Jonathan Koomey issued an updated report on the findings.
http://www.analyticspress.com/datacenters.html/
In his report, he noted that data center power consumption did not grow as strongly as the EPA projected. By 2010, global data center energy consumption hit 1.3% while in the US that number rose to 2%. Those are still very significant numbers.
What is Missing?
To add more fuel to the figures, a significant number of “facilities” are missing. Most notably missing from these findings is the energy consumption by the myriad of smaller “data centers”. While many would not call them data centers, they still serve the same purpose of housing servers, storage and networking equipment. These are smaller closets, rooms and labs. It may be as small as a server and switch under a desk to a rack or two of gear in a closet to a 1,000 sqft room. It is much harder to pin down the power consumed by each of these smaller locations. If you consider that these are the common solution for Small and Medium Businesses (SMB), the aggregate consumption is significant.
Potential Impact
Increasing the efficiency of the physical data center is a great start. There are many opportunities to improve the efficiency of power and cooling systems. People have focused on increasing the efficiency of power and cooling systems for years. Many of the solutions are simple to implement and make a significant impact. While others take quite a bit of work, expertise and money. And there are many brilliant minds around the world that are currently working on this very challenge.
However, the largest potential impact may come from the IT load itself. For the majority of IT loads, the equipment is not used efficiently. Server, storage and network utilization figures are much lower than they could be. Servers are designed (from an energy perspective) for high utilization. One look at the power supply power curve for a server supports this. On the server, processor utilization rates commonly peak at 20-30% with average utilization in the 5-10% range. In addition, the current implementation rates for virtualization are still relatively low. The latest figures suggest that as many as 50% of servers are virtualized. Anecdotally, that figure still seems high. Regardless, pushing the implementation of virtualization to 80%+ would significantly reduce the overall power consumption…for the same IT workload.
Imagine reducing the US power consumption by a full 1%. The impact could be that significant.
Strategic and World-Class Expertise
Now back to the root question: Do you need to have your own data center? Before answering, two other questions will shed light on the answer. Is your organization in a position to operate your data center (100,000 sqft facility, 5,000 sqft room, closet, lab, etc) at a world-class level? Asked a different way: Is your organization willing to make the investment of installing a team of people to operate a world-class facility where it is their whole job, not just a line in the job description? Second, is operation of a data center strategic to your organization? We already covered that data centers are vitally important. So is electricity. Are you willing to make the investment in operating a data center that is unique and provides an advantage from your competition? Or are there alternatives that better fit the strategic direction of the organization?
The Solution
If you set personal beliefs, cultural norms and inertia aside, for most, the answer to these questions is no. There are viable alternatives today that offer the economics, flexibility and responsiveness. And the alternative data center providers do employ teams to ensure their facilities are world-class. Only those few with large-scale requirements or the uncommon corner case will still need to operate their own data center.
Cloud computing is just one of many ways to accomplish these objectives. Startups and others are already heading down this path unencumbered by cultural norms and inertia. The challenge for established organizations is how to effectively turn the corner.
Bottom Line: Most organizations are not in a position to efficiently operate a world-class data center and should look at alternative solutions. The data center provider market is mature and competitors are already heading down this path.
In my various conversations and presentations last year, I was starting to hear a concerning theme. I’ll get to why it is concerning in a bit. The theme was around what I called “cloud fatigue”. That is, people were starting to get tired of talking about cloud computing. The reason was that the term had been over-hyped with little substance to the true value cloud computing would bring. In addition, people were having a hard time figuring out how to setup clouds.
This hype happened over the prior couple of years. One way to track the cycle is through Gartner’s annual cloud computing Hype Cycle. Here is the updated version from 2011:
To provide some empirical data to support my theory, I took a look at the search stats around the term “cloud computing”. Last year, I penned a blog entry with details on my findings.
http://timcrawford.org/2011/04/17/cloud-computing-search-trends-show-growth-and-plateau/
2012 Update
Today, I re-ran the reports to determine if the theory played out over 2011. Indeed it did. The subject, while discussed widely, has plateaued in search results. The global results show a marked flattening of the results.
International cities continue drive the top results with the United States falling from #7 in April 2011 to #10 in January 2012.
Within the United States, the results are similar to last year.
If interest in cloud computing was acutally decreasing, that would be a concern. Cloud computing presents a significant opportunity for most organizations both technically and organizationally. The business value it brings is not to be missed. While I don’t have empirical data to support my new theory, I suspect the change has more to do with depth of understanding. Today, many folks have heard about cloud computing and understand what it is (generally speaking). Now the conversation has moved into specific details of how to use it within a specific use case.
I would expect to see the general term of cloud computing continue to plateau and possibly decrease. This is natural and signifies a maturity of the term. In addition, new subjects will continue to fill in the cloud’s wake.
