Future with no hard drives?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

For the record, I have worked with tons of INCREDIBLE IT people. It is just the overall mentallity (like Marketting) that seems to have no connection with reality.

Marketing and IT seems to work pretty good for Google eh?

Edit: I will grant you that many cloud computing claims are overblown - it's early days yet, and a lot of early adopters are likely to buy into big mistakes. But to say there's no connection with reality is to ignore some very real benefits that many businesses can leverage. Many, but not all.

[MarchHare]

BTW, if you're looking for a high-profile example of a company that has fully-embraced cloud computing for its datacenter, storage, and network infrastructure needs, take a look at Netflix. Their video streaming business is entirely hosted on Amazon's public cloud for a small fraction of what it would cost them to host and operate a datacenter to satisfy their storage and bandwidth demands.

http://gigaom.com/cloud/netflix-we-d...-data-centers/

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I guarantee you that any decent enterprise-grade cloud provider has far more advanced security, encryption, redundancy, and backup capabilities than your organization can do in-house for an affordable price.

IT weenie...

I worked for one of the biggest companies in Canada and the IT department promised me the world (from his perspective) yet it was less than what we could do locally.

The "Cloud" is just another IT myth. Yes, if you want to rent time on a huge server farm or what not, fine, but for day-to-day operations you would be an IDIOT to go that route, IMHO.

Your opinion may differ, my experience dictates otherwise.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

BTW, if you're looking for a high-profile example of a company that has fully-embraced cloud computing for its datacenter, storage, and network infrastructure needs, take a look at Netflix. Their video streaming business is entirely hosted on Amazon's public cloud for a small fraction of what it would cost them to host and operate a datacenter to satisfy their storage and bandwidth demands.

http://gigaom.com/cloud/netflix-we-d...-data-centers/

Wow... an extremely low security risk, extremely high data volume application.

Do you think I am an idiot?

[MarchHare]

but for day-to-day operations you would be an IDIOT to go that route, IMHO.

If you want to spend hundreds of thousands (or millions) per year building and operating your own datacenter, be my guest. I'm sure the likes of HP, Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, and VMWare will appreciate all the business you give them. Meanwhile your competitors who embraced cloud computing will enjoy the cost savings, agility, and competitive advantages it gives them.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

Wow... an extremely low security risk, extremely high data volume application.

Do you think I am an idiot?

Idiot, no. Uninformed, yes.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

yet it was less than what we could do locally.

Which was what?

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

If you want to spend hundreds of thousands (or millions) per year building and operating your own datacenter, be my guest. I'm sure the likes of HP, Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, and VMWare will appreciate all the business you give them. Meanwhile your competitors who embraced cloud computing will enjoy the cost savings, agility, and competitive advantages it gives them.

Hahahah, OK then. Obviously you have a vested interest in seeing the "cloud" go forward, whereby I have a vested interest in my clients best interests. C'est la vie. You sound like some others that have tried to sell me on this.

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Idiot, no. Uninformed, yes.

I think when I received one of these companies highest honours, it came with a "Yes, You ARE Informed" T-shirt... I will have to dig it out.

Look March, like all things there are different opinions and options. You might be looking at it from just the IT side, but I am looking at it from many avenues like Clients, Operations, Customer Service, Finance, Security, Stakeholders, etc.

The "Cloud" as a concept is one that I cannot endorse. If you do, so be it. We have differed on opinions before and will again.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Which was what?

WAY too long to get into here, and also falls under confidentiallity agreement disclosures.

Bottom line though was that a lean, mean group that could implement changes quickly, efficiently and accurately was replaced by a bloated IT department that was focussed on implementing the latest fad instead of addressing clients (our) requests and requirements. Total failure ensued.

I am done with this, my opinion is noted. The last two words I have are:

Unintended consequences.

[MarchHare]

Hahahah, OK then. Obviously you have a vested interest in seeing the "cloud" go forward, whereby I have a vested interest in my clients best interests. C'est la vie. You sound like some others that have tried to sell me on this.

Actually, I honestly don't care if the cloud model or the internally owned & operated model (or some combination of the two) ultimately wins out. I too have a vested interest in recommending the best possible option for my clients, and for many of them, a cloud computing solution is the clear winner.

I think when I received one of these companies highest honours, it came with a "Yes, You ARE Informed" T-shirt... I will have to dig it out.

I'm sure you're very well-informed about many things, and I'll happily defer to your superior knowledge and experience in areas where your expertise exceeds mine, but you very clearly have some outright misinformed views of cloud computing. There's nothing wrong in admitting you're not an expert in all areas.

You might be looking at it from just the IT side, but I am looking at it from many avenues like Clients, Operations, Customer Service, Finance, Security, Stakeholders, etc.

Those are exactly the same criteria I use when evaluating technology solutions. I work as an analyst, not an "IT weenie" as you described it.

The "Cloud" as a concept is one that I cannot endorse.

Let's see how much your views on this matter evolve over the next few years.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

WAY too long to get into here, and also falls under confidentiallity agreement disclosures.

Bottom line though was that a lean, mean group that could implement changes quickly, efficiently and accurately was replaced by a bloated IT department that was focussed on implementing the latest fad instead of addressing clients (our) requests and requirements. Total failure ensued.

I am done with this, my opinion is noted. The last two words I have are:

Unintended consequences.

This is very interesting since one of the biggest business benefits of the cloud computing model is that you can replace some/all of your bloated IT department with on-demand infrastructure operated by a third-party that can quickly scale to meet your needs.

And you don't need to hire a bunch of IT weenies to operate it for you.

It's hard to comment without knowing more details about your specific scenario than you can legally share, but from what you described, it sounds like you had a poorly-managed IT department that wasn't aligned with meeting the needs of your business. That's not a problem with the cloud model, it's a problem with your IT director.

[To Be Quite Honest]

Golly guys, get a room!


My biggest concern is privacy in cloud storage. My private data only stays local.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

WAY too long to get into here, and also falls under confidentiallity agreement disclosures.

Bottom line though was that a lean, mean group that could implement changes quickly, efficiently and accurately was replaced by a bloated IT department that was focussed on implementing the latest fad instead of addressing clients (our) requests and requirements. Total failure ensued.

Sounds like you are conflating poor management or implementation with a technology set, which is merely a tool.

[freedogger]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

More garbage IT make work projects.

Avoid it at all costs.

This biggest burden I see with companies I talk with are unwarranted IT costs. This is just one of the lot.

Second to Marketting @$$wipes, many IT weenies are the bane to actually running a successful business.

Argue all you want; been there and have the t-shirt.

I could pick a few examples, but here is just one: Trello. I want a tool to manage a team in a scrum environment. What are you going to set up for us that beats it?
Here's the requirements:
- available on any device
- updates every where in real time,
- free
- we don't give a rats ass if we lose all the stuff in there, its a project's todo list, a team area that depeciates rapidly as time passes
- easy enough for my mom to use
- lets us export to a raw format that our own custom tools can extend
- we could still work without it for a few days if we had to
- we can customize and set it up all by ouselves without even involving IT, so nevermind, we don't even need to discuss the benefits or perils of the cloud, we are using it and don't let the door hit you on the way out

Your answer would be sharepoint?

Try besting salesforce.com or bookedin while you are at it.

An all or nothing stance on the cloud is a huge disservice to any IT strategy in my opinion. The answer for any company is "It depends"

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

WAY too long to get into here, and also falls under confidentiallity agreement disclosures.

Bottom line though was that a lean, mean group that could implement changes quickly, efficiently and accurately was replaced by a bloated IT department that was focussed on implementing the latest fad instead of addressing clients (our) requests and requirements. Total failure ensued.

I am done with this, my opinion is noted. The last two words I have are:

Unintended consequences.

Not to sound critical, because I obviously can't understand your situation, but this part seems to be what the problem is, not anything to do with the cloud.

[Azure]

We recently had a massive screwup with our Exchange Server. Still running 2003, it crashed, and we were faced with the idea of migrating everything to Exchange 2011.

From a financial viewpoint, the cost of owning all the physical hardware was bearable, but being able to do all the setup work as well as maintenance was not. We are a small company and those of us who get involved in the IT side of things only do it part-time. Works well for the most part.

Instead of investing literally hundreds of man-hours to setting up Exchange 2011, we spent 4 hours signing up for Office 365, and migrating everything onto the Microsoft 'cloud.' Had one issue where our calender entries got deleted, and we called Microsoft Support, and they had it fixed within a day.

It has been 6 months or so, and we have literally had zero problems. It just works, and somewhere in a data centre, some guy that probably helped build Exchange is making sure we get 99.9% uptime. We can't compete with that inhouse. Simply impossible.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by freedogger

An all or nothing stance on the cloud is a huge disservice to any IT strategy in my opinion. The answer for any company is "It depends"

Exactly. It's hugely ironic that everyone with an interest in a cloud toolset has said that exact thing throughout the thread - nobody has yet claimed here that cloud is an all or nothing solution, and that you should blindly start deploying all your stuff in the cloud just because it's new and trendy.

I'd love to hear Shawnski's stance on co-locating servers or using managed data centers like Q9. Since cloud is only a couple steps further removed from that, I bet the only acceptable solution for him is burdening your company with the expense and ongoing risk of doing physical security, power, cooling, racking, fire suppression, etc yourself, and ensuring you hire and retain qualified facilities guys to keep it all running.

[Bobblehead]

I'm going through the process right now where cloud storage has come front and centre. We are looking at SAN and cloud storage options. For the cost of a couple decent SAN you can store a hell of a lot of documents in the cloud for 12.5 cents / GB. You only pay for what you need so you don't need to overbuy up front and you won't need to worry about it later either.

Issues that we are also considering are latency, costs to pull data from the cloud, bandwidth costs, file encryption/security and data seizure laws depending upon where the data is actually stored. Even things like where the gateway is located (my company is spread across 5 provinces).

The cloud is not magical and not everything will suddenly be better with it. But to ignore it is foolhardy as there are many practical applications where is can be a boon.

[sclitheroe]

Previous page I talked about the possibility of using local compute resources to in combination with VDI in the cloud and keeping it synced and broadly available.

VMWare just acquired a company to deliver this:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Virtualizat...788653/?kc=rss

By adding Wanova's IP to its mix, VMware claims that IT organizations will be able to automatically synchronize PC image updates/upgrades to all types of endpoints -- physical virtual, tethered desktops, or roaming laptops (Mac and PC). This will be music to the ears of IT administrators.

Wanova also brings advanced layering technology to enable the deployment of persistent departmental or user-installed applications in centrally managed desktop images, providing every user with a low-cost personalized physical or virtual desktop, Montgomery said.

Mirage has image-syncing ability that stores all elements of a user's desktop image in a company's private cloud for complete management and backup, Montgomery said. It also has desktop streaming and layering to enable quick recovery and repair services for all types of endpoints -- even over WAN.

Again, for the benefit of the audience of this thread, nobody is claiming its the "one true way". It's one of many possible approaches for managing resources in a highly distributed workforce.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

IT weenie...

I worked for one of the biggest companies in Canada and the IT department promised me the world (from his perspective) yet it was less than what we could do locally.

The "Cloud" is just another IT myth. Yes, if you want to rent time on a huge server farm or what not, fine, but for day-to-day operations you would be an IDIOT to go that route, IMHO.

Your opinion may differ, my experience dictates otherwise.

Our head "IT Weenie" is open minded and isn't condescending, and sometimes I forget how lucky we are.