The Reality of the Hybrid Deployment Model

Having recently read Michael Fauscette’s article “Late” to the Cloud?, I sought out to test several of his assertions at Inforum 2012, Infor’s annual user’s conference held earlier this week in Denver, Colorado. One of Mr. Fauscette’s more provocative assertions was this one: “For companies that have a substantial investment in core on prem systems that currently meet their needs, they will continue to operate those systems for the foreseeable future.”

The first very first customer that I spoke with seemed to validate Mr. Fasucette’s point of view:

“We like the new applications being offered in the cloud, but we love the fact that Infor is not forcing us to move everything to the cloud in order to use them.”

Admittedly, you cannot draw a reasonable conclusion from a sample size of one. Further, I did not utilize a scientific survey instrument. However, over the course of 5 days and with over 5000 in attendance at Inforum 2012, I spoke with many customers and their job titles certainly covered the IT spectrum, not to mention much of the functional spectrum as well.

Again, not scientific, but the general sentiment certainly aligned with with Mr. Fauscette. Customers really like Infor’s commitment to innovation but consistently vocalized a steadfast resolve to not simply abandon investment in current [on-premise] solutions and jump to the cloud.

For those of us working in some way with the cloud, cloud computing technologies, software as a service, platform as a service or infrastructure as a service business models, that news, at first blush, may seem to be bad. However, with all of its latest innovations such as Infor Intelligent Open Network (ION), a lightweight middleware solution, and Infor Motion, Infor’s new mobile platform and mobile computing solutions, the focus is on ‘hybrid’ deployment. Cloud centric solutions that connect applications running in the cloud with applications that customer’s may already have running on-premise.

Nick Borth, Infor Motion Product Manager, received the following comment from an Infor Syteline customer:

“The cloud seems great for mobility… You can keep all of your core data inside your four walls and then push only what’s needed to the cloud to fuel the mobile apps.”

A possible insight from this comment is that hybrid deployment my also be valuable in helping settle remaining customer concerns over data security and privacy in addition to protecting previous software investments. Regardless, it seems there is mounting support for Mr. Fauscette’s conclusion that a hybrid model, where some applications continue to reside on-premise while new solutions are delivered via the cloud, is the likely course for the foreseeable future.

Heath-

[Disclosure: Heath Brownsworth is a Technology Strategist for Infor]

Off the Ledge and into the Cloud

Armed with my latest and greatest cloud presentation, I headed out to a customer user conference this week. The driver for the conference was to provide an update on one of our primary HCM products, but for the purpose of my presentation the conference could have been centered around any of our products as I had been asked to provide an overview of cloud computing and speak to the benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS).

As the room began to fill up, I worked through my normal pre-presentation jitters by walking around and personally introducing myself and thanking our customers for being our customers. I love to do this not only because it is good business and that I am thankful that they our our customers, but because doing so also affords an opportunity to ask people what interested them enough about the cloud to want to attend the session. The responses were candid and ranged from the curious “I hear the cloud mentioned all of time, but I am not sure I really understand it” to the skeptical “We get cloud, but are not sure it makes sense for us”.

The responses offer good insight and help me tune the presentation to better meet the needs of the audience. In order to quickly get to a common frame of reference I always like to start with a definition of cloud computing and the one that continues to seem the most objective is the one published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

NIST continues by identifying 5 essential characteristics of the cloud:

Broad Network Access
On-demand Self Service
Measured Service
Resource Pooling
Rapid Elasticity

3 common Service Models in cloud computing:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

and 4 evolving Deployment Models:

Private
Community
Public
Hybrid

At this point heads are nodding. All of the cloud jargon and buzz words that people have heard now have a context and for them now exist within a reference framework. However, as I moved from defining the cloud to explaining the SaaS service model in greater detail, I was hit with a zinger from the ‘We get cloud’ customer, “SaaS is for you (the vendor), we give up all the control and you get all of the money”. This was certainly an ‘ah ha’ moment, at that point the realization set in that if this customer is clinging to the the ledge of the on-premise world and needs to be talked into the cloud, then surely there are others.

For those of us close to the cloud and to its service models, we take its benefits for granted and believe that everyone sees the cloud and the future as we do. So my response, partially in jest, to this customer who clearly has not bought into the cloud, or the SaaS service model, was “Yes, but the difference now is we no longer get all of the money up front!”.

There is no arguing with this customer’s claim that economies of scale provide reduced costs for the SaaS solution provider, but there are also economic rewards for the customer as well in that SaaS moves the customer from a CAPEX to OPEX software consumption model (I am not a finance guy, but my friends who are tell me that this is a good thing). Putting economic rewards aside though, SaaS is truly a win-win in that it creates a virtuous development cycle of innovation.

That sounds like a benefit, but what does it really mean? It means that software developers like to build cool new things, but in the on-premise world that almost always means that customers have to go through some sort of upgrade (cost/effort) to take advantage of new features or innovative functionality. However, with a SaaS solution, there is a customer base that can always consume the solution provider’s latest innovations. The net result of this cycle is that innovations come to market faster, at a higher level of quality and can be consumed without significant cost. In a world where speed and agility count, that is a pretty significant benefit to the customer.

Bottom line, it is always great to get out and meet with customers, they truly provide a real world perspective that helps to keep me grounded or that least keeps my feet on the ground even if my head is in the clouds. The marching orders are clear though, we have to do much better job at educating customers on how the cloud, and SaaS, benefit them every bit as much as it benefits us.

Heath-

Balancing Cloud Economics

The move from technology capital expenditures to service operating expenses has long been touted as one of the big benefits of cloud computing, however, as Drew Reeves and Daryl Plummer point out in their very candid article, The Truth About Cloud Economics, this transition in financial models is not always an easy one.

Reeves and Plummer do not disagree with the logic that it makes no sense for companies whose core competency is not IT to operate and maintain multiple data centers and that companies routinely expense nonessential items to those who specialize in offering the item as a service. However, they note that:

For companies, cloud computing’s new economic model stands in stark contrast to the traditional economic model of IT where we buy technology from a vendor as a capital investment and continue to invest in maintaining and servicing it over time.

Further, they accurately add that there will most likely be a period of time when organizations need to pay for both the new model and the old model, i.e. switching to the new cloud service does not allow for the old software to be completely shut down.

This leaves the organization in the dubious position of the move to cloud having increased the lines of expenditure rather than reduced them. Definitely not a point highlighted by most cloud and software vendors, nor likely to be considered up front by most organizations. Reeves and Plummer go on to suggest that an Enterprise Agreement may be the best avenue for companies where some of the “pay-as-you-go” (PAYG) benefit is given up in order to enter into a longer term agreement with the software/cloud vendor. On the vendor side, the agreement helps mitigate the risk of customer departures and in turn the vendor is typically willing to offer better pricing with the cost savings helping to subsidize some of the transition to an operating expense model.

The economics of the cloud is most certainly a balancing act and if you are considering a move to the cloud, this insightful article by Reeves and Plummer is more than worth your time.

Heath-

The Evolution of the IT Department

The capabilities, agility and scale offered by cloud computing are too great to ignore. As such, it is becoming increasingly difficult for IT Departments around the world to look the other way and pretend that the cloud is simply a fad and that life will soon return to business as usual. This is the conclusion reported by ComputerWorldUK after February’s Cloud Connect Conference in Santa Clara. Is this an an anomaly? No, similar reports are coming in from every sector. Interest in the cloud is not isolated to any one geography, industry, class of software or type of computing.

There do, however, seem to be several commonalities across organizations moving to the cloud or that are considering getting at least some of their computing power from the cloud. First, these organizations report that the increasing sophistication of the business’s processes has outstripped IT’s ability to provide in-house computing solutions for these needs in a timely manner. Second, business decision makers in these organizations now have access to better technology at home than they do at work. Further, they procured it themselves without ever having to ‘install’ or ‘maintain’ anything. The inevitable question they ask, “Why can’t we do this at work?”.

As many already now the answer to that question is that you ‘can’ and without the help of IT. While no one is promoting the subversion of organizational policy, simple, rapid and efficient provisioning is a hallmark of many cloud solutions. Therefore the message to Enterprise IT seems clear: evolve, adapt, or run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Heath-

In a World of Clouds, People Matter More than Ever

There is no denying that Amazon Web Services’ lastest offering, DynamoDB, is super cool and holds great promise in resolving the database bottleneck that has plagued many applications and implementations running in the cloud. But is technological innovation enough to ensure Amazon’s future, or the future of the cloud for that matter? With the recent release of the 2012 edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer, the answer would appear to be “no”.

The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual survey conducted by research firm StrategyOne that seeks to examine trust in four key institutions: government, business, media and NGOs (non-governmental organizations). The 2012 report indicates that product and technical innovation alone are no longer enough to win trust, or translated in the case of business, revenue. The report draws several important conclusions, including that “engagement-oriented behaviors that are more societal in nature, such as treating employees well, putting customers ahead of profits, and transparency, are vital to building future trust”.

This should be concerning to all companies, but particularly companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook that have won legions of customers based upon their products and technology. We are already starting to see these ‘societal’  attributes of trust come into play as concerns continue to mount over worker treatment and working conditions at Foxconn, a Taiwanese company with manufacturing facilities in China that produces the iPad, iPhone, Kindle, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. With concern over how tangible products are made already at our doorstep, concern over how intangible services, such as the cloud, are produced is right around the corner.

So while technical innovation is driving cloud growth and cloud adoption, we cannot lose sight of the fact that people matter. In fact in a world where technology is increasingly desensitizing us of our humanity, people matter more than ever.

Heath-

Mobile and Social: Desperately Seeking an Enterprise Identity

Social Media

The technology streams of cloud, mobile, and social definitely seem to be on a convergence trajectory. As mobile and social are largely born of the cloud, or at a minimum have been enabled because of the the cloud, this should not come as a complete surprise.  However, what is interesting is that cloud is such an able enabler that social and mobile are moving so fast that the enterprise community is struggling to internalize these concepts and leverage them in daily business.

In his blog, A Software Insider’s Point of View, Ray Wang published an entry today entitled Quips: The Slide Some Vendors Won’t Let Me Show On Social Media Tools that pokes fun at Social Media but highlights how most enterprises don’t quite know what to make of social media or more specifically the ‘social enterprise’.  While social outside of the enterprise largely focuses on ‘self’, social inside the the enterprise is taking on a meaning more akin to ‘engaged’.  The big question is how, and the current selection of social media tools does not get us there.

Mobile at first blush may seem to be on more solid footing, but as the primary gateway to all things social, mobile and and social are inextricably linked. Additionally, mobile has a unique challenge that is manifesting itself in many enterprises around the globe, BYOD.  Bring your Own Device, or BYOD for short, is becoming a policy in many organizations.  Smartphones are expensive and there is a continuous cycle of new models and versions that makes it impossible to stay current.  These two reasons weigh heavy on IT departments and provide insight as to why they are beginning to favor BYOD even if it means relinquishing some control.  Companies are usually willing to pay for part, or all, of the service in exchange for being able to wipe the device of enterprise data, but beyond that employees are more or less on their own in terms of device management and support.

There is little debate that both social and mobile will be two of the biggest topics in 2012, but a great deal of the interest will be drivin by the efforts to find social and mobile an identity within the enterprise that makes sense to both employees and shareholders.

Heath-

AWS Opens South America (Sao Paulo) Region

Congratulations to Amazon Web Services [Partner] on the opening of their latest region in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Infor Global Solutions is very excited to be participating in this launch and looks forward to being able to offer enterprise solutions in the cloud to our customers throughout South America!

Forrester at Le Web – The Web is Dead

Whether you follow analysts and analyst firms or not, you have to appreciate that it takes a special kind of person to declare dead during his presentation the fundamental model for which the conference he has been invited to speak at is named.  That is exactly what George Colony of Forrester Research did at Le Web 2011 in Paris this week. In all fairness Le Web has morphed into a major technology conference that goes beyond the Web, but in promoting Forrester’s App Internet concept, Mr. Colony states without question that the Web model is dead.

The Web is Dead is one leg of a three legged stool that Forrester refers to as the “Three Social Thunderstorms”.   In support of his claim, Mr. Colony makes a critical distinction between the Web and the Internet and further explains the App Internet model.  While App Internet sounds a lot like client/server where powerful applications running locally ask servers for data over the network, thunderstorms two and three of the stool are of definite interest and merit further consideration:

• Social is saturated
• Most companies are moving towards social

Forrester and Colony believe that social is running out of both hours in the day and people.  He provides statistics that people now spend more time on social networks than they do exercising and practicing their faith.   Further he shows numbers that indicate an extremely high adoption rate of social technologies in the urban centers of the world.  The conclusion here is a simple one, social networks/platforms/applications must deliver more efficient, easier to use, higher value-to-time ratios than they do at present.

So why would companies want to move towards social?  Better customer interaction and customer self service.  Maybe not surprising, but companies appear to willing to traverse the uncertainties of social in order to get closer to their customers and further drive revenue.

Le Web has a reputation for being edgy, hopefully this time not at its own expense.

Heath-

Note: The term thunderstorm refers to Forrester’s belief that shifts in technology happen violently and abruptly rather than incrementally.

Predictions, Predictions and More Predictions

Cloud's Future

As the end of the year draws near, the prognosticators along with their predications come out of the woodwork. Most predict the continuation of an existing trend (not really a predication in my book), but some do go out on a limb and predict an actual event or change in the marketplace. You can find predications on everything under the sun, including the ‘cloud’.

James Staten over at Forrester in his Top 10 Cloud Predictions for 2012 is calling 2012 the ‘Awkward Teenage Years’ for the cloud. Of his 10 predication there are three that jump out at me as being highly likely to come to fruition:

• Cloud demand will outstrip cloud expertise
• Your company will survive a major cloud outage
• You will finally have to budget for public cloud spend

The remainder of Mr. Staten’s predications are certainly worth reading and overall I agree with his characterization that 2012 will be the ‘Awkward Teenage Years’ for the cloud.  Indeed, I would expect to experience plenty of cloud growing pains in 2012.

Heath-

Quick, hide the tablet – The Rise of Shadow IT

Every company has them, the rogue employee with the MacBook or non-supported smartphone, or worst of all that slick tablet that they figured out how to get connected to the corporate network. It is one of the fastest growing trends in the corporate world and it is called Shadow IT.

Living outside of IT policy used to be the exclusive parlance of the smarts kids, that handful of people in the organization that are as smart, or smarter, than the IT department. Not anymore. The massive consumerization of technology that we have witnessed over the last couple of years is creating an interesting change in our society. It is accelerating the blurring of the lines between our professional and personal lives. As employees adopt the the work/play anywhere anytime lifestyle, they come to rely even further on technology to enable them.

One of the realizations often associated with this increased reliance is that the employee has access to better technology at home than they do at work and rather than fighting the establishment, employees are simply bringing in their own devices and software into the workplace in order to get work done. Combine these personal devices and software with ubiquitous connectivity and social networks for support and the Shadow IT team springs to life.

Good or bad?  Yes. Condoning those who operate outside of the rules is a slippery slope.  The obvious issue is security of corporate data, which is a very real concern.  However, one of the great promises of technology is that is supposed to make are lives better.  The most likely outcome is that Shadow IT will force traditional IT to evolve much quicker, to the point where they become one in the same.  I am not sure that anything else will be acceptable.

Heath-