I recently had the opportunity to present a keynote session at the Enterprise Cloud Summit hosted by VISI at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts.   Based on the attendance, you could tell that enterprise cloud computing is still a hot topic for IT leadership.  Thanks to everyone that came up to me with additional questions after the event – I enjoyed the conversations.  If you missed my presentation, you can view my slide deck on slideshare.  From my perspective, there are a couple of key takeaways:

• There is a lot of attention to the problems and issues with the cloud but not enough attention on the benefits and enablers. These include:
  • Matching usage requirements with infrastructure capacity, e.g. buying only what you need
  • Having infrastructure capacity available for growth without paying for it, e.g. no stranded dedicated infrastructure
  • Being able to scale up (and scale down) capacity as business conditions warrant
  • Rapid provisioning of infrastructure (days vs. months)
  • Access to enterprise-class technology without having an enterprise budget
• There continues to be dogma about what a cloud is and what a cloud is not.   If a “cloud” meets your business and technology needs, do the definitions really matter?
• While the cloud has many benefits, it is not a panacea. You still have to manage security, applications (IaaS or PaaS), access, sourcing, and other IT operations.   Or partner with a managed services provider.

The bottom line is:  cloud is a great tool for making IT a leaner and more responsive and innovative support department for your business.  It can help you be more relevant.  And that is the best goal for IT.  Right?

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