Published: August 10 2011, 09:19 AM | no comments
by Trevor Bunker

What matters most to enterprise architects as private clouds take shape at their organizations? The same issues that always matter: standards, repeatability, governance and structure. Yet, I would say that all those things matter more than ever with private clouds. They are not, after all, just highly virtualized data centers times 10, and cannot function -- as many virtual environments have managed to do -- by fitting old and perhaps loose operational processes into a new paradigm. The private cloud is too dynamic, too invested in the concept of constant change, to get by with out-of-date configuration items or less than rigorously controlled change-management processes that only increase risk. The agility of a private cloud cannot be compromised...
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Published: August 08 2011, 09:04 AM | 7 Comment(s)
by Andi Mann

I saw an interesting post at Forbes.com last week titled ‘The Coming Crisis of IT Management,' lamenting that, "consumerization, virtualization, cloud computing, software as a service, mobility [sic] are all increasing the complexity of the job of managing IT by orders of magnitude." I certainly cannot disagree with that. I have written about these topics extensively, most recently tackling the impact of consumerization of IT . By looking at the problem through the lens of the (perhaps less than) average CIO -- the follower, the ‘lights-on' manager, the order taker - Forbes.com contributor Dan Woods is painting doom and gloom instead of highlighting the potential for the innovative CIO to embrace and extend these trends to...
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Published: August 05 2011, 12:08 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Jay Fry

I caved and joined the revolution this weekend. I bought an iPad. And while it was very fun to do all the things that a newly minted Apple fan boy does (like downloading the app that turns the iPad into ones like they had on Star Trek: The Next Generation ), that was just the beginning. I had yet to try to torment my internal IT department with my demands. First and foremost: I wanted to use my iPad as part of my normal work day. I'm certainly not the first to want this. The appearance of consumer-purchased devices that employees would like to have (must be!) supported by internal IT is getting an amazing amount of attention. Though not always from IT departments, if they can help it. In addition, it's not just 1 or 2 folks who want...
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Published: August 01 2011, 11:37 AM | no comments
by Jay Fry

If you're in enterprise IT, you (or that guy who sits next to you) are very likely looking to figure out how to start using cloud computing. You've probably done a fair bit of sleuthing around the industry to see what's out there. Stats from a number of different analyst firms point overwhelmingly to the fact that enterprises are first and foremost trying to explore private cloud, an approach that gives them a lot of control and (hopefully) the ability to use their existing security and compliance implementations and policies. And, all that sleuthing will most likely lead you to one pretty obvious fact: there are lots of approaches to building and delivering a private cloud. So, here's an additional thing to think about when...
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