This week we've had two bylines published by top technology sites that have generated quite a bit of commentary and traffic around various social networks. They're both worth a read - following is a quick recap with links to those pieces.
Cloud's Teenage Angst - Tips to Ease the Transition
First up, Andi Mann's piece "Cloud computing is entering its teen years" was published by GigaOm over the weekend. Andi argues that "The cloud has entered the ‘awkward teenage' phase" but "luckily it's not overrun with rowdy adolescents the way other technology paradigms have been (think early social media)."
Andi goes on to provide five suggestions to help IT better manage the transition, because as he notes, "[cloud has] been maturing, and so have best practices for its use and adoption, along with the related security and application aspects." The top line recommendations are:
- Allow for discovery
- Provide modeling and simulation capabilities
- Help develop credible capabilities
- Provide "grown-up" financial management
- Provide automation and assurance
I encourage you to take a few moments to read the story and join the discussion in comments.
Cloud = The Secret Weapon for Customer Satisfaction?
Next, we have Keith Allen's article "Can moving to the cloud help restore customer satisfaction?," which was published by ZDNet. Keith is a former systems administrator and notes he "can share a lot of stories about things that can (and will) go wrong when dealing with various customer requests." He explores the idea that cloud computing could serve as "the secret weapon that can relieve many of the common customer service complaints."
Keith walks through a typical internal customer scenario - and what happens when things go wrong. He then shows how that scenario could look very different in a cloud-based model.
You can read the full story here and share your own personal experiences in the comments.