The potential for cloud computing services in Australia

Cloud computing report Australia launched by Innovation Minister Kim Carr

The potential for cloud computing services in Australia : A Lateral Economics report to Macquarie Telecom

Planning Guide for Public Cloud adoption

Things to consider consider  your planning purpose  in the use of Public cloud services

1. What business solution do you want to create?
2. Are there organizational factors that will veto the use of public cloud computing services?
3. What pace of change must your solution sustain?
4. What is motivating your interest in cloud computing? What value are you looking to achieve by using a cloud computing model
5. What set of cloud computing capabilities is required to achieve the objectives for which the solution is designed
6. How will you design, develop and test the solution?
7. Who is the target developer audience and what are their skill sets
8. Will the solution benefit from — and if so, how will it take advantage of — the horizontal scalability, parallel-processing and distributed-data aspects of cloud computing?
9. How will you manage the governance of the solution?
10. How will you pay for it?

IaaS Versus PaaS

Cloud Computing Definition

Cloud computing means different thing to different people , its how we perceive it . Every thing as a service. It allows leasing of IT capabilities whether they are infrastructure, platform, or software applications as services on subscription oriented services in a pay-as-you-go model.

To me it is an High tech vending machine which allows consumers to procure IT capability’s using pay back or push back mechanism. The pay back or push back model is based on where the IT capability’s are sourced

1. Internally (Private) : Internal users are showcased with only there usage report (This is a push back mechanism). The Company keeps the track of usage

2. External (Public) :Users are charged for the IT consumption, transaction made using credit card and users are provided with invoice (Charge back mechanism). Pay as You Go

Creating Cloud Solutions

The three styles of cloud business solutions are cloud-hosted, cloud-optimized and cloud-native. Each of the three styles is the best choice for some use scenarios.

The cloud service providers with insight into the tensions within the modern enterprise will support all of them. Cloud-hosted, cloud-optimized and cloud-native solutions can be constructed on top of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), with varying degrees of difficulty.

Cloud-native solutions are well-positioned to take advantage of other characteristics of next-generation applications, including DevOps and Apps Intelligence; these practices are already being adopted by leading cloud service providers.

Recommendations : Choose a cloud-hosted strategy as a first step for migrating existing solutions. When evaluating IaaS providers for cloud-hosting, place more value on features (such as programmatic elasticity) that will enable gradual refactoring toward cloud-optimized development.

The inhibitor to adoption is normal human resistance to change: Cloud Computing

Pain – until the pain on traditional infrastructure drives people toward cloud adoption is much more than the perceived pain associated with moving into the cloud…adoption will be slow. Though in many firms operating a big complicated infrastructure is very painful, the pain you know is normally better than the pain you imagine.

Fear – since every cloud vendor trumpets the operating cost efficiencies, many IT professionals simply view the Cloud as outsourcing. Hence the stampede toward private clouds using the excuse of security and compliance…you know, if we have a private cloud, we can still have jobs..I mean the company will be more efficient and flexible and secure. There is lot of resistance to structural changes that challenge the status quo and will threaten traditional IT jobs.

Greed – the long history of rosy ROI/TCO studies sponsored by vendors, the long history of attractive earlier adopter pricing being ratcheted up as lock-in increases. the long history of unanticipated costs piling up over time in outsourcing arrangements have trained firms to expect greed and avarice. Until buying firms motivated by their own self interest are fully confident they will consistently gain advantages in the long and midterm, they will avoid stepping into a bear trap.

Laziness – it is real work to leverage new technologies. Many organizations have run leaner and leaner over the past decade and have a difficult time supporting new initiatives with adequate resource. Some overloaded resources playing whack a mole day to day, might not see the cloud as anything but another mole.

You first – there is a small segment of people and firms who are early adopters who revel in novelty and being on the bleeding edge. Most folks want these early adopters and a good layer of the mainstream to adopt and grind down any rough edges before jumping in with both feet. Because it is easier to overcome pain, fear, greed, and laziness if everyone is doing it.