Following the cloud

Just before I began my new role  25,000 mail accounts were moved from a hosted Microsoft exchange system to Microsoft's cloud systems.  This has not only simplified our environment it has made it more reliable and is perceived as a service improvement, better still it has significantly reduced our costs.  Now we are seeking to move the remaining more complex email accounts into this environment as well, that is once we have solved the enterprise vault issues.

Viewing it from the position of an organisation that has taken this path it all seems like a no brainer.  In my former roles though I encountered the nervousness that exists around the adoption of cloud solutions.  This is rooted partially in the uncertainty of trusting a third party and partly in concerns about where that leaves the IT department of the future.

It is inevitable that the cloud will and is changing the way that we use computers and there is nothing we can or should do to stop that.  Standing in front of its adoption will not protect our roles from the cloud but will simply encourage business users to work around us.  Instead we must focus on ensuring that we add value in areas that are not commodity computing, those systems that make our companies unique.

While it may initially be difficult to trust organisations that provide cloud services and indeed the infrastructure that delivers it to us it is important that we learn to do so.  Once we rid ourselves of commodity systems we will be able to concentrate harder on making a difference and supporting our organisations strategies.

And the cloud came crashing down.

I am a big advocate of cloud services but recent events have made clear to me that there is definitely some work to be done before we can rely on these services for everything.  Last week I arrived home to find that we had no internet, and worse still no dial tone on the phone.  For the second time in 6 months someone had run off with a section of the cable that joins the village I live in to the nearest telephone exchange.

This lead to a protracted disconnection from the internet that finished today five days later.  It is not until you miss something that you really realise how much you take it for granted.  Time and time again over the five days we had to check ourselves as we headed to the computer to find something out.  This was made particularly bad as this location also has extremely poor mobile data access.

Fortunately the hour I spend on the train each day gave me access to the cloud from my smartphone and all the same information was available.  Indeed now that my connection has been re-established I find that I am completely up to date with what I do, regardless of not having access from a computer for this time.  This shows that the smartphone revolution powered by the introduction of the iPhone has enabled anywhere cloud computing.  At the same time it shows that we still have some way to go making our fixed infrastructure reliable enough for cloud only computing.