Cloud - What It Means to Business

A very active topic among the technology professionals and business leaders has been the concept of cloud technologies and what it means overall to the industry. This discussion has been going round-and-round for a number of years now. However there is a much higher level of interest in the concept which I think is great!

Cloud means different things to different people. To the average consumer the first thing they tend to think of is storage, or more specifically the availability of content when it is needed and having a backup in case they need it. This is the general perception of what most consumers see especially with offerings such as Apple iCloud and DropBox. The significant progress made in this area, as small as it may seem, is the growing confidence in consumers that a technology is understandable to them in an non-techie manner and is useful in the same sense. What Apple has done is make people more comfortable with using cloud-based solutions with regards to something that they hold near and dear which is content that they value, i.e. paid content. This is a bit different than say DropBox which is a very cool service in my opinion, hardly gets a lot of notice from the average consumer. Interestingly a similar view is shared among most business users as well: they have heard/know of/understand iCloud but have different perceptions of other cloud offerings such as DropBox. Apple has created a manner that allows users to see some relevant benefit from cloud technologies that makes sense to them. Amazon's Kindle Fire is also leveraging their robust cloud offerings in their device once again in a manner that makes sense to their customers. As more and more vendors deliver solutions to customers using cloud that make sense to them there will be a greater general understanding of what cloud can do for the average person.

For businesses and professionals cloud technologies offer quite a lot of options in addressing common challenges. For entrepreneurs or similarly highly motivated individuals cloud offerings like those from Amazon are tremendously useful for advancing their own understanding of cloud technology. In many cases cloud offerings allow entrepreneurial companies to be formed with minimal investment in infrastructure while gaining significant advantages with regards to availability and growth. For developers coming to understand and work with cloud, programs such as Amazon Web Services - Free Tier allows professionals to explore what these offerings mean and how to work with them again with minimal investments other than time. 

Amazon is arguably the standard of cloud providers though by no means are they the only ones. Cloud providers come in a variety of flavors such as Heroku, SalesForce, Rackspace, etc. All of these vendors offer external services that can help businesses address challenges and develop new offerings in a much faster and scalable manner than would be typically found in most companies.

Most technology groups within an organization see cloud technologies as a way to "save money". In truth cloud technologies are not necessarily going to result in immediate cost savings. The benefit of cloud technologies is mostly in how the model especially around self-service can help propel a business forward with solutions in a cost-efficient, rapid manner. A classic case in most companies is probably Salesforce. Many sales and marketing departments need and want solutions to address many of their critical needs. However when they speak with their own internal technical departments more often than not their needs are not addressed adequately by their own IT staff. Hence using their own budgets they often sign-up for Salesforce, create what they need, use it, and end up never having to "bother with the ineffective IT department" ever again. 

While it has been argued, repeatedly in fact, that such initiatives are "against company policy", etc. the brutal reality is that business units are finding that their own IT groups are a) not delivering things fast enough, b) not listening to them as a customer, and c) have incompatible expectations in terms of timelines and costs. As more and more cloud-based solutions appear, especially in the area of Software-as-a-Service or SaaS, more and more business units will forego locking horns with internal resources and instead move to adopt these other offerings. 

For internal groups the message is pretty clear: adapt or die. If internal groups want to remain relevant they are going to have to learn, understand, embrace, and deploy a service model very similar to cloud companies for their own internal groups. The key challenge will be in delivering a business service as opposed to an operational service to customers. For example, most customers do not want to see services in terms of gigabytes of storage, number of CPUs, etc. They want to see things in terms that they understand such as "it will cost my department $2000 a month to get 5 analytics widgets and 20 reports". They also want to see timelines that they understand. To business users ordering something should take only minutes to hours, not weeks, not months, not years. After all how would you feel if you had to wait 30-days to get online access to your account from your bank? 

The ability to move quickly in a cost-effective manner to businesses is absolutely essential. It allows a business to react to changing market conditions, capitalize on new opportunities, make better decisions, etc. The more that IT departments are seen as impediments to these imperatives, the more unnecessary and cost-inefficient they become and in effect IT becomes a cost center to most businesses as opposed to a profit center. When a unit is a cost center, it gets cut and criticized which is not the most attractive place to be.

In addition to business perceptions the reality is that most internal groups who are expected to be the experts of these rapidly changing technologies are often times quite ignorant in relevant subject matter. Most IT professionals that I have had contact with are far more familiar with legacy approaches than cloud. They do not necessarily understand the approach or concepts, let alone how to implement it within their organization. While vendors begin to offer internal cloud-building solutions, the fundamental gap in understanding is going to take a while longer for most professionals to come to grips with which will slow the pace of IT adoption of cloud, though not necessarily business adoption of cloud.

Developments at Yahoo! - A Personal Perspective

With the recent developments at Yahoo! involving the departure of their CEO and the rumor of their intent to sell themselves, there are lots of discussions among the general technical professionals. These are not "insiders" nor "brainiacs" but rather what I call the general technology population that would typically include managers, directors, senior engineers, architects, and the occasional CEO/CIO/CTO in the mix.

Our conversations touch the history of the company, it's hey-day, it's decline and current status. From my perspective Yahoo! is yet another example of a company that continues to face a rapidly changing competitive landscape and has been challenged in exactly how to adapt.

Yahoo! had been on top of the world in terms of the key landing site for most people. It had content, it had people's interest, and consequently it had a huge presence. Then Google came along, and suddenly Yahoo! found itself slowly but inexorably losing ground to this competitor. A slick, simple, easy-to-use interface, with snappy response times and pretty darned good results offered appealed to many folks. In the technical world, Google swamped the internet with whitepapers, blogs and other infobits on their cool technology, their approaches and ideas. They engaged in a communication campaign that reached out to the imagination of techies while their product engaged the consumer.

In my opinion, Google fundamentally challenged the idea of curated content versus automated search. It seemed to be a fight and mindshift that Google had won given their growing market dominance over Yahoo!. Yet I kept with the belief that people fundamentally wanted contact with other humans in many ways even in internet content. This in spite of the growing influence and success of the Google approach.

However, another recent company came back to challenge Google's position with a different form of curation, one based on social interactions, that company was called Facebook. Within a few short years, this young talented upstart had not only grown a dedicated following, but a following that had displaced Google as the top interent landing spot for most people. Also with Facebook being less "open", they now could use their insights in a manner similar to Google's main line of business - advertising.

So what about Yahoo!? It seemed to me that with the emergence and growth of Facebook among other social networks such as Twitter, that Yahoo! has a really good chance of coming back to being a significant competitor. After all they had made such wonderful calls with products such as Flickr which really appealed to everyone, and seemed to be a heavy influence to companies such as Instagr.am. Yet Yahoo! still struggled to find a formula that would worked for them.

The recent appoint of Carol Bartz seemed hopeful to many technical professionals. That is until we all started to see layoffs, product cuts, etc. While generally acceptable in terms of cost cutting, it seemed to me that such moves were affecting the fundamentals of what Yahoo! was about... an innovative technology company bringing cool curated content to the people. With the rise of Facebook and Twitter among others, it seemed that a strategy to incorporate some form of social interaction on their content, perhaps similar to Flickr, could become a new core to Yahoo!'s content and hence increase their growth and ad revenue.

Yet to me some lessons from the Yahoo! life cycle can be applied to any technical professional or leader:

• Adapt or die. This is a standard business practice. A company or individual is challenged all the time with changes that affect their livelihood especially in the high-tech field. Coming up with an approach that recognizes change and processes to adapt to it are absolutely crucial.
• Cost-cutting can be dangerous. At some point, everyone worries about their budget. And invariably that means cuts. However be tremendously aware of what are "good" vs. "bad" cuts. Most leaders that I have seen have tremendously underestimated how cuts can affect the personality, demeanor, and tempo of a company. Not just internally but externally. These cuts can be seen in a positive or negative light. More thought needs to be given about the real impacts of cuts, and not just the financial ones.
• Keep in tune with your customers. This also seems pretty basic but most professionals and organizations only do this in what I call a "arms-length" approach. Very rarely are customer concerns and feedback actually used in anything more than just short-term analysis. Toyota for example has a very long-reaching and deeply infused sense of customers from the president all the way down to the individual team member. They have managed to keep this going even as they have become a huge global company. Customers are what keeps a company going. All too often I see companies and individuals using customers as convenient tools and setting them aside most of the time. This can be fatal especially as competitors rise in your business space and your customers start to go to them instead of you.

So as the latest chapter in Yahoo! unfolds it remains to be seen what this silicon valley icon will do. If anything, it is entirely possible that the company can indeed turn itself around in a fashion similar to Apple. And equally possible, it can fade into the sunset like so many companies have done. Regardless of what happens to Yahoo! it will be remembered and the lessons from it's life will be absorbed into the collective consciousness of the those who will live on.

Requirements - Who Needs Stinking Requirements?!?

Ever attend a meeting where arguments between business users and engineers get very intense? That has been actually what I have been dealing with a lot recently. Such discussions get very passionate. I love passionate arguments. Then invariably they start to turn ugly which is not very pleasant for anyone.

One of the most common arguing points happens to revolve around "requirements". Typically a business user just wants "something" done. Then engineers listen to the problem and come up with an argument whereby they will do "something" to address the business' "something" however if it's not what the business' actually wanted it's due to a lack of "requirements".

Now this sort of argument is very frustrating for me to be involved in. Mostly because I have not only been involved in these a lot, but also because this sort of argument is highly unnecessary. Requirements are very much necessary in the sense that they help give concrete definition of something that has to be accomplished. Yet often times the process of formulating the requirements is missing the mark. Typically speaking the process of what I call collaborative brainstorming, a means by which to by working together a vague idea can be hammered out into something more concrete, is often missed. People just assume that the individuals that they are working with will "just know" what they are talking about. This is rarely the case, especially when you have to get more and more people involved in creating the solution.

What tends to happen is that the longer that the "lack of requirement" continues, the more often management has to get involved. Please note that I mention management. Why? Because if you had leadership in the equation the argument would never get very far. Yes there would be some initial discussions, but ultimately leaders would hammer out their own process that they would apply. Management is typically called in because they are "organizationally" recognized to have the title or rank to end the argument and put everyone on a path of action. Consequently management folks will be the ones most likely to get the direct effects if the product being rolled out misses it's mark.

In my experience arguments such as the one around "lack of requirement" is really a result of a good process to address ambiguity. These arguments can also be symptoms of larger issues plaguing an organization where critical traits of adaptability to change and good leadership are lacking. If it's just a process, that is pretty easily handled by simply introducing some really good techniques that everyone is willing to try. If however whole groups of engineers and business users are bound and determined to get "every little detail down" before proceeding then a far more critical problem exists that will take a lot more time to address.