IT Consumerization: The end of IT is nigh

http://blog.cloudability.com/it-consumerization-the-end-of-it-is-nigh/

by akaffen • 14 years ago

19 26 14 years ago

blog.cloudability.com

The cloudpocalypse is nigh! Here's a handy guide for surviving the end times.

j_baker• 14 years ago

I think it's worth pointing out that we're facing the end of IT as we know it. I think that the only difference the "cloud revolution" will have is meaning that IT staff will work for some cloud provider rather than the companies themselves.

famousactress5• 14 years ago

Perfect! This repairs the relationship because it means these people will be responsible for _producing value_. In most organizations this is a cost center designed (whether consciously or not) to produce friction in the name of safety.

There's probably a TSA-privatization analogy here somewhere.

famousactress5• 14 years ago

Thank goodness.

If I can help it I'd like to only work at companies which don't have:

- An IT Department

- An Exchange Server

- A sales team

In my experience, all have been a vicious waste of energy.

poppysan• 14 years ago

How do you propose the said companies make sales without a sales team. (Not to be snarky, maybe I am missing something.)

famousactress5• 14 years ago

In my (limited) experience sales people exist to convince people that products have value. This is mostly useful when the people purchasing the products are incapable of evaluating them (see: "enterprise sales"), or when the products don't have enough value to sell themselves. Look around you. How many of the things that you've bought have been sold to you by sales people?

The concept used to have more merit. Lots of things our parents bought were sold to them by salespeople. Most of those same things you and I have purchased without.

Today most of the time I see a salesperson, I see a smokescreen for a shitty product.

Toshio• 14 years ago

I believe the gist of the article is about how IT has always been (and is always going to be) data-centric as opposed to solution-centric, and the guy who understands how to process one petabyte in one nanosecond has a better chance of surviving the consumerization of IT than the guy who does it in 5 nanoseconds (metaphorically speaking).

stormental• 14 years ago

If blog posts had theme songs, this one's would be by REM.

rnemo• 14 years ago

Cloud and IT are not mutually exclusive. The roles they provide are so different I can't at all see why anyone bothers to makes this apples and oranges argument.

zerohp• 14 years ago

Spot on, this whole argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what IT does.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

A large part of what IT departments currently do will, eventually, be replaced by cloud-based services that are easily managed. When you hire Google Apps, a lot of your server management disappears. When you put your servers on EC2, you no longer need to manage the boxes they run on.

Things like custom app development, account management and things like that will remain.

m0nty4• 14 years ago

I would love to be dis-intermediated, but everytime I've tried committing to "cloud" technology (and other innovations) I've loved it and the people I work with have hated it. Here's a list of things people don't get:

1. Cloud-based backup. It's insecure, bound to be hacked - never mind the encryption, teh haxxors can get around that stuff! So we're back to tapes and DVDs before you know it.

2. Virtual machines, but only if I make the mistake of telling them. It gives some people the willies for the same reason as (1) above, plus the supposed problems of a "shared" server. Also, if a server is outside our firewall they think it's less secure.

3. Google mail. They prefer Exchange for reasons which remain a mystery to me. I hate Exchange, love Google Mail and everything that comes with it. Even using Gmail via Outlook is mysteriously deficient for my colleagues.

4. Google Docs. Being able to collaborate on-line is not a very big benefit. The familiarity of MS Office is.

Things which do work:

1. iPads. This is the machine which will put me, an IT tech, out of work. Hasten the day.

2. Dropbox. Simple paradigm and works with the iPad.

3. All the clunky, difficult-to-manage, badly-designed software they've been using for years and have come to love in all their ugliness. It makes me weep.

The thing which will change this is the arrival of younger, more IT-literate people in the workplace. I have no problems at all with the under-30s; all the problems in the world with people older than that (not all of them but enough to be a permanent drag on progress). The simple fact is that these people will even shy away from something as superb as MailChimp's or Google's admin interfaces: too many buttons! They always get me to do it for them, and I will have a job in IT for as long as I want it.

advocate12• 14 years ago

If only they knew that Dropbox is cloud storage. It's Amazon S3 via python, the rsync library and a familar icon.

m0nty4• 14 years ago

I never said they had logic on their side ;) I suppose basically I'm saying you need to make it super-braindead-simple or it won't work. Dropbox and the iPad both do that (I mean it in a good way). I personally don't like the iPad I have at work but non-techies really love them. Small children, older people, no problem. They've discovered Dropbox more-or-less by themselves.

timwiseman• 14 years ago

As to 1: it is in many ways insecure (though bound to be hacked might be a bit much.) While dropbox isn't technically a cloud based backup, it can be used that way and there was a period where a glitch left it totally exposed for about four hours ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)#Reception ). I actually love cloud based backup, but I encrypt my files before I send them and I am dealing with just my own personal data. A company with data they must legally protect would need to be wary.

As to 3: Personally, I love gmail. But from a corporate perspective, you can still exert more control over exchange. This can be significant, especially for highly regulated businesses that need to worry about frequent e-discovery and may perhaps wish to take steps to limit what is sent.

m0nty4• 14 years ago

There's a nugget of truth in their concerns which makes them harder to dismiss. Equally, can you say that local storage is more secure, tapes in a "fire-proof" safe, etc? I have reservations about the cloud (Amazon's outage was a wake-up moment for me) but nothing's perfect.

As for Google Mail vs Exchange, my personal opinion is that Gmail is superior in evey way. If you need discovery, you can always shove email through your own gateway (running Postfix) and set it to store all emails it sends and receives. You could also use Postini which I think gives extra facilities like discovery. Might be a bit hacky for some organisations I suppose but I've never found Exchange that elegant or easy to manage.

tammer2• 14 years ago

I find it interesting that nobody's seems to recognize the primary problem with relying on cloud services - putting the entire business in the hands of your ISP. You can get redundant pipes, but then you're looking at the beginning of way more overhead than the cloud DB sales team wants you to know about.

At my office if the WAN pipe goes down, I know production will still be happening and almost all internal processes will be unaffected. These cloud services will probably soon replace IT for small businesses that in reality don't actually rely on software, but for major businesses where severe downtime = doom the only option is locally hosted services.

Frankly I think this along with the rest the "end of IT" bandwagon are spreading uninformed FUD... The industry will of course adapt to new technology, but IT is unique in its inability to ever be completely displaced by technology.

confluence• 14 years ago

I agree with you.

But, honestly, the same thing can also be said of electricity (or water/national defence/public transport/roads/sewerage/etc.).

You lean on your provider completely just to keep you running, and even a slight dip in their performance can take down your entire cluster, and completely ruin your day/calculation/work flow (outside of temporary UPS).

Not everyone needs their own generator tammer :D.

  Different strokes for different folks!

tammer2• 14 years ago

Precisely. Not necessary for every business, but entirely necessary any business that can't risk that kind of downtime. We've got (bare minimum) 8Kva UPS's on every netshelter on campus. The production side uses enormous generators and UPS's that I'd like to know more about.

All I mean to say is IT is far from dead, especially in these types of situations.

sleighboy• 14 years ago

Nothing like an impartial source for an opinion. Worthless prattle.

IT Consumerization: The end of IT is nigh

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