Concerning ‘The Cloud’ & horror, fantasy and science fiction stories

‘You will see it once you understand it’

Number 14, Johan Cruijf, one of the greatest soccer players all time

Reading guide

When a chapter title is preceded by the dollar symbol ‘$’ it denotes that that chapter has business relevance.

For who is this article? For those who are afraid of going to the cloud from an operational and financial perspective. Mental hindrance caused by thought that the cloud is less secure than on-prem(ise) will not be addressed because in general I would posit that cloud is more secure. For those that are moving (with applications) to the cloud at this very moment. For those that experiencing financial and operational 'horrific' problems while being in the cloud.

The fantastic dream of cloud to become an agile leader rather than a struggling lagging follower can be made true and all problems can be solved once you realise that go cloud is going to a different paradigm. From thinking (with all good intentions) to optimise existing processes to 'design thinking' in which you continually, permanently, reflect on your business in order to continuously deliver to the business by designing great products. A paradigm shift from re-designing to designing. A paradigm shift from following the past to design the past from eternity to have a better present right here and have better products for the customer. A subtle difference of two letters 're' makes re-designers and designers live in different worlds! Design or be designed, that is the question! Dream or being dreamed (by dreams of other dreamers).

Starting to work from within existing operational limits to extend operational possibilities or start working from 'endless' future business possibilities to limit the possible to the ideal possibility to realise. From efficiency (with a costs element for in efficiency time/costs are related to productivity) to business. From thinking in false limitations to thinking in what is possible. A paradigm shift from 'no(t possible)' to a yes (can do) attitude.

Yes or no?

Concluding executive summary

Part I. All domains in life are limited by logical contradictions that seem impossible to solve, whether the domain is technology or artistic fictional fantastic stories. In reality the impossible can be ‘de-limited’ by solving these contradictions. Once a contradiction is solved a new contradiction can appear that can be solved as well etc.. The engine of technological development is about solving contradictions. Part I explores the ‘impossible’ as a contradiction. It shows that domains in life are not siloed, not even ‘unreal’ fiction and ‘real’ technology. (May we conclude that fiction is real and technology is unreal, that the unreal is real and the real is unreal?!) Part I shows artistic unifying thinking in analogies between contradictions in different domains of life. This thinking strives for what is common and shared rather than searching for differences. This is the thinking one needs to benefit most from the possibilities cloud can offer.

Part II. This part discusses the benefits to go to the cloud, the benefits of cloud management and gives criteria, principles, how to choose a product and/or service that allows you to manage your cloud. Going to the cloud may execute the eternal (business) law that intelligence (to gather, analyse and act on data) allows to negate ownership of physical assets to become more agile (to react and act) and more profitable or effective. This law is not new and is given with human existence and not limited to business alone. The whole idea of mercenaries for example is an expression of this idea. Going to the cloud is terms of business benefit is the question on what the benefit is for your organisation to virtualise and disown physical assets (that from an organisational perspective can be people, human(e) resources, as well that can be automated in some cases). 

Part III. Is all about why it is almost ‘impossible’ to make the TCO, the ROI, the business case to go to the cloud. A contradiction in time is made between now and the future. Only once my business is in the cloud can I have a clear view on the TCO because the way of operational ‘non-cloud thinking’ makes capex visible and not so much opex and the time people spend on certain tasks. In the failure of a first attempt to make the financial argument for going to the cloud and managing that cloud to be agile in moving within and to different (public, private and hybrid) clouds it shows a paradigm shift in thinking is needed if you go to the cloud. A shift in thinking from actual costs/price, the actual, to future business opportunities/quality, the future.

This ‘new’ thinking is called ‘design thinking’ and is about continuous delivery to the business. This thinking is artistic because like an artist a design thinker is open for new possibilities, new business value stories. So cloud is not about technology, but a different kind of thinking that you need. A thinking that is adjusted to the (cloud) domain in which it ‘acts’.

   

PART I, OUT-OF-THE-BOX/container: ON THE IMPOSSIBLE

What we can learn from the United States of America is a positive can do (everything is possible) attitude. So when I discuss the impossible I do not refer to a negative attitude ‘I do not want this, do not want that…’ that makes ‘things’…life…impossible. A negative attitude that is the effect of mental inertia, a lack of energy, in most cases.

What I learned from Russia or to be more specific from Triz, as the only systematic innovation method in the world, is to emphasize what the impossible is in itself, namely a subjective perception, an illusion. A perception phrased in a logical contradiction. That logical contradiction can be explored in horror, fantasy and science fiction stories. (For the best introduction on Triz go to: https://www.xtriz.com/publications/AccelerateInnovationWithTRIZ.pdf). 

Introduction into the meaning of the impossible

This article is about the ‘impossible’. We have noticed that most people are willing to proceed with a project or buy an IT solution etc., when they know it can meet business objectives. They are right not to want something impossible, because that would just be a waste of everyone’s energy (including that of yourself). What is certainly impossible is a contradiction. So when we consult a customer we try to discover the implicit contradiction if the advice we give meets resistance. If you discover the contradiction you can know how to solve it. Without that discovery you will waste energy and talk in endless circles in terms of yes-no-yes-no…with your customer and no dialogue is possible to overcome/solve the contradiction.

To get a little bit more acquainted with what a contradiction as a contradiction is we will discuss how the impossible appears in horror stories, fantasy stories, science fiction stories and science (stories). We want to present the impossible to open the eyes and ears of some really exciting ‘impossible’ stuff that is happening in the world of Cloud. We most definitely do not want to associate Cloud with horror: seeing higher than expected, not really detailed and transparent, invoices from your cloud provider or your managed service provider or getting paralysed by the horrific thought of even going to the cloud. You should definitely not be frozen by fear when you think of cloud.

The rhetoric of our plea, our plot, is plain and simple: ‘know what the impossible is, know whether the answer to a question is ‘impossible’ or not and you will also know what is possible’. The possible has many advantages! First we will discuss the impossible in the fantastic stories and proceed with a practical customer journey model for going to the cloud. These practical pointers will be helpful for your cloud strategy in whatever stage you are.

The essential possibility we want to present is that if you go to the cloud make sure you virtualize your way to the cloud. Abstract from a certain cloud provider and be flexible to easily lift and shift your applications to another cloud provider or within your own private cloud. Do not directly walk of a snowy mountain, but make an abstract virtual layer between you and the snow: use ski’s.

The impossible for rational understanding in horror, fantasy and science (fiction)? Defining genres of the impossible!

To start with the word ‘horror’ it comes from the Latin ‘horrere’ which is akin to the old Greek meaning ‘hedgehog’ and alludes not to the hedgehog’s dangerous spines, but to the reaction of fear humans experience in their body that is compared with the reaction of a hedgehog that becomes a ball of thorny spines to protect themselves. When you are overcome by fear your hairs may rise as the spines of the hedgehog.

Horror as a genre simultaneously arised with what we now days call ‘enlightment’ or ‘rationalism’. This rationalism understands itself as scientific and opposes itself to what they believe are the unscientific, meaning ‘irrational’, Middle Ages and everything that proceeded the Middle Ages. Whether the Middle Ages are unscientific or not and whether ‘irrationality’ is a concealed higher form of rationality we will not discuss in this white paper, but what is a sure fact is that the irrational still had a great appeal to individuals and maybe more because in ‘enlighted rationalism’ it became a forbidden domain of the ‘superstitious’, the domain of ‘guilty pleasures’.

Before rationalism there were stories of the supernatural, but they were seen as supernatural and a fact of life, but within rationalism these stories became ‘fake news’. This was reasoned from within logic by arguing that ‘supernatural’ beings imply a confusion of fundamental concepts, categories, that reflect reality, correspondent with reality. A category as ‘life’ or ‘death’ reflect a reality, but totally different realities meaning you can either be alive or dead, but not both at the same time. A zombie is both dead and alive, is a hybrid creature and that is a contradiction, thus zombies do not exist. All hybrid creatures cannot exist for they embody a contradiction, an impossibility, according to rationalism.

However, rationalism, science, seems to be catching up with itself. With biotechnology, genetic manipulation, the category of a human and that of an animal can be mixed. How to solve that contradiction, that seemingly impossibility? Logically by saying that animals are really pro-humans or that humans are evolved animals, so be saying that an animal is in fact human or that a human is in fact an animal. Aristotle called a human a ‘rational animal’ and Darwinism could be called a scientific version of it. So not all hybrid creatures are horrific for they are not really hybrid, only at first sight, but not if you think about it. Otherwise transgenders and hybrid cars could be banished to the domain of horror and to banish hybrid people and transgender cars would be a horrific thing to do!

We conclude therefor that the essence of horror has definitely to do with the ‘supernatural’. We conclude that seemingly impossible logical contradictions for us are not absolutely in itself logical contradictions meaning these contradiction for our logical understanding can be overcome by reason, by principles. Technological development is nothing more than the overcoming of seeming (logical) contradictions of which there are a limited amount of that can be overcome by one or more of a limited amount of 40 principle (explicitated in the only systematic innovation method in the world called Triz:  https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/part-i-spoon-james-roolvink/). Understanding that understands it self does not see itself as logical, but reasonable.

The supernatural is still impossible for a rationalist, whether a logical or reasonable rationalist. A hybrid creature as the ‘Nephilim’, born of human woman and a supernatural masculine creature is within ancient times a possibility and cannot be counted as horror, but it can from a rational point of view. You can ask the question whether Indian horror movies like ‘Pari’ of ‘Tumbbad’ are generally seen as horror in India for in general India has an ‘ancient’ view of the world in which the supernatural is a ‘natural’ fact of life. You can ask the question whether a horror movie as ‘Martyrs’ is horror for a religious person who believes in the supernatural. The fact that you do not want a genre of a movie to be dependent on the viewer could be solved be the fact you have to look from the perspective of the general world view in which the protagonist, the one who plays the central role, acts, which should be the rational world view. A horror movie is a movie in which the supernatural is impossible according to the leading world view of the people in the movie, but the protagonist experiences that the supernatural is real. He or she will encounter disbelieve and as to act without recognition that the supernatural exist.

If the supernatural is within the movie a fact then, if you want to stick to the definition, it is not a horror movie, but you would call it fantasy. ‘Lord of the rings’ is called fantasy and not horror even if the supernatural is associated with evil. In fantasy there are no two worlds between what is normal, rational, and what is not. (Although what about the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’?!). ‘On the edge of tomorrow’ is regarded as science fiction, but the creatures human kind has to fight are as natural biological being, for they can bleed, supernatural as well due their time travel capabilities and what is more no one believes the protagonist. It is not horror because the supernatural is constructed from science. ‘Event horizon’ could be a movie that is both science fiction and horror for the protagonists travel with space ships to a horrific supernatural world. (The unknown as dark matter, dark holes etc. in science as a gate to the supernatural).

Why not speak of horror? ‘Horror fantasy’ and ‘horror science fiction’. It is about danger. Horror is about these dangerous spikes. That definition seems to be too broad for ‘Die hard’ is about danger. Horror is about impossible danger that is for some strange ‘reason’ impossible. ‘On the edge of tomorrow’ does not belong to the horror genre, because from within the context the impossible is just something with our scientific knowledge today we cannot completely grasp, but the impossible unknowable is in principles by scientific means knowable. Knowable in a scientific way. In ‘Lord of the rings’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ the supernatural can be understood in a supernatural, magical, way, but not in a rational scientific way. And in what seems to be part of fantasy is a fight between good and evil in which the setting is that good and evil are in principle equally powerful. In horror evil seems to be more powerful for it is an evil supernatural fighting against ‘natural’ humans. (A fight between ‘spirit’ versus ‘life’ as different categories of which ‘spirit’ is within rationalism not even a category because it does not exist within science).

So horror is about what is impossible and evil. And what about horror when rationalism really has caught up with itself? In quantum mechanics ‘Schr?dingers cat’ is both alive and dead! Well hybrid forms of the supernatural and science twined in horror movies, like ‘Martyrs’ (that distinguishing within the supernatural world of spirits and what is wholly transcendent, the Creator) for example, but in quantum mechanics the impossible is something natural or the natural is the supernatural and thereby the essential paradigm of horror that there are two worlds (that can overlap) cannot be sustained in quantum mechanics. And more the cat of Schr?dingers is not actually actually alive and actually dead, but only in the domain of the possible. Quantum mechanics is a hybrid form for the possible, logically defined as something that is not actual neither nothing, becomes more of an actual possibility.

The borders between what is actual and possible become blurred. When the possible becomes actual and the actual possible we speak about a force. A force is free is both actual and possible and really is an actual possible that can actualize its actuality in many different ways. How many living dead zombies or deadly living zombies have you seen today? Go to ‘https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/zombies-work-%C3%BCber-untermensch-test-more-james-roolvink/’ if you want to know more about how to define the horror genre.   

 

$ Hybrid, 8 trends of technological evolution of technology and horror

Agile collaborative design thinking in opportunities, that destroys silo’s if automatically for the attitude is to find commonalities rather than to search differences, in order to reach objective goals (to better serve the customer). Are horror and technology different silo’s? Yes, but they have something in common what we already discussed, namely the overcoming of contradictions.

Due the fact that there are a limited amount of technological contradictions and all contradictions are qua form logical the overcoming of contradictions describes the evolution of a technology and we must therefore conclude that the paths of evolution/innovation are also limited. These eight paths I describe by giving the example of these paths, trends, in cars. The same trends of evolution you can apply in cars in many other ways if you want so these examples are not exhaustive. By analogy with examples of the car and examples of horror I show the commonality between technology and horror in order to make the point clear that both are about contradictions and overcoming contradictions. (One can even generalise this and say that all things in life are about overcoming contradictions, duality). Analogy is the form in which what is common is expressed.

From a business benefit perspective these trends of technological evolution allow you to do technology forecasting, both of your own products (and services) and that of the ones you are going to buy or bought.

·       1 Evolution towards increased ideality. More positive results [more scary personages], less negative results [seeing less horrific scenes to have a bigger contrast with the scary scenes and experience more fear (in the experience of the ‘eerie’)]. A less non-ideal car is faster & uses less, or no, CO2.

·       2 Evolution in S-curves. The invention car could not be monetized, then could be monetized and then came a commodity. One ant is not scary, but many are. Can one zombie make a horror movie?

·       3 Non-uniform development of elements: each part of the system has his own S-curve of evolution. Cars becoming faster, but tires or breaks not yet adjusted to increased speed. When the parts of a horror personage do not develop harmoniously that is horrific in itself. Think of a person who`s head is like that of a baby, but the arms of a grown up etc..

·       4 Evolution towards increased dynamism and controllability. Hybrid-car can dynamically switch between gasoline and electricity and the same computer that knows when to switch also knows how to monitor and make the data visible in the dash board. A monster that becomes more flexible will can more intelligent and self-conscious, thus more dangerous.

·       5 Increased complexity, then simplification. In a car you can install your telephone by doing some manual actions, but in the future it could be easily automated by giving the car access to your telephone. Monsters with multiple heads to monsters with one head who look more human and are due the similarity with humans more scary. (It is the reason apes appal me).

·       6 Evolution with matching and mismatching elements. Matching parts: two parts deliver same function. Legs and flying capabilities: both make you move from A to B: smooth water-resistant surface as the front windows of a car and windscreen wipers. Mismatching part: one part delivers two functions. Wheels of a car are needed to drive and give comfort to the passengers. The painter Pieter Bruegel (the old one 1525/30-1569): a hellish being that eats out of the hole his digestion comes. The movie ‘El Labirinto del Fauno’ 2006: a hand with eye in it. 

·       7 Evolution towards micro-level and increased better use of (energy fields). Evolution from macro-level to micro-level to reach ideality. Motors in cars get smaller and more effective so you have more space in the care to build a bigger engine (to go faster).

·       8 Evolution towards decreased human involvement. Cars that drive themselves. Humanoid monsters as Frankenstein make place for invisible inhumane ghosts in the history of horror. Think of the movie ‘Bird box’ 2018.  

PART II, IN-THE-BOX: A CUSTOMER JOURNEY TO & ON A CLOUDY MOUNTAIN

The age of technology: the mountain travels to the prophet rather than the prophet travels to the mountain

Well I believe it was the philosopher on technology Hans Jonas who said that the difference between a technological world and the ‘ancient’ world is that before the prophet had to travel to and up the mountain himself and today in our technological world the mountain (top) travels to the ‘prophet’. The direction of fit is different and that results in totally different worlds, not only in the sense that the ancients think the world in a different way, but really see the world differently.

That difference in the way we life now over against back in the day is made clear by Wittgenstein: ‘If a lion could speak English, we would not understand him’. The difference cannot be bridged by words, but must be bridged by partaking in the life form of a lion, meaning become a lion. (Impossible?).

That the mountain presents itself to us does not mean we totally are free of climbing it. The mountain being presented whether you want it or not. Who is going to climb it for what purpose and how? In this article the mountain to be climbed is called ‘cloud’ and by climbing you will become to know that mountain better and better.

Or by being on the mountain you will become to know that mountain better and better. In this article we will speak mainly about Iaas Cloud, that is mountain climbing. Saas is getting on the mountain top by a helicopter and Paas is getting to the mountain top by a snowmobile. So why would you want to climb that mountain?! For one reason Saas and Paas are ‘one-size-fits-all’ software and Iaas allows you to develop yourself, climb higher mountains, have a better view. It some cases Saas or Paas could be the best option and in other cases not. It dependence on the context.

$ Twelve reasons you want to climb that mountain being a CXO

The CXO-agenda, top business drivers, for the next five years according to a research performed by IDC is seen beneath. Eleven of eighteen of these business drivers can be addressed by managing your cloud more cleverly.  

$ Eight questions to seven criteria to decide on your technological climbing gear

The character of the mountain forces you to have certain technological gear to climb. In the leading analogy in this article in which Cloud technology is the mountain it seems confusing if we do not distinguish within technology. We will make a distinction between technology as in the Cloud with technology that allows you to manage your Cloud, whether it be public, private or hybrid cloud, by allowing you to move between clouds and within clouds based on your preferences regarding price, features etc..

In short the previous chapter is about deciding to go to the cloud if you had a technology that can manage your cloud and this chapter is about how to decide how to choose between cloud managers. Are you going to climb? If yes, with what are you going to climb?

1 Is there (consultancy) support or only technology, software? 

2 Do you have focus on high return on investment for your clients?

3 Have you considered all negative possible disastrous consequences into the extreme?

4 Have you thought about staffing or skillsets that need to be in place or can be deleted once you are going to use the technology, the software with or without a (consultancy) service?

5 In case the technology is customer facing have you thought about the adoption curve of (the different kind of customers and can you make a business case for them?

6 Have you decided on what you want to optimize with the new technology and/or if you can open a whole new way or working and what policies, rules and regulations, are related to both optimisation of existing processes and creating new processes (to be optimized)?

7 Last but definitely not least does and if yes how does this technology align with needs and objectives and thus with the mission, core values and vision of your organisation?

8 Have you considered the roadmap, how the company selling the technology will innovate and repeating the first seven questions over and against future features? (You might want to read the chapter on technological evolution of technology & horror because these paths of evolution are natural paths of innovation).

These eight questions are inspired by the following seven questions: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/02/12/seven-ways-to-decide-whether-your-company-should-adopt-new-tech/?utm_campaign=Seven_Ways_To_Decide_Whether_Your_Company_Should_Adopt_New_Tech&utm_medium=LinkedIn&utm_source=SocialToaster#19ae15007973

One reason why you should be a mountain climber & a heavenly (impossible?) mountain

Most people see how a combination of being able to cleverly gather data, intelligently analyse data and powerfully act on data makes it possible to own less physical assets like housing, hardware etc.. The ‘sharing economy’ both at the level of people and of organisations will only accelerate the dependency on owning physical assets when, and only when, they do not make up your core business. (If your core business is data transportation owning fibre cable might be a good idea). über changed the paradigm of what a core business is in transport going from owning cars to owning data.

A very interesting article by the Harvard Business Review shows some nice stats on the rate of success (in terms of profit) of a company and/or industry proportional to the ability to not own physical assets: https://hbr.org/2016/09/investors-today-prefer-companies-with-fewer-physical-assets. Realising that cloud going from owning to hiring, from capex to opex, cloud seems to promise (at least a greater rate of) success.

Could that success be accelerated if we are able to virtualize the cloud, that is already a virtualisation, a negation of owning physical assets, if we can virtualize the virtual? Can we be more agile in moving between clouds (whether public, private or hybrid) and within clouds based on our own preferences on costs, latency, features etc.. Can we be a mountain climber that can choose between mountains? To have the ability to climb the best mountains for you and maybe you want to climb more than one mountain at the same time or making your own heavenly ‘personalized’ mountain adapted to your preferences.

In case you want to know more about the meaning of virtualisation by analogy with Plato’s thought go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/platonic-age-virtualisation-technology-james-roolvink/.

$ Climbing towards maturity: asking right (Iaas) questions: looking for the right mountain or climbing path

The principle of maturity is not how big you are, how many applications you have, but asking the right questions once certain conditions are met. It must be obvious that if you are happy with a Saas application it is out of the question you will raise the question whether you want to go to the cloud or not. Same counts for Paas. We are concerned here with Iaas and the question whether you are going to place your applications, namely on your own infrastructure, that of one or more cloud providers or both on your own infrastructure and that of a provider and more importantly how you are going to do it.

In the scheme below ‘primary drivers’ means the emphasis you put on a certain driver. If your primary driver is enabling your developers it does not mean that operations and financial costs are no drivers anymore for they are still secondary drivers and still drive your reason for a certain cloud approach. 

Climbing towards maturity: asking right (Iaas) questions

What conversation do you want to have? Which view do you want to have on the valley or do you want to stay in the valley?

Source picture: a CenturyLink presentation.

PART III, THE-BOX: PREPARING TO BECOME A MOUNTAIN CLIMBER THAT CAN SKI OF THE MOUNTAIN

Different analogies are thrown at you, the reader, and you may try and analyse implicit unconscious messages, that are not even visible for the writer, me. Could the leading analogy with mountain climbing reveal an idea of costs? Or are we talking about flat Dutch mountains (a contradiction!). Is skiing of a mountain associated with business benefits? Or makes the mountain the climber more agile? Is the mountain the trainer, the master? Etc..

The ‘impossibility’ of making an ROI for cloud due a paradigm shift from being designed in siloed-capex-cost-thinking to collaborative design thinking in business opportunities

Certain questions are raised in certain paradigms. The question of making a return of investment and thus having clear what all costs are is raised from a non-cloud environment. Companies that were born in the cloud would not raise that question for the cloud enables their existence in the first place. We can compare this to what we said in the first chapter on horror and different culture, that is different paradigms. For cultures that believe in the supernatural horror, supernatural evil, is not impossible, but for rational cultures the supernatural is impossible. For organisation born in the cloud, or people who think ‘cloud’, asking for an ROI is horrific for it questions their very existence!

Making an ROI is in most cases ‘impossible’ because in a traditional non-Cloud-IT environment it is not clear what tasks take how much time. It is not even clear always what tasks are done. It is clear many tasks are done. An ROI in the form of some hard returns can in principle be made once you know who is doing what for who long. A less hard return can in principle be made when you know who is doing what for how long at the expense of something else. (That something else could be something that needs high priority from an operations of development point of view, but in most cases that something will be development for the business). ‘In principle’ once you overcome the catch 22 situation: once you go full ‘stack’ to the cloud you will have the required transparency needed to make an accurate ROI in retrospective.

$ Making an ROI for skis: getting to get budget for moving to & within the cloud

Before that accuracy can be attainted I believe it is a good idea to strive for that accuracy to have some financial context to compare the present before and future after. This could be a first format to start making a ROI: 

However, this comparison is blocked not only by a lack of information, but also by a different financial operating model. Traditional IT with legacy systems talk in terms of ‘XK for hardware’ where ‘K’ can be 200.000 dollars, that is in terms of capex. In ‘thinking Cloud’ you think in terms of ‘X amount of storage per gigabyte’, this in terms of opex. You ‘think’ not ‘talk’ for the gained granular visibility will give you not only an idea of the TCO, but will allow you to plan, to design, to think what can and should be done for what business unites by whom. And even the ‘whom’ is framed in the language of legacy (‘leggardcy’) for it is more about delivery to the business by (agile (scrum)) teams in which team members can be part of many different projects in which they do different roles in which there different talents are claimed at the same time by different projects. (Think of the Dutch attacking 4-3-3 ‘total football’ that ‘the General’, Rinus Michels, made famous and in which defenders also needed to have attacking capabilities and attackers defence capabilities and by analogy in devOps, developers and operations become one team where developers develop with operations in mind and operations can give instant feedback to developers. Developers have to think operations and operations have to think development. Yet devOps is going beyond itself due managed cloud providers that allow organisations to develop more and do less of the operations. Then it is all about collaborative out tasking). 

How much will you save? What is the ROI? There are soft returns like reduced risk and greater security are the primary soft returns. The most tangible hard return is lower operating costs. Yet is it visible for you now, what time is spend by whom for how long on what task? Time to market, agility and scale as well as security all positively impact strategic risk ‘return’.

The biggest mistake is believing that going to the cloud is just about technology. It is not you have to imagine that with cloud you need a different culture, to really take the most advantage of cloud. A culture from a shirt with a tie were operations and development are siloed (a kind of ‘business autism’?) and everyone is doing their job to a hoody and jeans in which continuous delivery is a responsibility of a team. (RFP’s really accentuate the difference in mentality between non-cloud-thinking and cloud-thinking because if you have to deliver continuously once the RFP process is finished the business may have changed so much that the selected solution had become irrelevant). From function descriptions to common goals. That means that making a Return of investment is almost impossible because it is almost impossible to have a return on investment in a cultural paradigm shift. Evening thinking in costs rather than imagining business opportunities is determined by non-cloud-thinking. ROI should mean a return of imagination in cloud-thinking!

What is the ROI of a good education? We know education is well worth it! People with a good education are less likely to become ill for example? Would you want to miss a good education? It is hard to say, but you most definitely know there is a really good ROI! Both for you individually and a ‘state’ or organisation who wants to invest in good education.

If you still have the urge to quantify the new paradigm of continuous business delivery in terms of price and quality ratio, you might say that in the old paradigm the emphasis is on quantified price in the ratio and in the new paradigm the emphasis is on quality. A paradigm shift from price quality ratio to quality price ratio. In the new paradigm it is not about the quality that has to ‘verify’, justify, the price, but it is also not about the price that has to justify the quality for it is quality, as the power to deliver to the business, that must justify itself. Not the lowest price, but the fact that the price cannot be to high, not the minimum, but a maximum is the kind of thinking in the new paradigm of collaborative non-siloed co-creating design thinking. (Collaboration (tools) really enable cloud). From actual operational needs to business possibilities. From being directed internally to being directed externally, to the customer.

$ The butterfly effect of costs according to Aristotle of not having a good cloud strategy

Well if we conclude that going to the cloud could be a very good thing to do (and of course it depends on the context of the company) you cannot just go to the cloud. It may be hard to make an ROI for your cloud strategy as a strategy to go into the cloud (‘have an education’), but it may even be harder as a strategy to move applications from cloud to cloud (‘choose the right education’), but we may say inversely proportional that the harder it is to make the ROI the more benefits you may gain. Could not choosing the right education be even more disastrous than not having an education? (Remember pne of the eight questions: Have you considered all negative possible disastrous consequences into the extreme?).

Anyway for both strategies, going to the cloud and moving within the cloud, Thomas of Acquinas quoting Aristotle knew about the effects of a wrong start: ‘A small fault at the beginning has become a big one at the end’. 

You do not want your cloud strategy to become a horror movie in which the protagonist will not make it to the end of the movie! The biggest mistake one can make is to believe that ‘going cloud’ is just about technology and not primarily about culture. It is like believing a ‘hoody’ is the same as a shirt with a tie for they both are clothing.

 

The stamina, attitude and thinking of a mountain climber who designs his path to climb

Going to the Cloud is not just about having a slightly different technical set-up. It is about a culture of continuous delivery to the business and about a data driven culture. At least that is what it could be. Continuous delivery and a data driven culture need a different kind of mind set, a different kind of thinking, namely what could be called ‘design thinking’.

What is design thinking? Design the way you do business by supposing you have no current processes (for business decisions, application development & operations, security, service etc..) in order to start from scratch. The ideal of design thinking is to start with a blank page, without ‘mental’ heritage, to be open for all the possibilities. The word ‘design’ also refers to an artist’s ability to remove as much as possible from the page and be inspired to dream.   

Design or be designed! Dream or be dreamed (by someone else, your competitor (?))! You do not want to be dreamed by some one else his dreams for they become horrific nightmares. Johan Cruijf said ‘Je kunt beter ten onder gaan met je eigen visie dan met de visie van een ander’ meaning ‘It is better that your down fall is caused by your own vision than by a vision of someone else’. Once I was in Turkey and spoke to an Egyptian who characterised the genius of Cruijf by saying he broad his head, brain, to his feet. Design thinking is about thinking before you act by designing the way you can act and designing the tools (like hands and feet) by which you can act.

So what if a team, an organization, is not playing well or is playing well and could play even better? ‘Er zijn veel mensen die kunnen zeggen dat een voetbalploeg slecht speelt; er zijn weinig mensen die kunnen zeggen waarom ze slecht speelt en er zijn slechts een paar mensen die kunnen zeggen wat er moet gebeuren om ze beter te laten spelen’ Johan Cruijf. The translation reads as follows: There are many people who have the ability to say a soccer team plays very badly; there are only a very few people who can say why they play bad and only a handful of people who can say what needs to happen in order that the team is going to play well’.

$ Design thinking or be designed

The scheme beneath gives an overview of the differences between ‘design thinking’ and what is not.

If you want to know more on ‘design thinking’ go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/going-beyonddesign-thinking-designed-james-roolvink/. If you want to know more between ‘design thinking’ and how Triz can help you design your thinking go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-triz-can-accelerate-working-agile-design-thinking-james-roolvink/. 

A guiding Sherpa: best venue execution & data to decision

Being a CIO (as in ‘Creative Innovation Officer’) you also want the ‘new thinking’, new invented processes, to be implemented. If you decided to go to the cloud and possibly reinvented your business model what is next? You need to execute specifically for each applications and ask a few questions. For example: ‘Is this application cloud enabled?’, ‘How critical is this application?’, ‘If it is going to public cloud to what public cloud, when and how?’ etc..

Is this the end of ‘design thinking’ once applications run on what is their most ‘natural’ place? Not at all because businesses change and with the business applications disappear, new applications come into existence, applications change etc., so ‘design thinking’ as a name to constantly, permanently, reflect on what is best in order for continuous delivery (to the business) will be you day-2-day ‘job’. Being agile in going to public and private cloud and being agile within these clouds makes ‘design thinking’, or better harvesting the benefits of ‘design thinking’, possible in the fist place.

Being in the cloud makes you more flexible to think about ‘data’. Data being stored in applications or data to gather from external sources (in the cloud). Cloud is only a means to become an intelligent data driven organisation and if possible negate ownership of physical assets and be more profitable. (On how to become a data driven organisation (and the role of design thinking): https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/under-sea-level-how-become-data-driven-organisation-james-roolvink/. Concerning the difference between automation and being data driven: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/difference-between-automation-being-data-driven-role-james-roolvink/). So finally at the end of your journey you should think about how data can best help your business. You have always already thought about you business, but by going to the cloud this thinking can probably be more a thinking in the slip stream of data, rather than directed at improving existing processes. ‘Design thinking’ should be a skill also when and how you think about (what to do with) data (and what data you want to have).

Kind regards,

James

Dec 2018-Feb 2019