Disaster Readiness - Level COVID

“Go to the cloud!” is what I kept reading and hearing. The company was not truly ready for this disaster, so let us take a moment to discuss why, and more importantly what we needed to do now. The reality is, our systems are paid for, they function well and, more importantly, how do you justify a return on investment that is basically suggesting we spend more money to get the same functionality? There are advantages and disadvantages, but IT is a cost center and we are always looking to cut corners.

We had moved that direction some, dipping our toe in the water with communication and file sharing. The big ticket items are another matter. How do you risk the business… no, how do you tell the CEO and the board that we should take significant risk by replacing critical systems that function perfectly fine?

Then COVID. Suddenly most of our users are working from home, and they all need everything remotely. We had a VPN set up, but never intended to have everyone on at one time. How do we help everyone when we cannot see what they are doing? What good do the firewalls do when everyone isn’t behind them?

How do we eat an elephant?

This is where I tell you not to worry and just follow these three simple steps. Accept that there is no silver bullet to solving something of this size. Instead I need you to 1) map out the journey, 2) understand the obstacles and 3) most importantly, be clear on why you are going there. Changing a company’s technology is more emotional than tactical, a fact that will be vehemently denied if you bluntly ask. During any big project, you will hear someone pontificate that change is hard. For some reason, reciting cliché phrases seems to lessen the weight of that reality, it is a cliché for a reason!

So instead of three steps, let us break this into three core elements. Think of them as tools you will need before you can really start down the path. Like any journey, you need supplies, a map and most importantly a clear purpose for when things get inevitably difficult to keep going.

Total Cost of Ownership - TCO

This is where any conversation about moving to PAAS, IAAS or SAAS goes off the rails before we even get started. True cost must be rationalized by all of the elements that affect the business. Since this is technology, the mistake is to only cost out the hardware and licensing.

Instead, start by thinking about what the tools do for the business. What is the cost if they no longer exist? Examine the overhead that goes into keeping those tools relevant and valuable. Then step back and try to imagine what, if it truly didn’t exist, what else wouldn’t? What if everything running in that space wasn’t there?

Hard Cost, Overhead and Opportunity Cost

Server cost is not zero dollars because the cost was fully amortized 3 years ago. Take the replacement cost and divide it by 36-60 depending on what you believe makes sense and you can defend, but no respecting IT professional believes a 10-year-old server is risk free, so don’t cost it that way. Be sure you factor in an element of ping, power and pipe. This is a living breathing thing with a need for power, cooling, cabling and ongoing operational investment, not only in its operation but its place in the network.

The really tricky part of this is the opportunity cost of losing that service. To really understand the risk, you cannot just look back 24 months and take that uptime as some guarantee of future performance. Start by assuming a 1 hour loss of service during a critical time. Now how many times can the business absorb this loss? This starts you down the path of really understanding the total cost of operating that service in a state you can only mostly ensure is always up. As a side note here, during these exercises we always come across things that don’t seem to have an impact if they go down. Be prepared to ask the question nobody wants to ask; if there is no cost to losing this service, why do we have it?

Now look to the new service for true cost. As you evaluate the hard costs of a service; monthly operating cost, licensing, seat costs, etc. Make sure you factor in and evaluate what you won’t be paying for anymore.

The full definition of TCO

In truth, there are, of course, a litany of elements that go into a full TCO calculation. Naturally, you should understand them. My point is that you can gleen the value from the process and a broader understanding without needing to dig into the total cost, calculated to the penny for each hour a server runs.

Return on Investment - ROI

The final calculation of ROI is not what is most important. Remember this is about the journey, the process you use to get there. At this point you should have established that this service has value and if lost has a cost (we established that in TCO). So you can begin with what the contracted uptime is and extrapolate a return for how the number of 9’s (99.9, 99.99, real world availability) translates to in service hours during the month. It is important to realize that 99.9% uptime is still 43 minutes of downtime per month.

The IT leader alone is not equipped to calculate the true value of an application on their own. What I feel is that one of the best elements of a career in IT is how integrated and involved you can be in the entire business. This journey is a great example of that. Begin by enrolling the core users of the application into a discussion of how specifically this application affects their departments. I find it best to begin with what is best and worst about the current solution, but with a focus on why.

Why is almost always the most important element to understand. Let us take an example of something simple, like manifest software for shipping and receiving. The ‘what’ is pretty straightforward; put correct labels on boxes, ensure integration with tracking numbers and data in your ERP and with the end customer. Now to determine if you should work directly with shippers or invest in ‘spend’ on a consolidated manifest software you must work with shipping to understand how they do their job and why. In this instance every time a shipment is mis-labeled, that represents an angry customer. Each time someone is hand entering tracking numbers there is a chance for error, loss in time, loss in focus, angry customer. Each moment of productivity loss, every extra step and click, each change in practices by the external shippers that a hosted solution would be tasked with keeping up with is a quantifiable ROI.

Goals, Measurements and Plans that change

If I have hard TCO and measurable ROI then I have my measurements and goals already, don’t I? Take a moment and go back to how hard change is, how emotional we are about it. Taking your plan to the leadership and convincing them that the cost and risk are worth it will not be an engineering exercise of comparing equations.

This is a story arc you must construct; beginning with where you are today, the state of the union and an explanation of current costs and risks. Speak next of the potential solutions and your journey with your peers in understanding the true ROI of each service and application.

You are sharing a plan for the future, a map for where you have to go and why it is so important that you make this journey. A win is in the team gaining alignment on why we weren’t prepared for COVID and that we will not be caught unaware again. Which service to seek business continuity on first, how much spend is acceptable immediately and what can be propped up in the meantime is part of the journey and why Information Technology is so exciting and core to almost every business.

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