Sky Pilots in the Clouds - Part 5 of 5

by Thomas B. Cross CEO TECHtionary

In the last article I wrote about control without obstruction and internal/external IT role change.   In this article I want to tackle two more of the issues posed by the paper published by IBM on Top-10 Best Practices for Successful Multi-cloud Management - #2 Dynamic, up-to-date catalog and #5 Aggregated Services for added value and #8 Challenges of User Management. You may think these are rather different ideas, however, both are focused on bring about better user and/or customer experiences. In survey after survey with users, I have found that there is almost a geometric level of confusion on the part of users based on company size. That is, the larger the company the greater the number of systems and resources with decreasing level of user understanding. Small companies especially less than one hundred people work really well because the number of resources (applications, systems, platforms, devices, etc.) are often really limited by the IT department who is equally small. This is because the IT department has tight control over the resources because they have to fix them when it breaks or deal with those pesky users including the CEO who comes down the hall and won't let them alone until the problem is fixed and offers useless guidance. With large multi-location, multi-national business, users hate IT because the people fixing the problems are in different time zones and/or continents. Along with managers to users telling them to "call the help desk" being the answer to every real or potential problem, no wonder users take control of their own technology because they need tools to get their job done and waiting for the helpdesk. Also, saying that "I am waiting for help from the helpdesk" is not going to be a viable response to the boss when they ask why the project is behind schedule or not completed. The cloud is not going to solve this problem. The real key is to have your IT best practices already in place before moving to the cloud. Whether you do it yourself or get help from the outside, as IBM noted, "helps by applying best practices, predefined integrations and automation to ensure that existing structures can be extended for multi-cloud management." By incorporating a user-first approach to the cloud, you can grow your business easier along with being able to change faster. Why I say this is that large companies simply are not capable of changing at the speed and way the business world is changing. Even by bringing in "change agents" just infuriates users who perceive themselves more as prison inmates rather than adding any value to the company. Of course, if you are reading this from a large enterprise you think this is easy to say without any realistic way to change the way a large organization works. Indeed, one way large organizations can change is to be more like small ones. Companies need to change the way they think about organizational structures and operations. By taking a view that any group should be no more than 50 or 100 or even smaller and rightsize IT to fit each department rather than one size fits all, cloud and multi-cloud technology makes even more sense. That is, if technology and resources are coming from the cloud(s) then users can work where, when and with whom they need to who needs at with the right team at the right time. This also allows these groups to aggregate the resources they need to and dynamically update their own content. As IBM noted, "The challenge is that any time an external provider changes its price, service or technology, the organization’s self-service store must be updated so that the offering is presented correctly."

Summary - In reviewing all the 10 Best Practices for Multi-Cloud Management by IBM there are many takeaways that you can put to work today as well as keeping your own vision for multi-cloud management. Some of my favorite highlights are: 1) take a standards approach to IT processes, 2) build and expand IT with a cloud-first approach, 3) tackle transparency in cost control, 4) provide a self-service portal to all players and 5) rightsize IT moving it back to groups and users they serve. All are elements in learning how to be sky pilots realizing that real pilots don't fly into clouds they fly around them.

References:

https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/GW53O5LQ

https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/cloud-brokerage-services-store

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