It was reported last week by ZDNet that the global head of CSC’s cloud business came out saying that AGIMO were aloof on cloud computing. The folk at AGIMO seem to be soft targets as it is not the first time there have been reports of vendor criticism of AGIMO, last time the headlines had CSC and Telstra saying the AGIMO cloud vision lacked strategy.

The perceptions that could be drawn from these comments are probably unfair on AGIMO, the fact is that despite the push for the whole of government approach, each of the departmental CIOs are ultimately going to make their own decisions on when and how they move to cloud. AGIMO are there to support the CIOs with guidelines, standards and strategies and the AGIMO cloud strategy was balanced and well considered. AGIMO highlighted that there is still some maturity needed before the public sector CIOs will be able to tick all the boxes. And they are right. Instead of the faultfinding commentary directed at AGIMO, a better approach would be working harder with AGIMO in establishing public sector cloud standards and a process of accreditation over the longer term. We hear that AGIMO and AIIA are working towards this which is a positive step.

It seems that the supply side is pregnant with expectation that the market will be shifting workloads to the cloud and bringing in new revenues, however the demand side can probably afford to take more time to see the market mature and improve, especially with security, compliance, continuity, service management and service assurance. As I blogged here previously the research data on the cloud market indicates that there is some further improvement and maturity necessary. Interesting to see that the marketing machines of some cloud vendors are now repeatedly using the terms “safe” and “trusted”. These marketing messages are designed to distance themselves from the string of recent cloud outages from cloud vendors such as Amazon, Ninefold, Microsoft Office365 and BPOS etc. It seems to me that there is a disconnect between the marketing approach of some with the reality that comes with the ICT portfolios that CIOs are dealing with, both in the public and private sectors.

It might be true that workloads could be safely moved now, and many have been, but when you consider enterprise ICT is a complex portfolio of many moving parts, all integrated and connected, the approach to cloud has to be a portfolio approach and not about just dealing with individual workloads. If all you are doing is managing a workload today, and that is all you have to consider, then that would make sense to move that workload to a cloud model today. However if you manage a broad portfolio of ICT then you will want to develop a wider strategy and a roadmap that considers that broader portfolio. And in many cases the ICT environment just isn’t in a state of readiness for cloud adoption.

I was pleased to see in analysts briefings that more vendors are taking the business transformation approach with their customers, even to the point of telling some CIOs that their business is just not ready for cloud computing and giving them the practical framework on how to get ready for the cloud. Notably IBM, HP and CA are three of these vendors with whom I have recently had briefings with and seen very positive developments with their cloud readiness workshops and the approach towards business transformation.

Moving workloads to the cloud without considering the other cross dependencies such as data, integration, compliance, security, identity, continuity, workflow, licencing, business process, application support, service management, service assurance and the service catalogue, will only mean that it wont take long before something breaks and it might be very hard to fix.

Enterprise adoption of cloud is not a race, it is a journey of transformation, there is too much to be considered in the portfolio approach to a cloud transformation to see it as anything else but a long term transition that needs a program management approach.

Anyone who has had experience in running enterprise IT will know that there are always three factors that need to be considered: People, Process and Technology. A discussion on workloads may prove that the technology is ready, but technology is only one aspect and a lot also depends on the other two factors. CIOs know only too well that the market that they work in will only value successful execution. With this being the  goal, CIOs need to undertake planning, investigation and research that considers technology, process and people. This needs to look at the downstream impacts of each transitional step.

Whilst it may make perfect sense to the vendor that the CIO should move these workloads to the cloud, CIOs have a due process and lot of boxes that need to be ticked first. If the cloud hype did one thing it may have made many forget that the CIO role is largely about managing risk. It is the CIOs that have to sell it upwards to the board and the conversation that starts with cost saves will inevitably become dominated by topics of risk and law.

So if the CIO needs to be aloof to make a careful and considered decision on the correct timing for cloud adoption, then aloof is a good thing and the quarterly sales targets will just have to wait.

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