Cloud Computing and Virtualization Aren't What you Think
Today I had the opportunity to listen to a discussion about cloud computing and virtualization of IT services: "The Future of Enterprise IT Architecture" with representatives from Cisco, VMware, and Barquin. Now most non-IT government workers, like myself, probably would think, "Why in the world would you subject yourself to something like that?" But fortunately I did because I now realize how critical these issues are to supporting the work we are trying to accomplish in government.
Many of us in local government are in a transition phase leading up to a point of significant change in the structure of our computer networks. In the early 1990s, when computers were first introduced to our workplaces, few were formally trained on document or email management. In many cases, the typewriter was switched out for a computer, a few short lessons were given on how to use the mouse and open a word processor and save files, and people went about their business. And many local governments did not have formal IT staff as we do today.
We have now become so used to the benefit of having information digitally stored that we are increasing our digitization of all paper documents while at the same time we are realizing it is getting more difficult to find specific documents or files. All those years of using computer systems with no formal direction or guidance are catching up with us. So non-IT staff are meeting to determine how they can save and share even more through the use of computers. And they are trying to decide how to better organize their files to find them in an easier and faster manner. We cannot continue to function without some formal information management system.
And while we are all meeting and storing and saving, somewhere in the closets of our organizations IT staff are toiling away trying to keep servers running and answering our demands for files and documents. Years of emails sent with attachments to multiple people who all ended up saving the same attachment somewhere on the network has decreased available space. People who could not find data in the current file structure made new folders where they could store the information and easily find it often duplicating files already stored. All this inefficiency in file management and increasing demands on the system cause IT staff to juggle the ever-decreasing space on the network just to keep it all going.
At budget time, IT will ask for more servers and often due to decreasing revenues and competing interests they will get denied. They go back to the closet wondering how in the world they will keep it all going, while non-IT go back to their meetings wondering how they can put even more information on the network. This is what today's meeting caused me to realize - there is a disconnect between the IT and non-IT staff. IT is not conveying to non-IT the correlation between what they are asking for and how it can meet the needs of non-IT groups.
Of course, being an engineer, I try to relate it to my own field. It is the same as if a council person or mayor told public works to fix a road. If we responded by saying, sure, we will need a paving and grinding machine, 200 tons of asphalt, and about 10 laborers, they would quickly get frustrated. They do not need to know about the specifics of what we need to fix the road - they just want the road fixed and need to know how much it will cost. So at budget time we just submit a cost for fixing road X.
The IT disconnect is the same thing - we need to be able to store and manage files. If IT needs to buy servers or reconfigure the network to do this, we don't need to hear all the details. We just need to know can it be done and how much will it cost. Use terms we can relate to. This is a change from the way many IT departments operate. Computer systems are like roads in that both form an infrastructure on which we rely. IT will experience more success in getting approvals for system upgrades if they can re-structure their budget requests and we can view them as more like a typical public works capital improvement program. Network upgrades can become capital improvement projects that are named to meet a specific need with all individual component costs included in one project cost.
So instead of asking for 4 new servers, routers, and other IT equipment, the line item is under IT capital improvement and reads "Document storage and management improvement project." Everyone in the organization can understand this and can relate to how it will directly benefit them.
So as you can see, the cloud computing/virtualization discussion was actually more about how we can better operate our agencies and manage our information because these tools can provide the means by which we can accomplish this. An IT person must have come up with the title.
Comment
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Comment by Pam Broviak on May 5, 2010 at 8:41pm -
@David pretty cool mount - you are so lucky to get one as a gift! You should post a twitpic of you on it! My Paladin's been riding a Blood Knight Charger. I am still only about lvl 73 and really can't wait to get high enough for cold weather flying.
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Comment by David Fletcher on May 5, 2010 at 6:08pm -
@Henry well, the era of cloud is quickly putting an end to that paradigm. Problem is, there are still many people that don't comprehend exactly what cloud means for them. It's like 1994 all over again when I was trying to tell people that www meant the end of the world as they knew it.
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Comment by David Fletcher on May 5, 2010 at 5:58pm
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@Pam on another note, I just received a celestial steed as a gift at 4am this morning. Pretty cool mount. What are you riding these days?
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Comment by Pam Broviak on May 5, 2010 at 4:37pm
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@David you are one of the top innovators, and you provide an awesome model to follow. I appreciate your comment - it solidifies my thoughts that IT needs to shift to this budgetary model. As Henry points out there are many who have not modified their departmental financing structure since it was first set up. And the discussion I attended made me realize it is probably due to what Henry also said - both sides want the same thing but are using different terminology so they don't realize it and can't figure out how to translate into the others language.
At least on the local level we probably could use some guidance or toolkits for transforming into the type of model you have implemented.
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Comment by Henry Brown on May 5, 2010 at 12:29pm -
@Dave:
Would offer that a significant number of other agencies have yet to join the 20th Century.
. In my limited exposure to the Federal arena, the emphasis continues to be on convincing the comptroller/budget officer that the procurement of sophisticated expensive hardware is the only way that advancement into the computer age can occur. And for whatever reason MOST of the people trying to do the convincing don't know how to communicate with other people if they don't have the same skill level in the technical field as the communicator.
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Comment by David Fletcher on May 5, 2010 at 11:27am
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Interesting commentary Pam. We stopped using the model you described for IT quite a while ago and aren't so focused on individual purchases. That was the case more about 15 years ago. Once we adopted the internet as a model for delivering services, it's been more about the services. And our approach to cloud services stuck an even bigger fork in that old model. With our virtualization initiative we have only a fraction of the servers we used to in raw numbers and provisioning will all be virtual.
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