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« Build, Buy, Open Source or Services? | Main | Top Industry Vendors give their views on Clouds »
The Roman Cloud
Once, I spend an entire summer with Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation, according to many the best book series in the science fiction genre ever. Despite that, I don’t recall much of the story line, but one of the main themes is the principle of psychohistory: the more people are involved, the easier it gets to predict the future. So with the collective reasoning power of say an entire galaxy, forecasting becomes pretty accurate.
Imagine: all creatures of the universe connected, having their own page on Facebook and tweeting all the time. That’s what I call a social network.
Enterprise 2.0? Peanuts.
But I’m getting off subject. Another theme that I remember is that of declining civilizations. There is a planet that depends on very complex machines. With one little problem: their creators have left a long time ago. They are probably in another universe or just doing some time-travelling between two black holes (don’t e-mail me about erroneous details, I am just trying to illustrate a point). Anyhow, nobody knows anymore how the machines work and while one machine after another breaks down, the people on the planet sheepishly wonder how to go on.
A story with an obvious parallel to the fall of the decadent Roman empire. The thought crosses my mind this week. Freshly returned from a few weeks of touring through sunny Spain, I land up in a workshop with finance executives. The subject of the session: how new technology will change the role of the CFO in the future.
Yes indeed: after holidays it’s better to dive deep into work right away. Luckily, the discussion turns out to be interesting. I explain the ideas behind the cloud yet another time: raw processing power and storage, as well as complete applications are delivered from somewhere else, on the Internet. That is simpler, greener and cheaper. And it creates the headroom for other things, like outsmarting the competition, improving performance or creating new value.
Sounds feasible. Yet this future perspective works on the nerves of quite a few of the CFO’s in the workshop. Information and systems provide the core of the financial administration. They are the key to being in control. Some envision horror scenario’s of an organization that has outsourced everything and while doing that forgot how processes are supposed to work and how systems are being build and run: all that is left are the people, looking at the cloud in which incomprehensible things are happening. Out of control, they sheepishly wonder how to go on.
“Well, in that case you should not use your calculator anymore either” somebody remarks.
Excellent point. Clearly, some people start to grasp the change potential of the cloud. Yet, to others it still sounds like science fiction.
Does the cloud makes us dumb or smart? Fit or decadent? Out or in control? We need more discussion to understand. And maybe some powerful collective reasoning, Asimov-style.
Posted by Ron Tolido on August 29, 2009 in
Strategy
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Comments
# on August 29, 2009 9:30 PM, Rick Peters said:
One of the biggest advantages of the cloud will be that we can stop worrying about the actual infrastructure used by different customers. This will enable solutions that work for all sizes of companies. But this will be a big change for traditional IT employees in companies. It could very well be that 'write once, test once and run everywhere' will finally become true!
Why wonder as a CFO how it works in the cloud if you don't really know how it works, or doesn't, right now?
# on August 29, 2009 11:08 PM, Leo de Sousa said:
Thanks for the posts and insights Ron. It is apparent to me that what is needed is an approach to communicate with a common language, implement governance and process so that we do not forget how to run the "machines" = "cloud". Sounds like a perfect fit for implementing an enterprise architecture practice.
Being a sci-fi fan myself, I now want to go back and read Asimov's work! Cheers!
# on August 30, 2009 7:01 PM, John Maloney said:
Good post. The universal business languages are networks and markets. "psychohistory: the more people are involved, the easier it gets to predict the future." Yes. Prediction markets and value network have are fast becoming the enterprise franca lingua, e.g.,
http://www.pmcluster.com/
Ex:
http://www.crowdcast.com/
http://www.consensuspoint.com/
http://valuenetworks.com/
-j
# on August 30, 2009 9:01 PM, Peter Lindvall said:
So what should a contingency plan look like to keep operations running for a company that has its core systems running in a cloud when the cloud supplier goes out of business or turns "bad"?
Off the top of my head:
1) a backup service, or rather snapshot service, that uses storage outside the cloud in question.
2) a "virtual cloud", also away from the cloud in question.
3) an IT partner that periodically do restore tests and knows how to migrated the "virtual cloud" to a new cloud supplier when needed.
This type of Cloud Contingency Service could scale very well on the supplier side which in turn would make it affordable for the customer.
What do you think? Please elaborate!
# on August 30, 2009 10:10 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Rick: a very good point. Also today, most CFO's don't really know what systems do or how information is processed and stored. But having it 'on-premise' - with the own IT-department - sort of provides an illusion of being in control. But nothing more than an illusion.
# on August 30, 2009 10:15 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Leo: well, looks like it touches on the original objective of enterprise architecture (before it became something self-propelling): to function as a bridge between the needs of the business and the solutions system. Guess architects need to turn to some more powerful ways of visualisation and narratives before they can actually fulfil the promise of understanding what happens in the cloud without understanding the inside of the cloud. Happy Asimov-reading!
# on August 30, 2009 10:17 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@John, thanks for these excellent links. Not really sure if these crowds have the size that Asimov envisioned, but it is a start...
# on August 30, 2009 10:22 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Peter, let's see if we get some more feedback on your ideas. Standardisation is crucial in order to achieve the next levels of maturity in cloud computing. And once we have these standards, it becomes both easier to 'mirror' whatever we do in the cloud but also to switch suppliers whenever we want to.
# on September 8, 2009 4:28 PM, Daniela said:
Isaac Asimov is the best science-fiction author ever.