Cloud Technology has the ability to transform how IT delivers services. We are at the beginning of a change equal in significance to the advent of client-server computing and the Internet. Here are five proven strategies to manage sprawl in your organization.
1. Establish ROI with compelling business benefits.
Gain agility: respond quickly to new customer demands. Increase flexibility: change direction easily according to market conditions. Accelerate Speed to Market: cash in on proven advantages to bringing new functionality to market first.
2. Know your (emotional and financial) adversaries.
Progress is often encumbered by emotional fears of losing control, job loss or obsolescence, or perceived security risk. Financially, a change from a CAPEX model to OPEX impacts the monthly balance sheet and performance against targets. Also, the opacity of internal costs can distort the cost/benefit analysis comparing on-premises to cloud infrastructure services.
3. Encourage collaboration.
Risk, audit and compliance groups must link arms to cover such items as PCI compliance, data privacy, and regional laws and regulations, which vary in new cloud services agreements.
4. Become the broker, not the police.
Many non-IT groups want to go around IT because they believe IT will only introduce friction and delay value realization. By adopting cloud-brokering services to help your business partners achieve the benefits of agility and flexibility you will avoid cloud “sprawl” and minimize the friction experienced by business partners.
5. Start with what’s easy.
Moving certain workloads best suited to cloud computing first helps you learn more about the strengths and weakness of cloud technologies. By starting with small, low-risk projects, your team will establish quick wins and gain momentum.
Kamila Bajaria, Senior Director, Infrastructure Systems for BLUE participated in a panel discussion at CAMP IT on September 25th, 2013, that discussed strategies for managing Cloud Sprawl for Enterprise IT Leaders. Fellow panelists were Laszlo Gonc, Director Information Systems & Services, JUF, Eugene Leung, Director of Internal Audit - Information Systems, MARS IS, and Annur Sumar, Consultant, Concurrency; Former VP-IT, Duff & Phelps. Jeffrey Dorey, RSD, Central Region, NaviSite, moderated.
