• IT Guy: Cloud is the Devil
• How Cloud Actually Saves Jobs
• Cloud with Great Support

IT Guy: Cloud is the Devil

Ali Mirdamadi, a consultant with San Diego-based Abacus Data Systems, says that he frequently meets locally based IT professionals who argue against cloud, viewing it as a second-rate threat to their one-on-one, in-person expertise.

Mirdamadi suggests that while he thinks the concern of local IT is valid, it’s better to recognize how their role might be adapting than to battle against the inevitable. After all, cloud is helping many technologists stay in business, as described by Marc Le Guen of Digital Days – discussed below.

Why does local IT get nervous in response to the cloud, though?

The reason, according to Mirdamadi, is that private clouds, public virtual machines, and platform-as-a-service “have become more popular and more affordable which allows Law Firms and businesses to outsource their entire IT needs to experts specialized in data management, security and virtualization.”

Those who use cloud say it makes sense because of the following benefits:

• Whereas in-house servers are a capital expense that requires equipment ownership, cloud is an operating expense that can be slotted in as a consistent cost per month.
• Both on-site and digital data protections are enhanced, so it’s easier to stay compliant with any industry-specific regulations.
• You can easily tie in disaster recovery mechanisms, avoiding the tremendous potential pitfall of extensive downtime.
• Cloud services render companies more physically and organizationally agile, with space previously needed for servers made available and network weaknesses overcome.

Mirdamadi concludes that the cloud is a transition to a new model of data resource provisioning – and perhaps that goes without saying. However, it summarizes why local IT folks may get defensive when it is discussed. They used to be your middleman to the resources. Now you can go out and get them yourselves.

However, here is where they are wrong: cloud computing is not about slashing jobs.

How Cloud Actually Saves Jobs

Marc Le Guen, the head of sales at Digital Days, says that IT is progressively serving a strategic rather than a tactical role. In other words, rather than gathering finite sets of resources to meet defined objectives of the business, technologists are now tasked with viewing the organization comprehensively and providing solutions to improve the business and its use of resources across the board.

Any technology, whether physical or virtual, has a lifecycle, each phase associated with certain challenges, in a similar manner to people. IT management must pay full attention to the lifecycle of all technological models.

The overarching mission of IT, explains Le Guen, “should be to ensure that the business is up to date with a current solution that enables their co-workers to either have an advantage over their rivals on the market or at the very least remain competitive in their ability to carry out their daily work functions.”

Just like the human lifecycle, the lifecycle of a successful IT service – like any business service – come with a series of stages:

1. Early adoption – During this initial stage, the technology is still being tested and may be cost-prohibitive. Think of this stage as childhood – and yes, some technology is precocious.
2. Emergence – This stage is the ideal time for a company to have the solution in place: many hiccups and kinks have been resolved, so systems typically represent a competitive advantage. Think of this stage as young adulthood.
3. Maturity – At this point, the strategy is an accepted best practice. This phase corresponds to middle age.
4. Decline – This final period is when the system is being removed, trumped by a newly emergent, innovative approach. This stage is similar to the senior years, and we all know what happens after that.

People in the IT world who tether themselves to the onsite physical server approach should be cognizant of the fact that the localized equipment model is in its third stage, rapidly headed toward the fourth one and its exit. On the other hand, cloud is now in its emergent stage, rapidly headed toward maturity. It is becoming the recognized technological standard.

IT professionals may be convinced that the cloud is replacing them – that it is actually the IT professional that is in decline. Instead of thinking that the job is disappearing, IT experts are best served by recognizing how it is adapting. Cloud doesn’t mean that IT is no longer locally needed. Rather, it means that the specific tasks are different.

Cloud can actually make an IT job much less tedious and repetitive: “Once a cloud solution is put in place,” argues Le Guen, “the IT department can focus on improvements to business through IT instead of just spending all their time on maintaining the status quo.”

Cloud with Great Support

IT has always been fundamentally centered on the cutting edge. Cloud delivers automation at a speed and cost that is impossible to devise locally. IT is changing rapidly, and that means the IT role is too – but support is still needed.

It’s easy for people to think that cloud is self-service IT, and some dominant brands fuel that misperception. At Superb, we have cloud experts on staff to support your everyday technology needs.

By Kent Roberts