RallyDev.com
Thu 4 Jun 2009
Going to the Cloud – the Agile Way
On our recent webinar “Demystifying Cloud, The Next Generation Architecture” we had a number of thoughtful and tough questions related to security, intellectual property and risks. We provided answers to these questions in the recording, but I found the recent SD Times article “Cloud Providers Answer Tough Questions” an even better source. In this article, a number of experts on specific platforms from Microsoft, Google, Salesforce as well as Rally’s own Zach Nies answer questions about security, lock-in and IP.
Henry Ford didn't foresee the impact of the first car - do we foresee the true impact of the Cloud?
Daryl Plummer from Gartner also did a great job recently describing the real point of cloud computing as he reviews Russ Daniels recent Forbes article. Russ says:
“In my view, the ability to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship in this new model is one of the most promising ways to ignite the next wave of economic growth. We can no more see the full impact of the cloud than Henry Ford foresaw the impact of his desire to produce more cars in less time.”
As a result of SD Times’ tough questions and our desire to “ignite the next wave of economic growth,” we decided to talk in our next webinar with Global Logic and IBM about how to go to the cloud and mitigate risk along the way. As with any pilot, the goal is to enter wisely, learn fast and then move forward. Given the iterative and incremental method of Agile is best suited for this fast-learning approach, we will title our next talk “Going to the Cloud – the Agile Way.”
We are structuring the content now, but I would love to hear your ideas, questions or feedback on this topic. I will also post a registration link for the webinar as soon as I have it.
Thesis: Taking a learning-first approach to your cloud efforts can help you avoid the risks of vendor lock-in, IP security and a spectacular failure
Proposed Agenda:
- Review the innovation, benefits and risks
- Typical approach – Choosing early, over selling, dramatic big bang
- The Agile/Lean approach – Set-based, scientific and learning-based
- Case study
- Close
One thing that will help the conversation is to review the current examples of “spectacular cloud failures.” What are they? Why did they fail? The SD Times article doesn’t cite any. Zach Nies at Rally Software provided some great insights on differences between vendors (thanks!), but mostly this was competitive positioning between internet platform providers showing how they overcome objections.
Don’t get me wrong. The cloud looks bright. So far, the examples of what’s going right include dozens of innovative startups and world-changers like Amazon & EBay in commerce, plus Salesforce in business. But studying the failure modes will advance the day when we can strip out a lot of wasted man-hours, CPUs & kWh’s.