James Houghton

Over the past several weeks we have been discussing some of the mistakes made in early cloud deployments. As a refresher, here are the issues we outlined: Not understanding the business value Assuming server virtualization is enough Not understanding service dependencies Leveraging traditional monitoring Not understanding internal/external costs This week, we're exploring the problems associated with leveraging traditional monitoring solutions in a Cloud delivery paradigm. There is a common assumption that leveraging a Cloud operating model will save money. We won't debate the accuracy of this statement (tune into our next installment for that discussion!). For the purposes of this discussion, we'll assume it's true. But if that's the only benefit who, besides your CFO, really cares? Everyone wants to save money, but if you told a critical business customer that you w... (more)

Who Really Needs a Blueprint?

A few days ago we facilitated a passionate discussion on the subject of Blueprints (ah, the joys of an emerging market). The gist of the conversation was focused on deciding where limited marketing resources should be applied, and during that exercise a surprising insight came to us. It seemed so counter-intuitive at first, then as we kept exploring it became so blindingly obvious that we questioned our intelligence for not thinking of it before. What was this revelation, you ask – and more importantly, why should you care? An Architect doesn’t need a Blueprint. Let’s step outsi... (more)

Cloud Computing: What NOT to Do

A shift is finally occurring in the Cloud Computing discourse. Topics like "what is it" have been supplanted by more useful questions such as "should I do it?", "how should I do it?", and "when should I do it?" In appreciation of this new phase of Cloud Computing adoption, we'd like to offer some thoughts on some of the common pitfalls of both public and private Clouds so that you might avoid them as you evaluate and implement cloud solutions. 1. Not understanding the business value It's important to weigh a Cloud solution versus the traditional approach through the lens of busine... (more)

Business Value and Cloud Computing

In our last post we discussed the positive shift in the Cloud Computing discourse towards actionable steps rather than philosophical diatribes on definitions. And to support that discussion we offered the following list of things not to do: Not understanding the business value Assuming server virtualization is enough Not understanding service dependencies Leveraging traditional monitoring Not understanding internal/external costs In this installment we are going to focus on the first mistake - failing to understand the business impact of leveraging a Cloud delivery model for a g... (more)

Accounting for the Cloud

The past few weeks we have been discussing some of the mistakes made in early cloud deployments. As a refresher, here are the issues we outlined: Not understanding the business value Assuming server virtualization is enough Not understanding service dependencies Leveraging traditional monitoring Not understanding internal/external costs This week we are discussing a key mistake that occurs fairly often; one that only manifests long after the solution is operational...blindly assuming that Cloud equals costs savings. Blasphemy, you say - how could it possibly not cost less? Let's t... (more)