Now clearly I'm in a biased position as I work for an Outsourcer and I was the SaaS & SOA guy but...
Nope there is no difference in terms of the assessment criteria, the key point for EAs however is the mentality. Lots made mistakes around outsourcing with the "you can't do that" mentality then looking at the barriers they could put in the way which were swept aside in the main by the providers and by the business due to the cost. The few reasonable issues were hidden beneath a morass of trivial issues or perceived challenges. I'm seeing the same with cloud. People screaming "security" before checking out what SAS 70 Type II means, people screaming "personal data" before looking at the European instance of S3. The one big difference I'm seeing around cloud and the EA people retarding progress, and in some cases the word retarding is certainly the right one, is that at least with outsourcing they could understand the technical solution. It was the same boxes and software just in another DC and with different management. The issue with clouds is they can't see the software or hardware or the flashing lights and therefore rebel against it as being "too risky" when what they really mean is "I don't understand it". This either equates to "its just grid" or it equates to lots of slights about risk and downtime and my personal favourite question of last year when an architect asked their business person "Would you trust Google to run a data centre better than we can" to which the business guy said "Errrr... yes?". Architects have to have an open mind to the challenges but also need to be proactive in enabling the business to make the changes it wants, most especially the switch from CapEx to OpEx spending on IT and especially in those areas where IT adds little value, where it should be a utility. The Application Portfolio Strategy stuff I did last year at work is doing rather well in helping architects explain to businesses and IT departments the why and when of cloud with a business centric view, they then put the EA hat on to see if the right business model can be achieved _yet_ with the current generation of solutions. Cloud is just another type of infrastructure outsourcing and certain outsourcers are already including Cloud as part of their own portfolios. Steve 2009/3/17 Rob Eamon <[email protected]>: > Spot on Anne. There are more sophisticated ways to allocate and deliver > infrastructure to customers. But the basic concept is the same--using > someone else's hardware. > > The advances may make it cheaper and more accessible than before. This may > make it workable for additional customers whereas before it was too costly > to outsource in some cases. > > But, getting back to the thin slice being addressed in Morgenthal's > interview, the evaluation criteria remains the same, IMO--does outsourcing > make sense given one's particular goals and constraints. The answer may be > yes more often now, if cost was the halting issue. > > -Rob > > --- In [email protected], Anne Thomas Manes > <atma...@...> wrote: >> >> Minor nit correction Ashraf: >> >> Cloud computing (at least at the infrastructure level) is enabled by >> recent advancements in virtualization. It is not not simply >> repackaged grid/utility computing. We couldn't do 10 years ago the >> kind of stuff we can do today. >> >> Anne > >
