Cloud Implementation is a One-Two Punch

Did you know that Creed, the latest release from the “Rocky Balboa” franchise offers a lesson about cloud implementation to IT and development departments?

Stay with me.

Rocky (Silvester Stallone) writes a workout plan for his pupil Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan). Adonis pulls out his cellphone and snaps a picture of it and hands the paper back to Rocky. “Aren’t you going to keep it?” Rocky asks. “I took a picture of it” replies Adonis. “What if you break or lose your cellphone?” Rocky asks again. “It is in the cloud” answers Adonis. The scene ends with Rocky staring at the sky and at the piece of paper confused and puzzled.  

This brief interaction is instructive for both IT and Development departments and professionals.  

Who Resists the Cloud?

Statistics show that US and European companies are the most resistant to this new approach of computing implementation (24% and 34% of cloud adoption respectively). Latin America based IT decision makers are the most prone and ready to design systems for the cloud (56% of cloud adoption) followed by Asia (50% of cloud adoption).

Security and privacy concerns are the biggest obstacles for cloud adoption, even though many cloud providers are compliant with major security standards and agencies that support HIPAA/HITECH standards in compliance with U.S.  Health and Human Services regulations for instance.

When IT and development departments are stuck in a status quo mentality “I’ve always done it this way, and it works, why change?” they become blinded to resources and opportunities and can lose their competitive edge.

How to Overcome Resistance?

• Most businesses have succeeded in replacing old technologies with proof of concept projects to help measure cost/benefits of cloud born solutions. The more difficult alternative is to wait until everybody else requires compatibility or integration with the new technology –forcing companies to overcome resistance by necessity. (Remember the Y2K bug?)

• Successful cloud adoption means focusing on the tangible benefits like lower costs, flexibility and agile implementation of new processes. Oh, and dealing with security.

• Born in the cloud solutions take advantage of resources not available for on premises design like HDInsight and Table Storage or Azure SQL Database Row Level Security.

Need a little more evidence?

Check out Corom Thompson at Microsoft’s Build event last year. It's 12 minutes and offers behind the scenes story of www.how-old.net website here.

With the right training and education business can take advantage of what is available to them: a more agile, flexible, reliable and cost-effective computing implementation. It's a one-two punch.

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