[LINK] Cloud Computing Services in Australia?

Tom Koltai tomk at unwired.com.au
Tue Nov 8 12:13:40 AEDT 2011


> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of 
> grove at zeta.org.au
> Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2011 11:31 AM
> To: Bernard Robertson-Dunn
> Cc: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Cloud Computing Services in Australia?
> 
><SNIP>
> 
> When you point out that the $250,000 app can be equally 
> substituted for 
> 180 lines of Perl, you do not make friends with the people who 
> make the purchasing decisions.   "Operational Reasons" are used 
> all the time, to invoke a consultant or an external resource, 
> when it is equally possible fully trained and capable people 
> could do the same job, within their salary cap.   But the 
> mentality is 
> that IT is not "core business" therefore any interest in it 
> should be divested as much as possible and outsourced.
> 
><SNIP>

Prologue:
There used to be a joke about no-one getting fired for buying IBM.
Then IBM decided that they wouldn't ever support UNIX.
Then they released AIX.

A whole IT Religion lost extreme credibility in the Enterprise.
Solaris arrived at exactly the right time.
As did the popularity of Linux and BSDI. (Especially after the Blackbird
[NT 3.1?] and BSD scrap).

The other side of the Story:
The non-IT Corporate Director side of the equation has differing
drivers.

No shareholder ever sued a Director for buying a big name IT solution
(Microsoft/Amazon).
Allowing an employee to code an application makes that employee
indispensable (Lock-in - they think).
Non-Clued Experience with IT staff suggests that IT staff WAAAAY
under-estimate the time to code a solution (mainly because of their lack
of understanding of work-flow imperatives).

Directors are only in for three years after which they move onto the
next company, washing their hands Pontius Pilate fashion... 

Lots of examples exist where IT Departments nearly bankrupted a company.
(e.g. Westpac Mainframe rewrite.)

Therefore the cloud is seen as the "SAFE" choice. 


The Solution:
Directors need to be lobbied. (Err, educated.)

What was the cost to Telstra of sending the White pages offshore (1996)
? Actual and Public Relations.
How many companies were recently almost put out of business when all
their cloud data was lost ?

What will be the speed of updating a mission/time critical portion of an
application when it is part of a cloud based API ?
Why were Personal computers more successful than Mainframes ?
What will the cost of the cloud be once everyone has all their
applications rewritten to suit the cloud parameters ?

I suggest a PowerPoint be issued by the IT Department every quarter
telling the Directors of the achievements and money saved by the IT
department.
If they only see the Cloud Salesman pitch, how do they know he/she is
telling the truth?

Will the cloud be able to see anomalies in data patterns that someone
whom has been there for ten years automatically knows is possibly
fraudulent activity ?

(Hmm, that rings a superannuation bell...)

Educate and inform by lobbying for your tenure.   

The Cloud, great for the sales department or backup ... BUT!

TomK




More information about the Link mailing list