Microsoft’s CloudPro Twitter Hour

As I posted last week, on Friday, Microsoft has an hour long twitter conversation around the cloud. The basic idea was that Microsoft and a few MVPs (I was one) would hang out on Twitter, and answer questions around the cloud and the cloud technologies. The hour came and went – and it was an interesting experiment, which I hope Microsoft will continue with. I lost count of the number of tweets but it was around 150 for the hour. The questions came from a range of sources. I do have the source data (well everything I captured and want to make a CSV file from it – give me a bit of time to write the PowerShell scripts to do it .

As I read through my notes, the following items were discussed:

1. What is the cloud and what are the economics of the cloud and what’s there and not there. The answers were predictable – some definitions of what the cloud was (and the need for public cloud vs. private cloud). Lower cost was seen a key driver if not the key driver.
2. Security in the cloud - both in general and with respect to US Patriot act. The architecture provides good provision against most risks and there is an SLA with financial penalties. And Simon May provided a great link to an article around hosted data and exposure to the Patriot act (see http://bit.ly/fj5BbE). It goes some ways to addressing the concerns.
3. Office 365 - now that it's in more public beta, there's more interest for sure. The questions looked at what features were there and a couple of things learned so far (e.g. no PowerShell cmdlets for SharePoint Online or Lync Online!).
4. Training and the Future of the IT Pro. It’s clear, to me at least, that the IT Pro does not go away in this drive to the cloud. There continues to be work to be done to facilitate the cloud – IT Pros do not have to worry too much just yet. As for training, well this needs to evolve and training providers need to evolve too.

I understand from talking to the organisers that another event like this is being planned. What did you think? Comments please!

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Cloud,CloudPro,#CloudPro,Lync Online,Exchange Online,SharepointOnline Office 365

IT Pro Cloud Hour–Friday 15 April

The cloud, and all it’s variations, is one of the more fundamental paradigm shifts of modern times, at least as far as IT id concerned – perhaps as fundamental as the arrival of the Internet itself. As a way of advancing IT Pro’s understanding of the cloud, Microsoft is running an interesting event this coming Friday, April 15 from 12:00 to 13:00 (local time): IT Pro Cloud Question hour. This hour will be conducted on line via Twitter.

The way this is meant to work is pretty simple: to ask any Cloud related question, post your question to twitter and add the hash tag #cloudpro to your tween. Alternatively, you can text your question from you phone – text to 80809 or even send the question by mail to ukitpro@microsoft.com. During the hour, a team of Microsoft and MVPs will be watching the questions and tweeting answers. Watch for @AskTechNetUK where at least some of the answers are going to come from (I suspect these will be MS staff) – others like me will be posting under our own twitter IDs, but still using the #Cloudpro hash tag.

For more information on this event and to learn more about the cloud, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/gg710912.

Technorati Tags: Cloud,Twitter,#CloudPro

Training and the Cloud

I’ve been having some discussions with a client about the impact of cloud computing on the IT training business, particularly IT Professional training. If you believe the hype, cloud computing will take all the problems of running your IT suite and make it a thing of the past. Thus, you don’t need any more IT Pros and therefore no training. Of course it’s nowhere as simple as that! I’ve been reading an interesting blog piece by Alan Le Marquand titled From Servers to Services: the Role for the IT Pro in the Cloud. It’s provided some good input into the training question.

Alan first makes the point that 'the cloud’ is actually many things. Cloud computing has evolved in to distinct layers, each with their own approaches and IT Pro needs. Le Marquand breaks “the cloud” down into three main layers:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)– here you buy the software hosted by a supplier. For example, an organisation can use one of many hosted Exchange solutions for email. For this layer, the hardware, OS layers and application peices are for the most part gone. so IT Pros no longer need to worry about them. Of course, at the application layer, there is still a need to perform management and provisioning functions such as adding or removing email accounts as employees come and go. And since you are paying for the application, you need to monitor your SLA, possibly differently than today as well as manage your supplier.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)– here the hardware and OS are provided by a supplier but you provide the application – Microsoft’s Azure is an example of this cloud layer. With PaaS, the OS and hardware are primarily managed by the supplier , but you manage the application that sits on top.This layer still requires IT Pros to handle all the application management functions plus the ability to manage the platform in the cloud. 
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – here you just get the hardware provided by the supplier and you deal with the OS, application and everything above. To some degree, this is really not much different than from today in terms of the skills that IT Pros need – the key difference being where you put the hardware and how you scale it out (or not!). IT pros still need to know how to deploy the OS and the applications and manage them. Only the scale is different – you still need to patch, troubleshoot etc.

The role that the IT Professional plays in each of these layers differs, in some cases significantly, from today.  And of course, this means training needs differ too. All three layers require you to consider end-user/administration training in how to use and get the most out of the applications. PaaS and IaaS also require you to know how to develop and deploy your application solution. And finally, IaaS requires you to have broadly the same deployment skills as today since most IT Pros start their tasks once the hardware is in place.

The key first step all organisations considering the cloud need  to take is to get a good understanding of how to buy as well as deploy and manage cloud services. Organisations are being led to believe by the suppliers that the Cloud is the answer. That may be the case ultimately, but not all suppliers are equal and not all offerings are the same. So companies need to understand how to go about buying the services and then how to deploy them. For IT Pros, that deployment may be a challenge as there are new issues to consider. Deploying application to hundreds or thousands servers require you to have new automation skills than you might have needed if you just use the GUI to manage one server.

The suppliers of particularly PaaS and IaaS also need to deliver or facilitate training in their offerings. While SQL on Azure may be almost like SQL on your own server, there are differences. Also, deploying and managing larger numbers of servers will require new approaches to the tasks.

For organisations that are considering cloud computing, I’d recommend spending some time to think through just which cloud layers you are considering and the impact those have on your IT staffing. Then you should start to do some training needs analysis. The cloud offers organisations of all sizes some advantages and as Alan poitns out, IT Pros, and hence the training, will certainly adapt to fit the cloud model. But there is still some thinking and planning to be done before leaping off in to cloud-land!

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Training