Going Cloud… Thinking App Integration (part 1)

As many new and upcoming markets are drifting away from the norm of IT, Cloud based services are continuing to grow and grow fairly quickly in the market place, according to IDC’s Cloud Services Overview Report “Sales of Cloud-related technologies are growing at an average of 26 percent a year”.

That is roughly six times the rate of IT spending overall, the report goes on to state that in 2009 estimated spending on cloud technologies was just over US $17 billion and will grow to a whopping US$44 billion by 2013.

So as you start to review your future IT budget and prepare for the move to cloud based services, there are 4 critical elements to understanding the true value of the service being offered – Application Integration, Security, Storage and Virtual I/O.

In today’s article – we touch on Application Integration.

A number of companies have already invested a considerable amount of money into solutions that can assist in managing their network and platform infrastructure, these solutions are an integral part of your business and should not be ignored when moving to a Cloud based Solution.

The complexities involved in implementing a solution and ensuring that your current products’ potential is maximized requires integration.  We spend considerable effort in ensuring that our cloud based offerings, like Service-now.com can support the integrations required to tap this potential, and as leading systems integrators in our field, we provide the necessary skills and resources to make the integration between systems seamless.

Integration means more than just batch-processing chunks of data being traded between applications once or twice per day the way that was done on mainframes, according to Tom Fisher, vice president of cloud computing at SuccessFactors.com, a business-application SaaS provider in San Mateo, California

Being able to provision and manage user identities from a single location across a range of applications is critical, especially for companies that have never been in the software-providing business before and don’t view their IT as a primary product, he says.

So remember you don’t want to lose the capex on that expensive software solution you bought a few years ago, find out if your existing solutions can work hand in hand with the cloud based offering. And will these solutions be able to communicate and forward information between the varying platforms successfully ?

In the next article, we’ll consider the underlying security required as basis of this service.

Tips on choosing IT Management solutions

Here are 3 high-level tips on choosing solutions for your IT Management.   These are aimed at the not-so-versed IT manager, senior manager, business owner or entrepreneur looking to expand his business and with it establish a more mature IT environment…

1.       Start by defining or at least understanding [fully] what the business or IT process is.   If you don’t understand the process – you can’t properly identify the broader problem and how that problem can potentially be solved. In the world of IT (or IT Management), make sure you’re working according to some model and broader vision – whether that be by adopting an FCAPS model, the Meta Group model for E/DSM, your own proprietary model or simply by aligning to ITIL guidelines for managing your processes.  Whatever your preference, you have to work towards a model.

2.       Choose software or solution components that will contribute to the solution you intend to adopt.  Choosing a solution is not just about choosing a good piece of software, hardware or service.   You must take some time to understand the vendor and supplier of choice.   You should take into consideration their culture, their success (and reputation) in the market, satisfaction of existing customers and whether they could get maximum value from solutions they’ve purchased.   You should look at how the local partners are empowered to support you, how willing they are to understand your needs and grow with you.   Most importantly, choose a partner that will support you through the tough times, a partner that’s knowledgeable and can give you the appropriate advise, a partner that puts your interests before his (i.e. your business objectives) because he realizes that he’ll only be successful if your business is successful.    When making your buying decision – consider all these aspects – and spend time developing a relationship so that you can actually gain an understanding of these aspects.

3.       Lastly, it’s important to consider what your definition of a solution is.  Many people have a wrong perception – partly due to vendors selling “solutions” when all they’re selling is software or hardware.   Ask yourself “when is a solution a solution?”.   A solution is note something that comes in a box.  It’s not something you buy and now have to wonder what you’re going to do with it.  You only have a solution when the software, hardware, service and whatever else you purchase is fully implemented, integrated, supported and utilized (i.e. users are empowered and educated), and when it is adding maximum value according to your original definition of the problem that needed to be solved.

To sum this up, a solution must support a process that solves a business problem, it must be integrated into existing systems and you should have a partner supporting you to gain maximum value from your investment so that you can focus your efforts on your own business and your customers’ businesses.

Marutech ad iWeek

Take a look at our latest full-page add that featured in the ITWeb iWeek 11 August publication… (inside back cover).

Take a look!

The message is hopefully quite clear.  The world is changing, and if you’re not changing with it – you’ll end up as a fossil.

Cloud helps ITSM (ITWeb publicity)

The ITWeb Virtualization and Cloud Computing event in Jo’burg last week was a great success.

ITWeb published an online article highlighting our presentation’s key points…   read it here.

Past views on network management…

I almost forgot.  Another very interesting thing I read this week was a 2008 ComputerWorld article which asked the question “What ever happened to network management?“.   Sometimes its great to look at opinions and identified trends from a few years ago and compare them to today.  I found a lot of points to be on the mark while others not so much (the same goes for comments btw), but some of the trends noted back in 2008 became like fulfilled prophesies by 2010.

I also found a conspicuous lack of cloud or SaaS terms in the article.  It’s a different story today with virtually every big and small player making a play for cloud models, but I’m not convinced that 50% of these vendors aren’t confused about what it is they’re competing for.  

Technology at work for you

[Some commentary / messages for our new brochure]

Connecting your business to the technology resources you need…

Business needs to be agile to maximize its potential and IT needs to be the responsive enabler for your business to do so.  All too often organizations become strained by overly complex processes, systems and applications that were meant to make things easier.   In today’s world you need technology to simplify and streamline operations, and choosing the best-fit technology for your business is vital.  At Marutech we’d like to keep you informed about your options.

As an independent systems integrator with specialists and experience in a multitude of systems, vendors and operational models [not only in cloud computing], we can give you unique and unbiased insight into what technology (if any) would be the best fit for your organization – before you buy.  We understand the market factors that impact your business and we also understand that you want your business to excel, so every recommendation we make has this in mind – because your success is ours.

Bruce
PS.
[Apologies for the blatant marketing talk.  Its perhaps a bit out-of-line for a blog post, but I reckoned "what the heck, I can kill two birds with one stone here".]