Preparing for the Cloud: A Data Center and Operations Survival Guide

This May, I once again have the distinct honor of presenting at the Uptime Institute’s Symposium. This year it will be held in Santa Clara, CA from May 9 through the 12th.  This year my primary topic is entitled ‘Preparing for the Cloud: A Data Center Survival Guide.’   I am really looking forward to this presentation on two fronts.  

First, it will allow me to share some of the challenges, observations, and opportunities I have seen over the last few years and package it up for Data Center Operators and IT professionals in a way that’s truly relevant to how to start preparing for the impact on their production environments. The whole ‘cloud’ industry is now rife with competing definitions, confusing marketing, and a broad spectrum of products and services meant to cure all ills. To your organization’s business leaders the cloud means lower costs, quicker time to market, and an opportunity to streamline IT Operations and reduce or eliminate the need for home-run data center environments. But what is the true impact on the operational environments? What plans do you need to have in place to ensure this kind of move can be successful? Is you organization even ready to make this kind of move? Is the nature of your applications and environments ‘Cloud-Ready? There are some very significant things to keep in mind when looking into this approach and many companies have not thought them all through.  My hope is that this talk will help prepare the professional with the necessary background and questions to ensure they are armed with the correct information to be an asset to the conversation within their organizations.

The second front is to really dig into the types of services available in the market and how to build an internal scorecard to ensure that your organization is approaching the analysis in a true – apples to apples kind of comparison.   So often I have heard horror stories of companies

caught up in the buzz of the Cloud and pursuing devastating cloud strategies that are either far more expensive than what they had to begin with.  The cloud can be a powerful tool and approach to serve the business, but you definitely need to go in with both eyes wide open.

I will try to post some material in the weeks ahead of the event to set the stage for the talk.  As always, If you are planning on attending Symposium this year feel free to reach out to me if you see me walking the halls.  

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