Cloud Computing: 4 Ways To Overcome IT Resistance

Business and IT leaders are bombarded with cloud computing hype and promotion. Yet very little is said about how the cloud affects the evolution of the IT organization itself. Enterprise cloud adoption is a transformative shift where the greatest implementation challenges are often more about people and process than technology integration.

Agents of change, especially in large enterprises, must overcome various forms of resistance. This includes organizational fiefdoms and the IT silos that evolved with them. These four organizational change strategies can help IT departments fight fear and inertia as they move to cloud computing:

IT Change Strategy #1: Use Tiger Teams To Break Down IT Fiefdoms

While no one is shocked that IT silos can hinder cloud adoption, you may be surprised how quickly you’ll encounter resistance. For example, setting up IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) offerings for your first private cloud will likely involve separate groups responsible for storage, computing, networking, platforms and security. Coordination among these groups is already difficult and you'll quickly find that many cloud vendors have product interoperability issues that cause documentation gaps, integration problems and incompatibilities. Teams will have to escalate issues through multiple vendors, causing long delays and strains between IT fiefdoms not accustomed to relying on each other.

The key is for siloed groups to share activities across traditional boundaries. To encourage this, leading companies have created Tiger Teams: small cross-functional groups of skilled, respected and entrepreneurial-minded workers. They should be experienced enough to navigate their home departments to accomplish needed tasks, politically astute enough to marshal resources and enterprising enough to push projects to completion. And they need a strong sponsor who can provide political cover and help break through entrenched resistance.

IT Change Strategy #2: SWAT Away “Analysis Paralysis”

One large financial institution implemented a cloud strategy with an incumbent vendor that claimed to offer the right strategy and products. The firm waited too long for proof points and had vastly disappointing results. When it tried to bring in other cloud vendors, they merely added confusion to the existing failed effort - leading to analysis paralysis and the inability to decide on the proper next steps.

Unfortunately, this scenario is being played out in many large enterprises. If you can’t afford a year of paralysis, create a SWAT team.

Smaller and more discreet than a Tiger Team, a SWAT team is quietly let loose to “get something done.” It emerges only when it has a concrete working model to integrate with the IT ecosystem for evaluation. Because it runs “small, fast and dark,” a SWAT team can be easier to initiate than a Tiger Team. A SWAT team’s goal is to break the paralysis and create a tangible model that everyone can improve. Building a SWAT team is relatively cost effective, especially compared to the opportunity cost of spending a year just trying to decide what to do.

IT Change Strategy #3: Challenge Legacy Obstinacy

Many organizations cling stubbornly to legacy applications and platforms, often including proprietary applications running on no longer supported platforms. While some groups may propose porting those applications to a modern, standardized, platform and as-a-Service offering, legacy zealots may claim that's too risky.

But there are many different techniques for cloud migration, including some require little to no re-architecture efforts. One size does not fit all when it comes to migrating applications to the cloud.

That's critical, because the benefits of eliminating non-standard platforms and infrastructure in favor of lower cost, cloud-based service offerings are too important to ignore. Because cloud computing promises automated processes that lower costs and speed cycle times for application provisioning, maintenance, patching and updating, cloud-based IT service costs will almost certainly decrease over time. Legacy system costs, meanwhile, typically continue to creep up. Many times, simply running numbers can help overcome emotional objections to changing the legacy status quo.

IT Change Strategy #4: Challenge Habitual Inefficiency

Most organizations existing IT processes and governance approaches are the result of years of layering of systems, technologies and process exceptions. Today’s cloud initiatives present a significant new opportunity to improve process automation and implement new governance best practices. That will likely breed resistance based on the idea of, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” Don't buy it. The process has likely been broken for years.

Part of the resistance is political, as people within the IT organization understandably worry about positions being eliminated or particular fiefdoms losing prestige and power. The misperception may also exist that automation is fraught with risk.

But the real risk lies in not doing anything.

While some positions may in fact be eliminated and other roles may change with a move to the cloud, this is far better than the alternative. Sub-optimal IT efficiency can lead to lower enterprise productivity, a loss of competitiveness, lower profits and ultimately the risk of wholesale outsourcing of IT operations.

Successful Organizational Change Management

Addressing organizational change is vital to ensure the success of enterprise cloud-computing initiatives. By incorporating the right approach and building strong arguments to overcome resistance, you can help your organization make the changes necessary for successful implementation of enterprise cloud strategies.

Everything You Need To Know About Dailymotion, YouTube's Dark Alter Ego

The last big video sharing alternative to YouTube has a history of picking up seedy content that the video giant won't touch. And Yahoo is interested.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo is in talks to purchase a controlling stake in France Telecom SA's Dailymotion, a video sharing site that's been called, among other things, "the poor man's YouTube."

The company, which was founded one month to the day after YouTube, calls itself the number two video site on the Internet. It's one of the last mainstream vestiges of user uploaded video content outside of Google — a role Dailymotion has been able to hold onto, at least in part, by hosting content YouTube won't touch.

For Yahoo, the Dailymotion acquisition would be CEO Marissa Mayer's largest deal to date, and could mean a bigger presence in Europe for the company. It would also bring onboard a property that's far cooler — or, at least, better known — than Yahoo's current video portal, Screen.

From a traffic standpoint, Dailymotion is a formidable site. In fact, in 2011 Google DoubleClick's Ad Planner listed it as the 44th most visited site on the Internet. According to comScore, Dailymotion attracts 116 million monthly unique visitors to YouTube's 1.2 billion. (In terms of views, however, YouTube accounts for 28% of globally, while Dailymotion accounts for just 1%.)

Size aside, the biggest difference between the two sites is Dailymotion's longstanding reputation for being far more lenient with both copyright and prohibited content.

Though Dailymotion introduced a fingerprinting program to combat copyright violations in 2007, the site gained a reputation in online communities for being less stringently policed than YouTube (particularly when it came to TV shows). As a result, Dailymotion has come under scrutiny from content providers, especially in France.

The contrast is most stark when comparing the prohibited content guidelines of the two companies. While YouTube's policy broadly bans all pornographic content with few exceptions, Dailymotion has a far more nebulous policy, banning only child pornography, "dangerous or illegal acts", and a limited range of sexually expicit content and features a "Red Band" or "sexy" section.

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Watch A Massive Bridge Explode In Super-Slow Motion

Infrastructure renewal turned into art.

This is the Marble Falls bridge, located at Lake Marble Falls in Texas. It was destroyed on Sunday:

Hundreds gathered to watch it. The demolition was conducted by the Texas DOT.

Luckily, filmmaker Kirk Drummond was there with his RED camera, and recorded the explosion in 300fps slow motion:

Via: vimeo.com

The results were incredible:

(Try rubbing the gif.)

From a local news report:

Sunday's implosion went smoothly with the exception of knocking out phone service in the area for several hours.

TxDOT crews will spend the next several days removing debris from the lake.

Areas of Burnet, Blanco, and Llano Counties are without telephone service due to a major telephone line being damaged during the explosion.

As of 5:30 Sunday evening, cell phones and land line telephones were still out of service. Verizon estimates that some service will be restored late Sunday night.

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More New Androids Than Babies, And Other Surprising Mobile Facts [Infographic]

Smartphones are in fact taking over the world. An infographic from Web-application monitor service New Relic offers some surprising statistics about the mobile landscape.

For example, every day more than 1.3 million Android devices are activated — which is way more than the 300,000 babies born daily. Users now spend more time each day surfing the web or on their mobile apps than they do watching television.

There are more than a billion smartphones in use around the world, and age is no barrier — teens, adults and seniors are all well represented among their users.

Infographic courtesy of New Relic

OnLive chairman breaks silence, says the streaming game company 'expects great things'

It's been seven months since OnLive's famous turmoil, and though the company never stopped streaming in the meanwhile, OnLive's new owner Gary Louder has maintained a near-perfect radio silence. Today, however, in his very first post on the OnLive Blog, he says the company's back in action, with 90 employees working out of a new Mountain View office and a new SVP of Engineering. Don Gordon, former VP of broadcast solutions at Gracenote and COO at ActiveVideo Networks, is joining the cloud gaming team, and Lauder says OnLive will have a presence at major gaming shows going forward, including the Game Developers Conference next month and E3 in June.

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Amazon reportedly building a private cloud for the CIA

Amazon Web Services (AWS) power many popular and essential cloud-based internet tools, ranging from entertainment and social networking sites like Netflix and Instagram to scientific endeavors like the 1,000 Genomes Project. Now, it sounds like Amazon might be building a custom version of its cloud infrastructure for perhaps the company's most sensitive and secretive client — the CIA. According to FCW , a site specializing in "the business of federal technology," Amazon recently won a cloud computing contract with the government agency worth up to $600 million over a 10-year period.

It's not entirely clear what the CIA will do with its new cloud, but FCW says it'll provide a better way for the agency to keep up with emerging...

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South Korea Cyber Attack Heightens Tensions In Hair-Trigger Region

No one is at all clear at all about the origins of a purported cyber attack against South Korean media and financial organizations yesterday, which left broadcaster and bank networks paralyzed for hours. The obvious culprit is a state-sponsored attack from North Korea, but even if that nation isn't directly responsible, it may not make a difference, given the heightened tensions in the region.

According to reports, three South Korean TV networks, KBS, MBS and YTN, as well as Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup Bank, reported that their networks had suddenly been shut down on Wednesday afternoon, local time. The takedown was apparently not from a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, but a virus that has apparently infected machines in these organizations and delivered its payload simultaneously. There were scattered reports of users seeing skulls on the screens of the affected machines before they shut down, anecdotal evidence that malware was indeed the cause.

South Korea has been the victim of cyber attacks before, of course, just like any other computerized nation. And many of these coordinated efforts have been ultimately traced back to North Korea.

No broadcasts were interrupted by the crashed computers, which apparently only hit the workstations of the television stations' staff. Some banking services, such as ATM and online banking, were adversely affected by the shutdowns, though the banks are reporting that those services have been restored.

North Korea is suspected of being the source of these attacks, just as they have done in the past. North Korea has increased its saber-rattling following new UN sanctions and joint US-South Korean military exercises being conducted in the region, and even accused the U.S. and South Korea of similar cyber attacks against its Internet servers on March 15.

(See World War III Is Already Here - And We're Losing.)

No proof has been offered yet on the source of these latest attacks, but it ultimately may not matter. This kind of attack could have been launched by anyone, since malware can be easy to deliver to unsuspecting computer users. Anyone from sophisticated cyber criminals to script kiddies could have started this, and until there is detailed analysis of the malware, conclusions should be approached with caution.

The problem is, it may not matter. Malware attacks within such an increasingly tense political and military situation are the equivalent of yelling "fire!" in a movie theater or - more appropriately - throwing a lit match into a barrel of fuel.

No matter what the source of this attack, tensions have been ratcheted up, the South Korean armed forces on a state of higher alert. If things go sideways on the Korean peninsula, this could be the first major confrontation preceded by cyber attacks. And when the dust settles, no one may care who actually wrote the code.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.