Nephophobia, or the fear of clouds, has fast become a line in the sand for many senior IT decision makers. It seems every day more of us feel forced to land on the issue one way or the other. Board members, stakeholders and the people who work on your team all want to know what your strategy is for Cloud Computing and how it affects, well, everything. Like most things, we all get drawn into the conversation when controversy emerges. Case in point: the recent Azure outage.
There isn’t much point in trying to sensationalize the recent Microsoft Azure outage. Let’s be honest, just between us, we all know coping with system and platform failure is part of the job. AWS has taken outages, Microsoft took one at almost the same time last year and I have a couple fresh battle scars of my own – just like you. If you are in the role of CIO, CTO or IT Director please do not make a simple positive/negative binary decision about Cloud Computing. Control your Nephophobia. Instead, evaluate the root cause of the recent Azure outage and gain some wisdom from what it reveals.
It appears the Azure outage was based on a SSL Certificate not being renewed. I have nightmares, still to this day, about the first time a member of my team told me we took an outage for the very same reason. I know for a fact the person responsible for communicating this to me also has nightmares about having to tell the CIO of the error. We share that misery bond to this day. The point is my organization suffered an outage because of human error – just like the recent Azure outage. The Cloud is not something to be feared, but to be understood. Seeing the frailties shouldn’t encourage your Nephophobia; understanding them should inspire you tackle the challenge of leveraging the Cloud to achieve maximum benefit with manageable risk.
First, you still need to architect for success. If you do not want to take the risk of Cloud storage being unavailable then make plans for resiliency through Cloud hybridization or similar options. Push your technical teams to focus on these issues and make sure they have testable solutions for Cloud outages. You don’t give up much (if any) of the benefits of Cloud computing by being architecturally thorough and prepared. You, the CIO, are the ultimate owner of the benefits and risks of Cloud computing for your business so put the same discipline on your Cloud strategy you have applied to other platform paradigms in your career.
Second, don’t bet more than you can lose. Cloud Computing vendors are going to make mistakes. They are going to experience outages and failures. Understand the odds and the rules of the game. You might very well find better availability, security and accessibility models in the Cloud than you are able to provide. The cost, if managed well, can also be attractive. You can depend on some Cloud Services more than others and the vendors are starting to shake out regarding their strengths and weaknesses. Some business models and technical architectures just beg for the Cloud and others are far from ready.
Conquering your fears, Nephophobia included, is all about being informed and prepared. Public outages and events should be viewed as a chance to educate your CEO, Board or Stakeholders and empower you to develop a strategic view of the Cloud based on business value. Use these events to build your strategy and correlate the plan to real world experiences of those already engaged. If you are engaged and don’t have a plan these events should be your motivation to build one – fast.
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