Redefining the role of IT in the era of cloud technologies

IT departments, sooner or later, will have to slightly change the style of work in connection with the introduction of cloud technologies. No, this is not a revolutionary upheaval: you just have to give up attempts to keep all the processes under control and switch to the most rational use of things that are controlled on the side.

I spent a lot of time thinking about Internet technologies and the role they play in the cloud era, API development, and the ever-growing interconnection and interdependence. At the head of the corner, applications gradually rise, servers fade into the background. And what is the role of IT in all this? What does IT move to the clouds mean in general?

Nick Carr, in his book, Does IT Matter?, Describes how IT brings a certain lack of differentiation to business. His main point is that the IT industry is becoming more and more predictable, and business products are becoming more similar. And if so, why does each business have its own unique software product?

If we agree with Carr's point of view, the transition to cloud technologies is the most logical and rational development of events for the IT industry. In the book “The Big Switch”, Carr brought another interesting idea: he said that the increasing standardization of technology is increasingly bringing them closer to the status of one of the most necessary resources for humanity (along with water and electricity). It really makes sense and helps to understand what is happening with the cloud technology market at present.
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In this case, IT departments may eventually disappear completely, giving way to third-party Internet services offering data analysis and processing services? No, I do not think so.

I think that IT plays a much more important role in more or less large organizations than simply providing reference services and equipment management. To understand this role, you need not only to look closely at the applications that are being created and used in organizations, but also to understand that what IT is doing now is quite different from what they would do if their task was to build a cloud-oriented organization model.

Good old IT

Of course, to talk about IT in general is quite difficult, because in each organization they work in their own way. But it is possible to single out a few basic trends. One of the most important trends is what I call the “central role of the server” or, more precisely, the “central role of the infrastructure”.

To begin, let's remember how the era of computer technology began. First of all, in order to do at least something, you needed a computer. The computer must have an operating system, which, in essence, is an interface that allows a person to interact with the machine. And only when you have a computer with an installed OS, you can resort to using applications to solve this or that problem.

The computer has always been an integral part of this model - the other parts could not function without iron.
Thus, companies had to spend fabulous sums on their own data centers, operating systems, software applications, databases, and so on. All this was done to ensure the key business processes - this was the role of IT.

IT and cloud technologies

Developers - those who, ultimately, solves business problems using computer technology. For understandable reasons, they were always saddened by the very limited capabilities of computers and software, and supporting the infrastructure was always a difficult task, requiring considerable time and material costs.

Now, however, not even the rules of the game have changed - the game itself has undergone significant changes. The common infrastructure is now available to anyone who wants it for a small monthly fee. And if you add to this a multitude of innovative software tools and services available through the Internet, open source projects and other cloud gadgets, it becomes clear why cloud solutions seem to be much more convenient for employees of IT departments to develop certain types of applications than their own infrastructure.


Providing Amazon Web Services virtual servers.

When developers think about operations, they are more focused on the applications themselves than on the infrastructure used.

So what it turns out, IT is gradually getting out of the working cycle of many organizations? Not “officially” and very quiet, but, nevertheless, it happens, and in the most different companies working in the most different spheres. In the meantime, this happens in two main types of software provided by the clouds (scalable web applications and data collection and analysis), many other areas just die from IT thirst.

What do IT departments do?

I think the answer to this question lies in a clear understanding of what “the central role of applications” really means for business. No business uses only one application. And no business carries out only one specific activity. Each company uses a whole system of applications consisting of many interdependent software components, services and data that must work together in a certain way to ensure the stable development of the company.

In the era of cloud technologies, the real purpose of IT departments is to coordinate application systems — to adapt the work of cloud services within an organization’s internal infrastructure.

Below are a few key questions that the IT industry needs to answer in connection with the new order of applications:

1. How the company should control the identification, authorization and authentication of data processing systems and other and essential security functions, which are coordinated through various control systems.
2. How the company solves problems arising from the interaction of applications through control systems or when setting deadlines in a team.
3. Is there a solution, independent of individual applications, to improve the performance of the existing system?
4. Who has enough knowledge of the system to give the necessary advice on how to integrate ideas or components into new applications?

Thus, the main task of IT moves from infrastructure management to software management or, to be more precise, to helping developers manage large software systems. This “advisory” function includes a set of tools and services that must be relevant for supported developers. These can be, for example, tools for visualizing the relationships between applications and the resources they use or services that develop management literacy.

The basic idea is that IT will have to abandon attempts to keep all processes under control and switch to the most rational use of things that are controlled on the side. It really is possible. That's exactly what Netfix and Amazon do today. The result is a much higher level of flexibility and adoption of innovations, given that cooperation, communication and measurement are becoming increasingly important components of success.

The main disadvantage of most modern IT organizations is a centralized, or at least implicitly centralized infrastructure, when it comes to corporate software. The transition to centralized applications and self-service in the field of development is a very complex process, requiring changes in the corporate culture of the company, as well as in the level of staff training. This means that private cloud services are not the most important cloud initiative taken by IT.

I wonder how soon most IT organizations will understand this.