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Why Businesses Move To the Cloud: They Hate IT
jfruhlinger writes "Cloud services can be unreliable and pricey, and they often duplicate capabilities larger companies already have in-house. So why do many managers within organizations use them? Partly because they don't want to deal with their own company's IT department. Getting a big project started is often such a politically fraught process that for many managers it's easier to simply write a check."
Seriously, I would rather pull my own teeth than deal with my last company's IT people. Getting anything done through them was a nightmare. "Customer service" wasn't even a concept on their radar. "No" was the only word in their vocabulary. They had perfected a variation on "security through obscurity," which could best be characterized as "security through inaction." By not allowing anyone or anything on the system, they kept it secure. Here was a typical exchange:
Me: We've got a new program that's going to make the company a lot of money
Them: We can't do anything to help you. And if you try and go around us, we'll try to stop you.
Me: I just want to put up a simple html webpage with information on it.
Them: Can't do it. It's a security risk.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Getting a big project started is often such a politically fraught process that for many managers it's easier to simply write a check.
There is no way the services provisioning and supply chain processes should allow line managers to sidestep corporate IT by merely writing a check. IT is failing in its critical mission to become the unavoidable middle man--the bill you have to pay--by not exercising its oversight over all purchasing decisions. It's the only way: every expenditure must have an IT sign-off to so that a grown-up can make sure IT isn't being left out, and attempting to acquire computing, storage, or communications facilities from anyone except IT must be an immediate termination offense.
Of course, IT must also make sure its firewalls and content protection systems keep the company's machines safely away from these rogue service providers unless the appropriate genuflections, prayers, and offerings are made to IT. An unsanctioned cloud provider contract is useless if the network won't let your systems connect to the service demarcation of the profider.
(Am I serious? Am I kidding? Am I both?)
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Have you tried turning off the Cloud, and turning it back on again?
And why couldn't you install IIS on a HP/UX server? Spin up a windows server in a VM, and be done with it. Not that hard.