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."

Comments

Of course

[crashumbc]

Because their IT departments actually use the word "NO" when the managers want to do something stupid and retarded...

Re:Of course

[tnk1]

The answer is not to say "No", it is to say "Yes, but I will need X amount of money to get it done", where X is what it takes to do what it takes, no matter what. Once you put money into the equation, the management types will either give you the cash (doubtful) or they will back off. Sometimes, they push back and say "you don't need that!". You just tell them that its a rush project and it wasn't budgeted, so there really is no money for it. You really, really, really want to do what they want, but alas, you just need to get the equipment/people to get it done.

Keep saying "Yes" and explaining what you need to get the problem done in terms of dollars (or whatever you use). Management doesn't understand the word "impossible", but they do understand "incredibly expensive". Give them a path they can follow to get the money. Given the usual organization's reluctance to part with money, the rush project deadline will pass before the money is approved to be spent. That then shifts the blame to someone else, sometimes even the fool who made the stupid request to begin with.

You have only said "Yes we can!" to the questions. You may have to do some research and presentations to justify your numbers, but that's nothing compared to trying to implement the impossible. If you get really good at it, your face doesn't even momentarily change to horror when you get that sort of request, you just simile and hand them the price tag.

One thing you need to learn in business. Never say "No". You will look like you are an obstruction, rather than part of the "solution". I've found the way management works is based partially on what I call "happy horseshit", which means that your attitude tends to mean more than facts do. Even if you are correct 100% of the time, if you present that with a negative attitude, you're just as apt to be shunned or even fired as the incompetent people. Indeed, you'll probably be hated more, because the incompetent people might well be amiable idiots.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

So they'll "write a check" for the "cloud" service, but we are expected to provide whatever they want for free. I don't have a magic room where I keep equipment (and people) that I can pull out at the drop of a hat. Resources cost money, but they do not want to pay fr them wen the resources are internal, but can always find money to hire outsiders.

Re:Duh

[MightyYar]

Congrats! You've pretty much illustrated exactly what this article is about!

Think of yourself in terms of having a customer and your competition is the cloud. Do you think the "cloud" provider is rude and surly? Do you think that they push back and make it seem like this whole idea is putting them out and making their life harder? I'm pretty sure they cheerfully offer services and then negotiate a price. Might even buy you dinner.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

If a huge cloud host, like Salesforce, devotes more resources, expertise and time to their security, and has higher security standards than an internal IT department, what's the disadvantage of going with the cloud?

None. Hey wait, I see what you did there. Nice premise.

Sometimes the premise is that the cloud has worse security than the IT department.

And then the other 98% of the time, the relative security of the cloud vs internal is completely unknown and therefore can't be a factor in the decision. Management doesn't even understand how well their own IT department enforces security, and third parties are less well understood than that.

Re:Duh

[haystor]

All too often provisioning a new server costs weeks of paperwork and a ton of man hours from both IT and the business dept. Or, they can clone a new server in 30 minutes. There is no simliar service offered by IT, especially at big companies.

IT may have rules and procedures in place for good reasons, but all too often those rules are followed in a passive aggressive manner to put IT in control of business, instead of the other way around. Requests must be submitted with the hope of them being granted. Departments should be stating business cases and needs and IT should be helping figure out how they can help accomplish these. Frequently, this is not how it works.

Too many places, a request is made and IT denies it, telling the user they don't need what they're asking for. No research, no effort given, just a flat, automatic "no." I had a virus scanner fighting with my build, preventing the build from getting done. While our dept. is getting billed by IT for things, they refused to do anything at all about our new inability to build our main program. They had their rules that allowed them to say "no" and leave it at that. So here we are getting billed (internally) for IT support and being treated like no company in the world would treat a client. That is why departments move to the cloud.

The stories from developers fighting with IT are endless and all of them are countered by the same basic fear card and the general statement that users are idiots. In my two years at AT&T, I probably had firewall exceptions turned off a dozen times. They didn't keep their record keeping straight and couldn't justify a port being open between two computers so they shut it down. They didn't notify anyone at all, they just close a port. It would take 30 seconds to look up the paper trail on firewall exceptions and call/email the owner. There is a general arrogance that we are on "their" systems and not that they are managing "our" systems.

Re:Duh

[Moryath]

IT may have rules and procedures in place for good reasons, but all too often those rules are followed in a passive aggressive manner to put IT in control of business, instead of the other way around.

You say that now. Then the Department Manager of your department, or the VP of Asshattery, gets caught doing various illegal things from his work desktop and IT gets word from on high to either (a) "cooperate fully" with a police investigation, (b) figure out how to hide it so it doesn't get to a police investigation, or (c) do some combination of (a) and (b) that may or may not be legal.

Departments should be stating business cases and needs and IT should be helping figure out how they can help accomplish these. Frequently, this is not how it works.

Everywhere I have worked, the process has gone line this:
- Department states business case. Part of the time, business case involves a complete lack of understanding of how the technology currently owned/operated by the company works. Part of the time, business case involves unrealistic assumptions like "it'll only take a couple days to move us from our current server environment to a completely different architecture." Part of the time, business case is actually reasonable.

- IT then figures out (a) what needs to be done to make it happen, (b) whether it can be done in a time-effective manner given the existing IT workload and available staff, (c) what it will cost to temp or outsource it if not. Sometimes there is also (d), whether the new toy the fuckwit VP du jour has purchased on company funds even does what he thinks it will do and how the FUCK to integrate it into the existing network.

The stories from developers fighting with IT are endless and all of them are countered by the same basic fear card and the general statement that users are idiots.

That's because for every story like yours, there are a dozen or more fuckwits like this or morons like this that the IT department has to contend with.

There is a general arrogance that we are on "their" systems and not that they are managing "our" systems.

And what you fail to consider is that "they" are caught between you, the user, and the weight of the company heads screaming the usual, contradictory priorities:

#1 Priority - "Just make everything work."
#1 Priority - "Keep everything safe."
#1 Priority - "Give the users what they want."
#1 Priority - "Protect the network from rogue users doing bad things."
#1 Priority - "Make the VP's latest toy cell phone plug in to everything."

Nothing that comes from "on high" for IT is ever not a "#1 Priority." IT is one of the most thankless tasks in existence. If everything is running well, people forget they exist. If something breaks or has to be taken offline for maintenance, someone is inevitably screaming bloody hell. Then they have to deal with mobile devices, 18 gazillion models of phone that everyone wants to hook in to company email, traveling flash drives that are a danger vector for worms coming in and corporate espionage going out...

Try putting yourself in their shoes once in a while. IT aren't the bad guys. They're stuck in a terrible position, under PHB's that make your department's PHB look like an utter genius by comparison, and your PHB is the guy who once took a week sick off of work after accidentally supergluing his hand to the family cat.

Re:Duh

[Old97]

The other groups in the business are not my customers. They are my partners. If I were a consultant, ASP, cloud provider, or other vendor, my interests would be in making money for my company, not doing what is best for my customer. Sometimes the interests of the customer and the vendor coincide, but often they do not. A lot of vendors rake in tons of money doing whatever is asked of them with little or no regard for how bad it is or will be for their customer. That may please some clueless manager who is trying to look good, but it's not good for our employer. As a partner I have to care about our common employer. I have to be willing to push back when they want to do something stupid - something that is against the best interests of our company. That's in part what I'm paid to do. That's why we have an IT department.

That being said, I'm not advocating being a surly, snotty pain in the ass - a Mordac. We have to work to understand the requirements and challenges of our partners and help all of us through them. It's like a marriage. It takes work.