Rethinking Step 1 in Your Cloud How-To

You know the drill. You’re in college. You have to give a “how to" presentation for your speech class. You’re a philosophy major so you’ve never built a thing in your life or created anything with your hands. And you can’t use the one skill you learned your first semester — rolling a joint with one hand. What to do? What to do?

Here’s what I did. I demonstrated how to arrange the perfectly peaceful family dinner setting. Using the teacher’s desk as a prop, I sat at what I deemed the head of the table and placed dolls around the desk in order of size — from Barbie and G.I. Joe to the biggest Cabbage Patch Kids I could find. The main feature of the demonstration was to show how strategically placing the larger, mouthier kids at my end of the table made for a nice quiet dinner because – as I demonstrated with great flair – I could, without getting up or missing a beat, backhand the kid on my left or wrap the knuckles of the kid on my right with a gravy ladle before they ever saw it coming, thereby setting an example for the rest of the table to mind their manners.

After sending dolly flying into the second row with a solid backhand and my grade into the toilet (teacher had no sense of humor), I sat through more disciplined and instructive presentations from the more serious students. I didn’t learn anything from those demonstrations on origami and flower arrangement, but I did learn something from that class. And that is to always ask the question: “Oh yeah? How you gonna do that?"

I ask it a lot in my present job. I ask it because I hear every day from people telling me they can do some pretty amazing things. Most of the time, it turns out that they can. I hate to think I am exacting some sick kind of revenge for having flunked speech class by forcing people to give me how-to demonstrations. I tell myself I enjoy them and that they help me understand what it is I am writing about. Yes, I think I’ll go with that.

Over the course of the last several months and likely over the coming year, I have seen and will see many how-to demonstrations on the myriad ways companies are using and supplying cloud services. I was reminded last night as I ruminated on all I have heard so far about the cloud, that we had several how-tos presented at B/OSS Live! in June and one in particular that stood out because it was not so much a how-to on providing cloud, but a how-to-think prior to taking that first step into the cloud. Or, perhaps it was more of a how-to-rethink.

TMNG Global talked about the need for better business assurance strategies for the cloud and where in the process they should come in. Todd Ashworth, vice president of software and technology at TMNG, called for the inclusion of a control layer that can manage all the transactions that take place whenever a new cloud service is added. Transactions have to be recorded, provisioned, billed, bundled and managed. The control layer needs to be in place before you get to the point of adding services. It needs to be no later than Step 2 in one’s how-to demonstration.

Step 1 is to back up and define your operational goals and develop a 360-degree view of those goals that include a strategic alignment that takes into account risk management, resource management, performance management (from both a user and supplier perspective) and value delivery.

You can see a brief report on TMNG’s session here and get more detail from them directly, but the important takeaway here is that in almost all cases when someone gives a how-to demonstration on a new technology or network-based service, there are surely steps that come before their Step 1. Often these steps include the laying of a foundation based on BSS and OSS solutions for ensuring service quality and profitability. And if not, they should. And even prior to that are the setting of business goals and the development of a business assurance plan that tells you what BSS and OSS requirements you’ll need for building that foundation. In other words, planning and planning for support and assurance up front, should always be the first steps in any how-to.

Comments? Email me or click on the comment button below. And mind your manners if ya’ know what’s good for ya’.