The Cloud: Yep, Flying Blind Is Fun
July 5, 2016
Most of the information technology disasters I know about have a common characteristic. Ready for it? Managers did not do their job. The reasons ranged from a lack of informed decision making (this is a nice way of saying “stupid”) to a desire to leave the details to others (this is a nice way of saying “shirk responsibility”). Example: Portland, Oregon’s incompetence.
I thought about information technology crash and burns when I read “75 Percent of IT Pros Lack Visibility into Their Hybrid Clouds.” What I think the write up is trying to say is, “Folks with clouds don’t know what’s happening in the mist and haze.” The desire to get out of having computer systems down the hall is an admirable one. When I fiddled with the IBM mainframe at my third rate university in the 1960s, who wanted one of these puppies at home. The cloud is little more, in my opinion, than a return to the mainframe type approach to computing of a half century ago. Life is just easier with a smartphone.
The write up reports:
The study from cloud governance specialist Netwrix reveals that almost 65 percent of organizations do not have complete visibility into user, IT and third-party activity in their IT infrastructure. In addition 75 percent of respondents have partial or no visibility into their cloud and hybrid IT environments. The survey of over 800 people across 30 industries worldwide shows a large majority of respondents (78 percent) saying they are unaware or only partly aware of what is happening across their unstructured data and file storage.
The painful reality is that people who are supposed to be professional struggle to know what the heck is going on with their cloud computing systems. MBAs and failed middle school teachers as well as bright young sprouts from prestigious university computer science programs have this characteristic too.
Understanding the limits of one’s own knowledge is a difficult undertaking. The confidence with which some “pros” talk about nifty technology is remarkable. The likelihood of a escalating costs, annoyed customers, grousing colleagues, and outright failure are highly likely events.
Whether it is the baloney about figuring out the context of a user query or an F 35 aircraft which cannot be serviced by a ground crew are examples of how arrogance or human behavior ensure information technology excitement.
Change human behavior or go with a Google and Facebook style smart system? Interesting choice or is it a dilemma.
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2016
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