OC CIO Minutes May 12, 2011

1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 12, 2011 meeting

Present: Jeff Hecht, Keith Golden, Jim Sutter, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Jon Grunzweig, Joe Desuta, David Mann, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
7/14/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan

At the meeting, the members agreed to suggest topics and speakers for September through December.

Topic: Cloud Computing update

Jeff Hecht started out with a great slide showing why some companies are for and some are against cloud computing. At its best, cloud computing enables IT to be more responsive to business needs, and more efficient, but it requires a cautious rethink of IT. You can’t move applications to the cloud without understanding the completely different environments. Maturity of key elements such as virtualization, SOA, and broadband networks has made the cloud viable. There are many reasons to embrace the cloud such as low start-up costs, consolidation, scalability, reliability and DR. Check out the IDG slide for drivers of cloud initiatives within companies. It allows you to optimize the cost of capacity. But there are many reasons to be wary of cloud computing, and none more than security and compliance – 74% of IT management does not believe the costs savings outweigh the security considerations. There are 4 models – private cloud (single entity), public (open to all), hybrid (a mingling of both), and community cloud (supporting several organizations with like interests) – and 5 key characteristics (on-demand self service, ubiquitous network access, location independent resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and pay per use). There are 3 delivery models – SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. I thoroughly recommend that you read Jeff’s slides to get more detail on the concepts, terminology, and especially the concerns about security, threats, and countermeasures. The scale of the cloud providers is amazing – see slides on Microsoft, Google and Amazon, and be careful to read the detail in the SLA agreements. This was an excellent presentation. Jeff lists the many links to more material on this subject.

We asked the group to share with us their experiences with cloud computing to-date.

David Mann said that his company has a company, which provides services in the cloud computing environment, but they have not yet started to use the cloud for internal mission critical applications

Joe said that since this was his 2nd day in a new job, he is not absolutely sure but feels safe to say that they are doing nothing in the cloud as yet, but are interested in it and it will be something that they will consider.

Jon said that they do use Storage as a Service, and other simple SaaS, and are talking with Microsoft. They are investigating options and will probably use Azure for development.

Jennifer said that they are looking at anything that will reduce in-house IT resources. They are looking at putting email in the cloud, and other options. They are ITAR compliant, which means that they cannot use a service from an overseas location

Jeff Reid is using SaaS and Salesforce.com. They are generally very open to this, but at the same time are concerned about the risks and security issues. He feels that the cloud killed Iron Mountain

Jim’s only exposure to this has been when he was on the Board of a start-up. He can see that it would be attractive to a same company, but is trying to envision a larger company relying totally on the cloud.

Keith said that he is in constant contact with cloud service providers. His 5-year road map visualizes extensive use of the cloud, and he is trying to work out how they get there from here. He is evaluating CRMs – the sales VP does not like Salesforce.com. Other divisions are starting to sign up for cloud services.

Thank you, Jeff, for an excellent presentation and handout. It can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .