Navigating The Cloud With Joachim Horn: Why Simplicity Rules
Ah, the cloud. The latest ascendent to the throne of business terminology with more buzz than a beehive. Indeed, its seemingly endless sea of definitions has left more than a few CIOs in the corporate sphere questioning their cloudy decisions. Ahem.
But as solutions continue to reduce time to market and cost – as well as a host of other benefits surrounding corporate IT – it’s clear that the cloud can offer an array of next generation benefits, provided you can see the pitfalls.
To kick this week’s MeetTheBoss interviews off, we spoke with Joachim Horn, CTIO for European telecoms operator Tele2 – a company serving over 34 million customers across 11 countries – on how to avoid the buzz and get straight to the honeycomb when it comes to leveraging the cloud. His advice? Keep. It. Simple.
Taking Joachim’s advice, below are his three key takeaways to manage your cloud and ensure you reap its true benefits. For the full breakdown of Joachim’s best practice ideas, head on over to the complete interview and get involved in the conversation.
“You need to understand that whoever is providing your cloud solution and handling your data is letting you keep control. If it’s really sensitive data, make your own data centre,” explains Horn. “You can still use a cloud solution. You can still have a server using the economies of scale of a standardised solution – but just put it on your own premises.”
This idea is central to anyone – from the CIO of a multinational to the MD of an intimate start-up – looking to introduce the cloud to their operations. Security of data has, and always will, be of pivotal importance. Put it in the cloud, and you better know where your data sits – physically and digitally – and every hand touching it, which to Horn also includes testing it accordingly yourself.
“You need to audit on a regular basis, just as you would in your internal organisation. Frankly, hacking it in order to make sure it’s really safe is invaluable. If you do all of that, you keep control.”
As Horn is clear to outline, cloud solutions do not replace your IT organisation; they don’t replace your brain; and they certainly don’t replace your architects and strategists. In fact, the inverse is true – you need them more in order to keep control of what you’re doing. And when you get the balance right, you reap the benefits.
“It’s a journey. Every year, we review our structure and we reorganise, we reallocate resources…trying to get more cost efficient but also faster, reducing the time to project and getting more reliable….it’s a constant learning effort. That’s principle here, because the business is also changing. What I’m trying to achieve [at Tele2] is to move a step closer to the business every year.” He goes on to explain: “The time to market needs to be significantly reduced; costs need to be reduced; we need to be more reliable in promising deadlines for projects and really deliver on what we’ve promised.”
On the subject of “negative surprises”, Horn makes no bones about falling into the trap that so many IT organisation do – namely retrofitting their cloud with what they actually wanted versus what they’ve been lumbered with. “You get the solution and then you get the list of ten different things you want to have different. What happens is your cloud then becomes a customised solution. Don’t do that.
“The problem is that your business will accept it because if you show them you can have it changed in so many months, and then conduct a customised code change – not a category change – every time a new software release comes out, you have to undertake a regression test and provide additional development. Before you know it you’re in the same trap as you’ve been in before, so that has to be avoided at all costs.”
When it comes down to it, finding the right cloud solution is never an easy process. Structures, security issues and functionality all play their parts in determining the best routes to successful implementation and evolution. But as Horn has proved with Tele2, simplicity should always favour the day. Do you agree? Get in touch in the comments section and give us your take.
You can follow Nick online @NPAPryke
Author: Nick Pryke
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