The Antidote to Cloud Trepidation

TLDR; the antidote is a partner in wires and computers.  Not another employee or two, not another consultant, not another cloud vendor.  For the smaller shops lacking huge budgets and staffs to advise and implement changes to the "spine" of your company ... the key is finding the right partner.  And trust me, I know how you feel.

Early on in a prior engagement I had cloud trepidation.  I had successfully virtualized my company's hardware - which was a big deal.  But I was unimpressed with performance and wanted something that was more immediately "DR-able".  The obvious answer was the newest and latest buzzword, "the Cloud"!  However, I knew there might be downside.  To the internet!

So, www.google.com search "why the cloud sucks" and ... thousands of stories of well-intentioned people just like me and where things went wrong.  I reached out to a mentor of mine, Sheman Bar-Tal who is the CTO at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and in that role is a handler of a vast amount of data.  Among many pieces of advice was the one that was the most obvious but had the broadest impact on me and my decision making, "The cloud isn't the answer to every problem."  I knew this intuitively but I had never heard anyone in the technical realm dare articulate that philosophy (*gasp*, Heresy!).

So after engaging numerous vendors and more discussions I eventually muscled my way through all the usual warnings like "once you get your data into the cloud it is hard to get it back out" problem and yes, we went to the cloud.  And no, it did not solve all of my problems.  But with the right partner it could have been much quicker and just as effective ... if not a little cheaper.

Months later I was talking through postmortem and lessons learned with Chris Martin, a colleague of mine with  Source Mission Critical Facility.  Naturally this meeting of tech giants took place outside the Starbucks kiosk inside of Grapevine's Great Wolf Lodge - the "Silicon Bayou" of Texas.  Our advice to those of you suffering from cloud trepidation, stop looking for "cloud" and start looking for "solutions".  Find someone that offers hosting, co-lo space, cabinet rental, virtualization as well as public and private clouds - someone who can advise as a partner and help your small business establish a firm foundation for stability and reliability with just enough flex to gain scalability.

Oh, and if you ever get a chance to talk to Chris Martin, ask him about his Alaskan wilderness stories.  Talk about business continuity plan meets disaster recovery ...