PREPARING THE IT WORKFORCE FOR THE HYBRID CLOUD

Definition: Hybrid Cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain distinct entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. Hybrid cloud can also mean the ability to connect collocation, managed and/or dedicated services with cloud resources.  

I recently spoke at an event on the topic of preparing the information technology (IT) workforce for the changes required to function in the new world of the hybrid cloud. I was chosen to speak for this topic because I am a Chief Information Officer (CIO) for a very large organization and am grappling with this very subject. For me the hybrid cloud is a reality today. The technology is here now. The problem we face is we have a workforce that is trained to deploy and manage a computing environment that is primarily on premise technologies. Now we are starting to venture out and are slowly consuming cloud based services such as email and secure document storage. Next we plan on moving to a cloud delivered version of our desktop office suite. Incrementally as we gain experience and trust the service delivery levels we will try out new offerings like infrastructure on demand, etc. Eventually I see a day where a major portion of our technologies that we deliver to our clients will be some sort of consumable service that we procure and then administer. This is our today and tomorrow.   

In preparation  for the panel discussion I started by thinking about what I need to do to take my organization forward so they are intact and functional in the new cloud based world. Yes, IT is concerned with the information security aspects of operating in the cloud, but they are also worried about a different type of security. Job security.  

It dawned on me that this was not a new problem to solve.  At our very own nature, IT is very adaptive as a workforce. We are constantly reinventing ourselves as technology changes or morphs at light speed. We have to be adaptive or we are out of business, outdated and irrelevant. We have faced monumental change many times before and successfully marched forward. Just think about how many times we have faced change were we needed to rethink everything about how we ran our operations and delivered services to our customers.   

Here are just a few key examples of change events that shook IT at our very foundation and had a lasting and positive impact:  

• Moving from mainframes with terminals to servers on a network with desktop computers.  
• Introduction of the Internet.  
• Introduction of mobile devices and technologies.  

How did we survive change before?  

• We set strategic and accomplishable goals for the organization to achieve.  
• We developed schedules to achieve the goals. 
• We regularly communicated to all of our workforce.  
• We regularly communicated to all of our workforce.  
• We regularly communicated to all of our workforce.  
• I cannot emphasize enough how important communicating to your workforce is. When there is a vacuum it is human nature to fill it with distrust and fear. This will kill any organizational morale you may have. Fill the void with the known and displace the unknown. 
• We worked to help our workforce gain the necessary augmentation of skills needed to make the transition.  

This is what has worked each time before we needed to change and what will work now!  

I believe that over the next few years that most IT organizations will follow the same path we are taking in adopting a hybrid approach to cloud computing. As we always have, IT will develop and retain our existing workforce so they are able to be productive and in the end be the brave new generation that walks among the clouds.