What Project Managers need to know about cloud computing

What Project Managers
Need to Know About
Cloud Computing
Stacy Taylor
President, Red Mountain Services
[email protected]
Stacy Taylor
• Background
▫ Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering
▫ Masters in Engineering Management
▫ Has played every role on a project and enjoyed
every single one
PMs and Cloud Computing
• Why project managers need this in their skill set
• What is cloud computing
• Types of cloud computing projects and how to
handle them
• Top mistakes in cloud computing projects
What Is Cloud Computing?
Who Cares About Cloud Computing?
• Means different things to different people
▫ Consumers - all my data, all the time, on any
device
▫ CFO - Pay only for what we need when we need it
▫ CIO - Outsource all or part of a data center, so we
can focus on our business applications
▫ COO - Geographically diverse data centers for
built in business continuity
▫ CEO – Isn’t that the thing my iPhone uses?
Why Should PMs Care?
• By 2015, 10% of IT security enterprise
capabilities will be delivered in the cloud
• U.S. government will accommodate external
cloud services
• Cloud traffic will grow from 39% in 2011 to 64%
in 2016
• By 2016, three out of five data center workloads
will be processed in the cloud
Cirrus, Cumulus or Stratus?
• 3rd party applications
• Migrating existing applications to the cloud
• Application development in the cloud
Whose Cloud Is it Anyway?
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Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Azure
Google App Engine
Rackspace Cloud
Use of Cloud Computing
• Companies who found the silver lining
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Netflix
SalesForce
Intercontinental Hotel
RehabCare Group
3rd Party Application Project
• A purchased application that runs on the cloud
• Don’t want to run on a cloud? You may have to
rethink that.
• Watch out for version upgrades
But it Sounds so Soft and Fluffy
• There’s lighting in them there clouds
▫ Data at rest
▫ Data in transit
▫ Having your data mingle with your competitors
data
PM Takeaways for 3rd Party Apps
• Security you took for granted when hosting now
needs to be evaluated
• Availability you took for granted when hosting
now needs to be evaluated
▫ Cloud outages
PM Takeaways for 3rd Party Apps
• Adjust your RFP solicitation
• Not structured in your solicitation? Ask a few
questions of your stakeholders
• Software already bought before you got
assigned?
Migration to Cloud Projects
• Migrating an existing system to a cloud
environment
• All concerns from Type 1 plus some!
▫ Selection of a cloud is not as easy as you think
▫ Cloud vendors offer widely varying packages
▫ Existing data transition
1st
Why Migrate?
• Highly variable usage
• Aging hardware
• On demand test environment that matches
production
• Lower total cost of ownership
▫ Latest and greatest always at your fingertips
What do PMs Need to Know?
• Evaluate if there is a preferred cloud vendor
• If not, cloud vendor selection will be part of your
project
• Impacts to existing application support
▫ Changes to build and deployment
▫ Possible changes to configuration management
▫ Possible changes to load and performance testing
• Use Online calculators help evaluate ROI for
project
Online Calculator
Custom Application Development
• Everything from before plus
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SSDLC – Secure Software Delivery Lifecycle
Determining Support Level Agreement
Load test metric collection
Security
Performance and Logging
Training for Development Team
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Security
Configuration Management
Load and Performance Testing
Administration
More Terminology
• Buying a product that runs in the cloud is almost
always SaaS (Software as a service)
• The lure to migrate is usually Iaas
(Infrastructure as a Service)
• For new app dev, you're looking at IaaS and
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
Top Mistakes
• Not taking advantage of cost
optimization (Example: Prepay)
• Unintentionally getting married to a cloud
• Buying too big of a server
• Not accounting for cloud outages
• Not evaluating security requirements prior to delivery
• Underestimating the time and effort it takes to make
cloud adoption successful
About Red Mountain Services
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Project Management Consulting
IT Consulting
Staff Augmentation
Training
• Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] with
feedback, questions or for more information