The CIO’s mission to create the ‘cloud corporation’ – I-CIO | I-CIO.
Another report on our book…
Author: Dr Will Venters
Lecturer in Information Systems, Department of Management, London School of Economics.
“Be careful you don’t throw out the IT baby with the cloud-bathwater”
Last week Royal Bank of Scotland was fined £56m by the Financial Conduct Authority for its 2012 software challenges that deprived millions of customers of banking services[1]. In a quote, FCA director Tracey McDermott said[2]: “The problems arose due to failures at many levels within the RBS Group to identify and manage the risks which can flow from disruptive IT incidents and the result was that RBS customers were left exposed to these risks”.
What lessons might we draw from this for cloud computing? Within banking many of the core legacy systems are old mainframe applications developed decades ago. As the architecture of financial services IT changed, so these systems remained but the detailed skills and knowledge to manage and upgrade them was often lost.
Today many companies are contemplating another change in the fundamental architecture of IT in their move to the cloud. Within this debate there is wide discussion about moving innovative new services to the cloud, but keep core services on-premises on existing hardware. This hybrid-cloud model has huge appeal since it capitalise on the benefits of cloud but apparently limits the exposure to risk for those core applications of business (for example where customer data is exposed).
The challenges faced in financial services provide a stark warning for this strategy though. Quickly the on-premises services can become legacy, lacking the innovation and appeal of innovative cloud-based services. How are companies going to keep the skills and innovation then to manage this core long term – expensive skills now only targeted at a limited set of applications? How are they going to keep transitioning those applications and keeping them current? How will they attract new staff to manage this core resource?
Facing this risk will require an analysis of the cloud-hybrid decision which divorces the simplistic “Its safer to keep this bit on premises because it has customer data” to consider hybrid cloud as a long term architectural decision involving reorganising core IT capabilities. Or more succinctly – “be careful you don’t throw out the IT baby with the cloud-bathwater”!
[1] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e8d7d5e-7084-11e4-9129-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3KdUULrr0
Drugs enter the digital age – Details of a research project I’m part of…
A team of us at the LSE have just won £700k to look at the complex digital processes and infrastructures surrounding future medicine delivery. The following is taken from the press release (link below).
“The world’s health sector has gone digital, with electronic prescriptions, digitised supply chains and personalised medicine the new buzz words.
Earlier this year, the US biotech company Proteus announced that it had raised US$172 million for its pioneering tablets containing embedded microchips. These swallowable devices collect and report biometric data and can tell if a patient has taken their medication correctly.
In a similar breakthrough, Google has recently announced a prototype contact lens which measures glucose in a user’s tears and communicates this information to a mobile phone so that patients can better manage their medication.
Both innovations illustrate the hybrid devices that medicines have now become – and highlight the cumbersome and mostly paper-based current systems that are still being used to deliver medicines.
Dr Tony Cornford from LSE’s Department of Management hopes to make some headway in this area by spending the next two years exploring digital innovations in how drugs are supplied and used.
A £700,000 grant from Research Councils UK will allow Dr Cornford and a team of co-investigators from LSE, the University of Leeds, UCL, Brunel and the Health Foundation to map emerging new fields, such as electronic prescribing systems, intelligent medicines supply chains, new diagnostic and monitoring procedures, and personalised medicines based on individual genomic profiles.”
Read the full article at: Drugs enter the digital age – Health – Research highlights – Research and expertise – Home.
Microsoft takes clear lead in IaaS second place race, AWS still way out in front – Cloud Tech News
I’m judging the UK Cloud Awards again this year!
I am very pleased to be a judge for this year’s UK Cloud Awards… below is a message about nominating your business for the award.
UK Cloud Awards 2015 – nominations are now open!
They’re back! We’re delighted to announce the return of the UK Cloud Awards following their success at our inaugural event earlier this year.
UKCA will showcase the leading vendors, customers and individuals who are setting the benchmark in the UK and beyond. Submissions for the awards are now open and will close on 23rd January 2015. A panel of highly respected and independent judges will produce a shortlist of the best products, projects and providers before deciding on an overall winner in each category.
Whether you’re a Cloud Service Provider, technology vendor or business using Cloud to deliver great outcomes for your company or customers, get your nomination in – see the links opposite for details.
The judging panel includes Cloud Pro journalists Max Cooter and Maggie Holland, as well as variety of experts from the world of cloud computing. These include consultants, analysts, CIOs, academics, venture capitalists and many more. The full list of judges can be found on the UK Cloud Award website.
We look forward to receiving your nominations – with 21 awards across 4 categories, all shortlisted nominees will receive an invitation to the awards venue in Canary Wharf on 11th March 2015 for a chance to celebrate with the best in the business.
Good luck!
Alex Hilton
Chief Executive
The Cloud Industry forum
Heating buildings using computers within the cloud.
“It sells computing capacity to corporate clients, generates heat with the computers… and then finds ways of channelling off the heat to use as central heating…His ingenious software ensures that when users turn up the thermostat, enough extra computation is rustled up from corporate clients to increase the emitted heat.“
Government must be a platform entrepreneur to deliver ‘digital 2.0’
Government must be a platform entrepreneur to deliver ‘digital 2.0’
via Government must be a platform entrepreneur to deliver ‘digital 2.0’.
Amazon Is Facing A Cloud Crisis, As Microsoft Muscles In
A thoughtful Forbes article on the market for cloud services today… except for the stupid line about Amazon investing in drones – surely nobody thought they were serious!!
Why GE Invented the Industrial Internet | MIT Technology Review
“We are moving into big data, but it’s not because we want to become Google,” he says. “It’s because we are dramatically evolving manufacturing.”
Coining the term “the Industrial Internet” GE are demonstrating the importance of Cloud Computing and Big Data to manufacturers and industrial processes, where a 1% improvement in efficiency offers huge financial rewards,
via Why GE Invented the Industrial Internet | MIT Technology Review.
Binary Blurring 