Dealing with Cloud Computing Sprawl

Saugatuck research indicates that 65 percent or more of all NEW business application / solution deployments in the enterprise will be Cloud-based or Hybrid by 2015 (up from 15-20 percent in 2009) (SSR-834, Key SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Trends Through 2015 – Business Transformation via the Cloud, 13Jan2011). One implication is that by 2015, 25 percent or more of TOTAL enterprise IT workloads will be Cloud-based or Hybrid.

In order to more effectively manage Cloud procurement and reduce “Cloud and SaaS sprawl”, IT asset management practices must evolve to define, discover and manage cloud based assets. This becomes critical as Cloud Computing adoption moves from an opportunistic point solution strategy to one that is deeply embedded as part of an integrated hybrid infrastructure. Saugatuck hears of horror stories from unmanaged Cloud Computing procurement and poor operational disciplines. Consider the following:

• SaaS projects are bypassing centralized procurement functions. Saugatuck believes that most organizations may be underestimating SaaS use by up to 25 percent (see Strategic Research Report, Enterprise Ready, or Not – SaaS Enters the Mainstream, SSR-460, 10July2008). We are aware of one client that has at least six salesforce.com instances, and our experience shows that this is not dissimilar to other large decentralized organizations. Do you have a process in place to standardize procurement in order to drive economies of procurement and support?

• Small department driven (silo’d) projects have grown into enterprise wide deployments enabling business processes and hosting corporate data in external data centers. Security, standards and management of cloud computing assets has not kept up the business adoption (see Strategic Perspective, Mitigating Risk in Cloud-Sourcing and SaaS: Certifications and Management Practices, MKT-660, 30Oct2009). Do you have visibility into the performance, reliability and security of your data and applications?
• Client and mobile management groups require improved security practices to deal with new smart devices like iPhones that are accessing more than email, but corporate Cloud based applications. When users leave the organization, do you immediately cut off access to critical information?

Saugatuck’s advice is to identify and implement repeatable practices around management of the delivery of IT and business processes that are enabled by both on-premises and Cloud IT. The IT management team must evolve and expand their role and responsibilities in response to the Cloud providing information about the state of on-premises and Cloud IT to users such as risk, security, HR and vendor management.

New technology vendors will enter the market to focus on the technical challenges associated with managing Cloud IT. Conformity and Okta are two such vendors we recently had briefings with focused on addressing the challenges of identity and access to Cloud Based Solutions.  But while IT organizations may add new tools to assist in discovering, provisioning and managing Cloud IT, the strategy and process for managing IT and business processes must remain coordinated across traditional on-premises and Cloud IT.