Technical Skills Might Be The Hurdle to Cloud Migration

Dateline: February 14, 2014

Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend.

This week’s thought comes from a recent blog about Bank of America‘s cloud strategy.  Information Week’s Chris Murphy wrote a mini-case study titled, Bank Of America’s ‘Why Stop There?’ Cloud Strategy where he examines the bank’s strategy for migrating from a data center-based architecture to the cloud.  He writes,

Why can’t companies fill their datacenters with white-box computers stuffed with x86 chips and a ton of memory, controlled by software that can make that box an in-memory storage device today, a software-defined switch tomorrow, and a server next week?

This radical departure from today’s datacenter approach isn’t just idle salon chatter. Bank of America, this country’s second-largest bank with about $2.1 trillion in assets, has a team of people right now exploring how to reinvent the bank’s datacenters using a private cloud architecture.

The real issue behind the slowness of migration to the flexible architecture B of A seeks is the way their technical staff view themselves, and ultimately the skill set they have.

Changing to a private cloud architecture and a software-centric datacenter will require different skills. Infrastructure pros today define themselves by the gear they run: “I run my company’s million-port Cisco network,” or “I manage our 50,000 servers.” In a cloud model, as those technical silos get blown away, infrastructure pros will need more software skills.

How do your technical staff identify themselves?  Is their skill set a hurdle to your cloud migration?

That’s a WRAP!  Have a nice weekend.

 

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