Is Cloud Computing changing Project Management?

In today’s competition, survival requires increasing customer relations & business receptiveness along with the effective use of smart technologies. Every businessman’s prime goal is to accomplish the targets of high financial gains at lower operational costs. However, this objective requires the optimal utilization of available resources, both human and material.

With the IT industry going through a new avatar, it is important to recognize and acknowledge that at the core of it all, businesses remain focused on processes and projects. The discipline of Project Management ensures the delivery of expected outcomes. Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to activities that meet project requirements and is accomplished through the use of the time tested processes.

Project Management is taking a paradigm shift with the evolution of Cloud based applications. With the advent of Cloud Computing, there is an added need and urgency for a formalized project management methodology across organizations. The successful delivery of Cloud projects depend on the Project Managers, empowered with project management frameworks and proven methodologies combined with experience. Project Management acts as catalyst in building the robust service delivery engine to deliver faster and cheaper services in the areas of Public and Private Cloud Computing services to global customers. It is important to identify the portfolio of different services in Cloud Computing space and build the necessary project management assets.

What does cloud mean to a project manager?

- Web based meetings

- Optimum utilization of IT infrastructure

- Web-based project management software

- Remote management

- Green IT

- New web-based testing process

- Collaborative tool for resource management

- Lowering project costs

- Used for projects with unpredictable scalability

- Quick time and money estimation

Project managers are equipped with the general skills to manage a project, most of them would not have thought about Cloud Computing in sufficient detail. There is a need and an opportunity in the Cloud Computing world for project managers who at least have a conceptual understanding of the issues. The instant availability of computing resources solves some problems, such as the dependencies on procurement and provisioning of resources. Still there are areas where Project Managers can use their experience to delivery Cloud project with some innovative insight dealing with better ways to cater to clients. Cloud Computing introduces more than just technical changes as it forces changes to IT processes and alters the way that the business interacts with its customers to improve the process in a easy and manageable way.

The key to successful project management in the cloud is to create and manage a project management framework that embeds best practices of standard project management and cloud computing methodology into how one manages projects, inside and outside the cloud. The impact of cloud on project management will include a higher emphasis on security, parallel processing, scalability, and the ability to utilize infinite resources.

 

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. 
 

Business decisions before moving to the Cloud

With the buzz of Cloud Computing gaining momentum, the question of moving or not has become more important for the business leaders of any organization. Migrating to the Cloud is supposed to be a technology decision because everybody looks at Cloud Computing more as pure technology advancement, but it is important to note that this decision is linked more to business needs such as ROI, performance, cost & time benefits and suitability to tasks.

Business leaders should perform a cost-benefits-risk analysis comparing the Cloud to traditional development before making this decision. These are certain decisions that only business leaders can take or approve for an organization before selecting any technology for their use or for their customers’ use:

1. Perform a Cost-benefits-risk analysis
2. Audit the impact on business processes
3. Audit of Cloud service providers
4. Auditing internal processes and their performance improvement using the Cloud.
5. Evaluating the services and value adds
6. Evaluating the SLA based on data security, continuity and cost
7. Evaluating the level of services and support provided by the Cloud service provider
8. Involvement in the service strategy, design, transition, operation and continual service improvements
9. Decisions related to concerns surrounding the Cloud adoption within organization
10. Decisions related to privacy, rules, regulations and guidance

As already mentioned, moving to the Cloud holds significant benefits to the corporate IT departments. The relationship and communication between the business units and IT department will change. Greater power will shift to business units from IT. Working in the Cloud means functions performed by corporate IT departments will shift from those who do to those who define and manage. Remember that Cloud Computing is a change in business models, and not JUST a new technology. Explore the business decisions, as this enables IT and business leaders to decide on which applications should move to the cloud.

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. 

12 Questions to ask yourself before choosing a Cloud Service Provider

Traditionally, launching new business services through an IT implementation lead to significant upfront costs. And when you are unclear about the usage volume, your business needs a new technology model that is suited to the need of quick development, delivery & launch and a primary focus on usage based spending. With a pay as you grow pricing model, costs are only incurred based on actual usage such as CPU cycles, memory, users, etc.

Thus Cloud Computing strategy provides these instant benefits:

1. Rapid road to market.

2. Lower upfront costs.

3. Predictable pricing.

Once you decide on using Cloud Computing because of the monetary benefits, it’s time to choose the best service provider which can help you implement you business requirements. 

You should have the following points in your checklist to decide on a service provider:

1. How do they handle data security and privacy?

2. Do they maintain a SLA for every customer?

3. Do they have options of interoperability or data migration?

4. Where is their data center located?

5. What kind of SUPPORT services do they provide?

6. Do they have a disaster recovery plan in place?

7. Do they have options of giving an iterative prototype for your application at each stage?

8. Is there an Agile Architecture in place for the application development cycle?

9. How often do they monitor and manage applications?

10. Do they address scalability?

11. What kind of User Experience are they providing and do they have an option for custom Branding?

12. Who owns the IP of the application?

Answers to these questions will help you find the right Cloud Computing service provider and architecture solutions that address your goals and challenges, in addition to your functional requirements, system integration needs, and technology stack preferences.

Disaster Recovery Management (DRM) in the Cloud

Although the occurrence of a disaster is unexpected over a certain time span of a system, the possibility of it occurring cannot be ignored. Automatic Disaster recovery in the Cloud becomes a largely indistinguishable operation if your entire Cloud infrastructure falls apart. You should have the capabilities in place to restore it on internal servers, at a managed hosting services provider, or at another Cloud provider within minutes or hours.

Through disaster recovery planning, you identify an acceptable recovery state and develop processes & procedures to achieve the recovery state in the event of a disaster.

Defining a disaster recovery plan involves two key metrics:

1. Recovery Point

2. Recovery Time

Recovery Point determines how much data are you ready to lose in number of hours or days of data. At the same time, Recovery Time determines how much downtime is acceptable and is specified as number of hours/days to get things fully operational once again.

DRM plan in the Cloud should consider these four major factors before going in effect;

1. Backup and data recovery (fast, secure, easy)

2. Geographical presence of data center (redundancy of data center according to geographical presence)

3. Recovery Time and Point ( should be ~0 hours if possible )

4. Monitoring tools residing in third cloud service provider’s infrastructure (as monitoring systems cannot live in either your primary or secondary cloud provider’s infrastructure)

WOLF has a DRM plan which expects zero downtime and data loss by having multiple data centers in different geographic locations that are synchronized. In other words, we are operating with multiple data centers from different infrastructure providers with dedicated, high-bandwidth connections serving different geographical customers. 

Though the cold reality is that the cost of losing 24 hours of data is less than the cost of maintaining a zero downtime/zero loss of data infrastructure, we still try to emphasize this level of redundancy in our DRM plan, which gives our customers 99.96% service availability and zero loss of data. 

We have implemented a strict backup recovery management plan for all the applications- design and encrypted data - with a daily on-site backup on different data center. WOLF application designers can also take a backup of the design & data at anytime with the click of a button! Thus we guarantee zero data loss with maximum downtime of approx. 2 hours as per our DRM plan.

With the acceptability of the Cloud and related services increasing daily, the DRM plan could become a point of competitive difference between vendors in the Cloud.

Two faces of the SaaS simplicity coin

While there is a common consensus that "less is more" with SaaS, application developers/SaaS designers need to consider a couple of factors when contemplating application features for an end customer on the web:

1. Tech-aversion of the target user/segment
2. The real world analogy of a feature

For a non-technical end user, the application developer should necessarily incorporate "props" that would increase usability. This includes pictures, icons or even larger text that would draw the attention of the user or prioritize a certain process.

For example, a customer in the logistics domain emphasized the importance of setting up driver details and vehicle routes before any data was recorded in the system. The developers used icons and pictures of different sizes & colors to indicate priority.

In addition to this, a feature which can be cut down to a single step for a tech-savvy user may need to be stretched out for the target segment/user. In doing so the system emulates the real world scenario as closely as possible and reduces erroneous data/user training thereby increasing adaptability.

To illustrate this, lets consider the tyre life estimation process which, in addition to maintenance, is one of the major costs for logistics companies. The SaaS designer deciphered the process as shown below:

After consulting the maintenance staff, it was uncovered that there was a need to track the history of all tyre checks at every point in the process - Number of initial checks, Checks for retreading, etc. - as well as the staff involved in checks. Hence a process that can be simplified may need to be scrutinized and elaborated for the sake of usability.

Do you have any similar experiences to share? Please share your stories in the comments.