Is Cloud Consultancy Apocalypse coming in next few months?

Shlomo Swidler and Reuven Cohen wrote very good starup-posts on how to select the contractors for cloud consultancy, back in 2009, when the cloud-roar was in its infancy. Back then the topic of interest was around Amazon EC2. In this post I will try to generalize that to multiple clouds, and will look it in terms of whats happening 2011, 2 years after they wrote the articles.
They gave guidelines of how to select a cloud consultant. I would check out in further highlighting whats happening in the arena. So lets kick off.

Currently there is a big move of all sorts of enterprises to shift to cloud. Since many of these enterprises don’t have that level of cloud knowledge as a dedicated one OR who is working on it for a long time as the posts from the guys (Shlomo and Reuven) recommend them to be, the market for the cloud consultants is far more attractive now than before. And we see many good market players and startups jumping into the cloud consultancy. They are using all sorts of tiers, and many of them even can manage all the services in almost all the cloud providers.

So what dimensions are being picked up by these cloud consultants, and how they are specially valid for the current shift in enterprise tastes. Obviously the homework done by these cloud consultants is on the basis of some kind of need by enterprises, but whats the main thing that derives enterprises to focus more on consultancy than geting involved into geting experts in cloud management and provisioning. To become an expert they would have to go through some kind of learning curve and even then they have to trust their own employees for that. Infant trust is the kind of things in which most bigger enterprises don’t beleive normally. So the coming months could be some kind of a biggy for cloud consultants. But still one more thing is lagging. And that is how important and URGENT the need is for the enterprises to shift to cloud, specifically in 2011?

To answer this question we would have to dig user behavior and not the development behavior thats going on in enterprises. I may be wrong in here but would love to think it back. That analysis will also come, hopefully if I have ink left on my keyboard for tomorrow.

Behavior, Experience, and Band Wagon:
Migration consultants typically first go through the Cloud adoption assessments. These assessments weigh heavily on the correlation between the internal datacenters and cloud environments. I guess the weigh should be equal in terms of what user behavior, experience, and band wagon demands. They should include some kind of services level assessments too. Many of them do too. But the pronounced effect that tells an enterprise that its time to rely on consultants isn’t that powerful, to me I guess. One obstacle is the concerns of the enterprise to hide the secrets of the service that they are providing in their local datacenters. So a true augmentation of the Shlomo’s post can help these enterprises alot. But consultants have to push this kind of knowledge to the enterprises. Its their responsibility.

When a company thinks of adopting the cloud, they have to think in terms of some kind of shift in current strategies for

• development
• configuration and environment
• operations and monitoring
• provisioning and metering
• data auditing
• costing

So consultant fall in the above areas. They were individually targeting each section back in 2009, but now they have gone as far as providing consultancy in all or mix of these areas. Plus since multiple clouds exist, they can provide in multiple cloud environments. Even phased migration doesn’t mean that an enterprise get rid of the contractor after the last phase of migration. Now the game will turn towards TRUELY MANAGED SURVICES, atleast for the time when enterprise develops its own skills in cloud.

Knowledge of Business cases
While working with enterprises cloud consultants will be able to know deep enough of the business cases that are thinked of in enterprises. So it would be a kind of strange mix, where a cloud consultant will know you and your customers more than your enterprise does. I may be wrong but my braincells are tweeting me in this area. So this will help accelerates the consistancy in apocalypse.

Cloud consultancy dimensioning
Cloud consultants doesn’t need to think in only one aspect. They have Iaas, Paas, and Saas in the armory. And among these 3, they have so many sub-THINGS that you can’t imagine. Virt, I/O, scalability, performance, monitoring VMs, monitoring apps, security complience and much much more. And thats hell lot of stuff for the enterprise to learn in a few courses. They need experience. So we get the cloud consultant apocalypse on over hands.

Survival of the fittest
I hate the medical one, but love the innovative, and enterpreneurial one. Cloud consultants have to best to be picked up by enterprises. And they to provide the same kind of commitement to all sorts of enterprises whether small or large, because they use the same kind of tools for any kind of deployment and monitoring. So this consistancy will help competition, which will be the roar or cloud consultancy.

Startups in non-consultancy can benefit from being consultants
Startups, which provide their services in the cloud and manage those CAN make another tier of teir company where they provide cloud consultancy to smaller companies or NEW startups. Thereby creating a new form of cloud consultancy spectrum where they will be the enterprise at some future point in time, and will have the necessary skill to be in new frontiers of the cloud services or research. I hope some guys must have got my point.

Thats it for now. I would love to see comments.

Shopaholic’s approach to buying services from the Cloud

Compulsive shopping done in stores is the coolest thing for a guy like me. And discounts are like conditioning for the buying recipe. But what will I do if I were to buy services instead of hard-stuff. If I can transition then I can imagine how others simple-people-like-me can do the same.
So it would be good for those who are projecting billions of dollars in revenue from billions of connected devices and consumer-cloud-transformation scenarios.

1- Adventure + Need:

I would first look at the app. store then go through apps then would try each what meets my eye. Thats what I normally do. Not so beneficial SO I would have to transition my buying habits since it wastes my time too by going through trillions of apps out there. I would equate my adventure to my needs. I hate trial versions-and I hope/predict all my shopaholic friends do the same. So if companies out there can turn me in without the trial-version type service then I would be happy to take a look. So trial versions really kill my adventure part. Maybe they can give me a bit of a service or prep my need a bit BUT if they ruin my adventure then I am not buying it. So think a new strategy apart from trial versions.

2- LOVE-TO-GO-SHOPPING:

The best thing about the best-of-the-best stores is that they make YOU move. So If apps make me move that would be an awesome thing but thats an OPTION not a requirments from my-kinda-shopaholic. Let me give you an example IF you can’t find an example. Groupon moved me to move. Signing up on their service gives me more than sitting on computer/belly-top. BUT its kind of really hard for app developers who work inside cloud to make people move. So I would suggest partnerships with Groupon, livingSocial, and Google Offers. Concerned guys know what I mean.

3- B2B-to-B2C:

Shopaholic’s aren’t just the guls-n-guys who don’t have roles, they can be giving services to others. So a I would love to see a service that help me service others. For that Shopaholic is willing to pay and more than willing to pay if its pay-as-you-go. You know what I mean? Definetly.

4- Sharing is caring:

Shopaholic buys the things which others can see, comprehend, applaud, OR atleast take-notice. So apps developers have to think out-of-the-box to make such a kind of service that an end-user is able to do ‘Sharing is Caring’ kind of stuff. So social media, augmented reallity, and seamlessness is very very important for me.

Shopaholic will be back—right now gotta go on a Groupon Prix.