Collection 2 of great posts

It's time for my second collection of great posts. These four are, according to me, connected to each other in two ways: career and orchestration. I will link each post up, give you a short break out and add a short comment of mine.

First, when reading; think about how you can be a part of future IT, in the cloud, in hybrid solutions. Customers, whether to an IT department an ITO, MSP or appl operator,  need support from someone they can trust, their IT need to be orchestrated not only techy, its needed to be orchestrated on all levels: service management, support, legal, governance etc. You can be "the 1" but then you have to be open minded to cloud and hybrid IT. If your not someone else will.

Gartner: SaaS Now Replacing Legacy Apps, as Well as Extending Them by Chris Kanaracus (@chriskanaracus) on CIO.

Short break out:

"Companies are not only buying into SaaS (software as a service) more than ever, they are also ripping out legacy on-premises applications and replacing them with SaaS, according to analyst firm Gartner.

"In the past 12 months, Gartner has seen a decline in the proportion of SaaS deployed to augment existing applications," according to Gartner's report, which explores global SaaS adoption patterns. It found regional patterns, with SaaS replacing existing systems in mature markets, while often being the first business solution implemented in emerging markets."

This one and the next is a wakeup call to all ITO's, MSP's, IT departments and appl operators. You need to able to handle applications and services from several sources: cloud, ITO/MSP/appl operators, on-premise - Hybrid IT. To be able to handle them you need orchestrating software AND you need to think and act like an orchestrator.

Worldwide SaaS spikes as adoption shifts from extending software to rip and replace by Nick Heath (@NickJHeath) on ZDNet.

Short break out:

Businesses are replacing on-premise systems performing non-business critical roles, such as test and development, with SaaS, in order to lessen the burden on internal infrastructure, he said.

""We are seeing people use these kind of services as a capacity plan rather than to increase capabilities."

Such a move can also be used as a stop-gap he said, to free up space and power in in-house datacentres until the IT department is in a position financially or strategically to expand the datacentre.

Cappuccio said companies he'd spoken to that had carried out analysis of their application portfolio found that only 15 to 25 percent of their applications are critical to the business. A common definition of business critical applications is, he said, those that will cost the business money or cause reputational damage when offline. As businesses replace these non-critical applications with cloud services the long-term effect could be a reduction in the size of internal datacentres."

Read my comment on the last one. To add. This make scense to Hybrid IT and orchestration. Not everything is adopted as cloud because of compliance issues, security concerns etc.

I end up with two posts about career.

Will Cloud Computing Put Older Techies Into Retirement? by David Linthicum (@davidlinthicum) on GIGAOM Pro.

Short break out:

"Cloud computing is really a rather simple shift, considering past shifts. The existing patterns remain, such as storage, compute, databases, etc., while only approaches to consumption, provisioning, and a few other tidbits are evolving. Thus, it should not scare those with a few grey hairs.

I suspect that cloud computing won’t displace many IT staffers. Indeed, if you’re willing to put in some extra time to learn about this technology, it could be a way to reinvent your IT career and perhaps put a few extra dollars in your pocket. If you have the skills, it won’t matter how old you are. You might even want to put off retirement for a few years."

Demand for Cloud Skills Doesn't Stop at the Data Center Door by Joe McKendrick @joemckendrick) on Forbes.

Short break out:

"But the demand for cloud skills doesn’t stop at the door to the data center. The effects of cloud on the job market resonate well beyond IT. The driving force for cloud implementations has been within business units, often without the support or knowledge of IT departments. It may be that job candidates familiar and expert with cloud offerings relevant to their professions may have the edge in job interviews. Cloud skills are making their way into many non-IT jobs, including engineers, project managers, purchasing specialists, call center managers and accountants.

If you were a hiring manager, wouldn’t a candidate who knew exactly where to go for abundant online resources be a compelling candidate?

Even better, someone who may have been working with these cloud solutions for an extended period of time is likely to already be familiar with the inevitable idiosyncrasies kinks, and shortcuts of each. Consider the viability of candidates with cloud experience in these key business areas:"

These both are a wakeup calls to a lot of people and organizations. You have to understand cloud and see the value it bring to your career and organization. You can't just sit and wait and say "no no".