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David Linthicum on Changing the Enterprise
David S. Linthicum is a thought leader in the EAI, SOA, enterprise architecture, and Web 2.0 spaces. He formed David S. Linthicum, LLC (www.davidlinthicum.com), a consulting organization focusing on enterprise architecture, SOA, and use of the next-generation Web within the enterprise. Write him at david@linthicumgroup.com. See More by David Linthicum Gartner Outlines the Basic Rights of Cloud Users In a typical Gartner move, the analyst firm listed several rights and one responsibility that should lead us to a better cloud-enabled world. "All cloud services customers should have some basic rights to protect their interests; Gartner's Global IT Council for Cloud Services has defined six rights and one responsibility of service customers that will help providers and consumers establish and maintain successful business relationships." The abridged version is this... 2. The right to service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes. 3. The right to notification and choice about changes that affect the service consumers' business processes. 4. The right to understand the technical limitations or requirements of the service up front. 5. The right to understand the legal requirements of jurisdictions in which the provider operates. 6. The right to know what security processes the provider follows. 7. The responsibility to understand and adhere to software license requirements. While nobody can disagree with the concept here, the fact is that leveraging any type of technology comes with certain risks. In many instances, we have fewer protections with on-premise technology than cloud technology. However, considering that "the cloud" is so new and scary, we're going to see things like this from the analyst groups covering cloud, as well as new cloud standards organizations. I'm sure the intentions here are honorable, and they are similar to other similar types of efforts made in the past. The reality is that the onus is on the cloud customer to figure out the stuff listed above. They, and only they, understand their own requirements. Thus, blanket statements such as this do very little good. I'm working in the new cloud space right now and what's clear to me is that things like security, all covered in Gartner's rights, mean very different things from cloud consumer to cloud consumer. It's up to the customer to understand how the provided security model and mechanisms work with their existing and future requirements. You can make the same case for SLAs, compliance ("legal requirements of jurisdictions"), technology limitations, etc. So, while these sorts of efforts will make us feel better, the reality is that using cloud computing is like using any other type of technology. The technology is simply a set of tools to solve problems, but how those problems are solved comes back to those charged with making IT work for the business. That's never going to be the cloud provider, no matter how many rights and responsibility lists you write.  This is a public forum. United Business Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. United Business Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers. Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of United Business Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in United Business Media's Terms of Service. Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.
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