On this episode of The Smart IT Podcast, I welcomed Chris Norris, Chief Technologist Cloud & Datacenter @ Computacenter, to the show to have a chat about modern infrastructure.

Chris has seen a lot over the years in technology. His vantage point as a thought leader who spends time analyzing the trends in the industry was invaluable for our conversations. The evolution from organizations having their own datacenters to the widespread adoption of Cloud (and hybrid models) has changed how IT operates. From the increased flexibility and capability that the Cloud provides, it has also come with some challenges that must be understood. We discussed several insightful areas, including:

• Busting the myth of Cloud as easy or cheaper. Multi-cloud brings in more complexity. Increased need for Enterprise Architecture and workload design. System thinking to understand all this complexity. 
• Organizational shift of how IT teams work. Distinct tools across cloud environment. Data protection strategies for how data is stored in various places. Need mature communication styles among teams.
• Shared responsibilities. You cannot hand off liabilities to someone else. Companies are still responsible for the protection and confidentiality of its data.
• The use of automation to pull human errors out of your systems. The benefits of building some code and automating. Want to avoid application drift by managing with automation.
• Platform Ops, embedding into other dev and ops teams to ease communication challenges and understand how they are integrating with the business.
• Changes in IT organizational structure. Changes in inter team communications pattern 
• Before automating, must get everyone on the same page for process, including approval processes, change control, monitoring solutions.
• Business imperatives to move fast to react to market/competitive forces, line of business see new tech and want to leverage it for themselves.
• Somebody must translate how new initiatives map to technology.
• Financial analyst role to understand and drive down Cloud costs. The dichotomy of agility/speed along with not blowing up the budget. Need to understand cost models to determine which one is optimal. Runaway tech costs could throw off TCO and ROI. 
• There are no IT projects, they are all business projects.
• Security implications of how new systems are designed and implemented. Is the new system more exploitable than it was before? Could we blow the budget by making it safer? 
• IT has moved passed managing infrastructure to managing service availability. 
• The app is king, the business does not care about the underlying infrastructure.
• CIO’s role has changed. Some have developer background. Must look at operating models, financial models, and infrastructure; and see how they all come into play. The CIO’s job is much tougher today.

We wrapped up chatting about how much more there is for IT professionals to learn.

LinkedIn Page: Chris Norris

#cloud #enterprisearchitecture #platformops