| | June 20178CIOReviewBy Glenn Kurowski, SVP, CACI International Inc [NYSE:CACI]Most of us remember the grade school me m or i z at i o n challenge of clouds: Cirrus, Stratus, Cumulus, Altocumulus--there were ten in all and to this day I can't keep them all straight. Over a decade ago the term cloud arrived in Information Technology (IT) and although it's easy to remember the basic types (public, private, and hybrid) bring in five technology companies with "cloud offerings" and you'll likely get very different descriptions and a menagerie of terminology. It's become a mine field of buzz words, attempted differentiation and obfuscated roadmaps. Yes, the cloud is good. I have had the opportunity to work with many customers on transformative journeys to the cloud including hosting, rationalization, porting, optimization, re-architecting for micro-services, securing, authenticating, business modeling, and introduction of as-a-service offerings, which, in various combinations fundamentally transformed mission efficacy.One hears industry refer to lessons learned, but the term lessons experienced may be more accurate. Having experienced much in the "cloud" world of IT, it's those lessons experienced that help developers and integrators reduce risk. Some keys to success include: 1) starting with the end in mind (i.e., know what problem you are solving), 2) having an exit strategy; and 3) using training as a catalyst for your workforce. Starting with the End in MindGreat engineers identify what problem they are solving early, define the end-state and measures of success and then develop the solution. This advice is simple, but often overlooked. There are instances of companies and agencies turning to the cloud for DevOps and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) because "they have to". This can be disastrous. Dig into the problemit is likely you'll find developers spending too much time on administration and software released into production and failing because the test environment was different than production. Recognize the importance of governance, build out development, test, quality and production environments, and get your developers DEVELOPING. Simple example, great results. If you make the switch to cloud solely based on a desire to save money on infrastructure or operations you will probably be disappointed. Not that cloud can't achieve that, but the more enduring Return on Investment (ROI) comes in business or mission agility: The ability to Ensuring Good Weather with CloudsGlenn KurowskiIN MY Opinion
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