July 2010

Although it is definitely possible to see results from smaller, incremental projects, bigger certainly looks better when it comes to most IT innovation. It seems to me that what some CIOs view as “practical” innovation, however, might be far out of reach for the majority of businesses today. As an example, in a wide-ranging conversation about innovation and other topics, two leading CIOs each discussed how they have built their own private cloud networks.

To me, these CIOs clearly represent the leading edge of IT, not the mainstream. John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, is well-known as an intrepid early adopter of emerging technologies and an e-healthcare industry leader, as his blog often explains. Speaking with Smart Enterprise Exchange recently for an upcoming podcast about Practical Innovation, Halamka said that the size of his operations has allowed him to host e-health record services for several smaller hospitals.

“If there were a cloud offering available with the security and privacy I need, I’d use it,” he said, “but [my IT operation is] big enough to provide e-health record services for smaller users from our cloud,” he said. Halamka has 5,000 CPUs and “petabytes of storage” available “at low cost for thousands of users in the Harvard community.”

Another innovation podcast panelist, Richard Plane, who was until very recently the VP and CIO at Aviat Networks, formerly Harris Stratex Networks, has also built a private cloud for use by the company. Plane said he was looking for a public cloud provider “to seamlessly manage” the private cloud and public offerings. Using only a public network might lower costs, he said, but since most public providers still need to do more work on security, Plane is sticking with the private option for now. He recently joined Harris' Cyber Integrated Solutions as head of solutions development and delivery.

Long term, both CIOs expect to show financial savings as well as productivity improvements and better services with their cloud options. In fact, Halamka said that in a hosted private cloud environment, he can cut about 50 percent of the support costs of solution delivery. “Demand for services far exceeds budget growth. We have to cut costs with cloud and outsourcing” options, he said. Moreover, their cloud efforts represent just one innovation among many that these two CIOs' businesses are pursuing.

Tom Kendra, Executive Vice President for CA Technologies’ Enterprise Products and Solutions business line, agreed that cloud models give CIOs more choices for delivering services to internal and external customers. CIOs are now “managing a supply chain of options — all driven by technology innovation,” he said.

All CIOs may have more options with cloud technology, but as with other emerging technology efforts, the playing field is not level; bigger businesses have far more choices — and therefore, advantages — than others.

The full podcast includes discussion about mobile devices, virtualization and alternate IT delivery models as well as Practical Innovation. It will be posted on Smart Enterprise Exchange very soon.

Meanwhile, I invite you to share your experiences about funding IT innovation efforts such as cloud computing. Will you develop your own private clouds — or will you be among those who use the services of others?

And if you are concerned about cloud security, this month we also feature a Q&A with Nils Puhlmann, co-founder of the Cloud Security Alliance, who (surprisingly?), says that many security concerns are overstated. You can read the interview here.

Paula Klein
Editor and Community Manager
Smart Enterprise Exchange