Hi I am from XYZ cloud vendor and I am here to help!

I can honestly say that the most annoying thing for me is people telling me things that I know aren’t true, and stating them as facts. In part, I realize that this is a much larger issue than myself, it is one that plays out what seems like every day in the media.

In particular, this bothers me from a reality perspective. Many years ago, I developed an application migration framework for a customer. I then took that framework and built a process around it (you can still find that process on Microsoft.com – it was called AAEP or the application analysis Envisioning process, yes I picked the name, yes I am good at names often but not that time).

The process was a mix of Enterprise Architecture (building a capability framework) and creating a technology implementation roadmap.  It was most effective when you mixed not only the art of the possible but peaked over the horizon to see what was possible.

I bring this up because of the reality of cloud. I talked yesterday about the fact that cloud was an answer and it remains so. It is not, however, the answer. The reason it isn’t the answer is what drove the creation many years ago of the AAEP system. I created it for Lotus Domino migrations, and it was extremely effective. But I quickly realized that many pieces of it fit any migration.

The difference between what we expect, what we have, and ultimately what we need is a critical juncture for end users and IT. What any one cloud provider tells you, is something you have to evaluate carefully. It is their information that presents what is happening in their specific instance and therefore has a limited impact on your situation. The value of information has it, evaluating it and using it to create a report that combines what you know, what you have and what you need into a roadmap.

To get to the new DevOps world, you have to know and understand the world you are coming from!