“I used to have that on vinyl” confesses senior IT professional
Thu 29 May 2014
You may t![Richard_Morell_small1[1]](https://thestack.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Richard_Morell_small11.jpg)
hink IT is now a young person’s game with their dextrous use of agile technology – but Richard Morrell believes there is life in the old dog yet when it comes to getting safely and successfully on to Cloud
I am what people politely call ‘middle aged’. Past forty, comfortably; been in the IT game longer than some of my colleagues have been on the planet; every day notice the hair getting greyer and the appreciation of modern culture becomes more and more a complete mystery. Games controllers used to have a ball and a stick. Now you need the dexterity of Neil Armstrong putting Eagle on the surface of the moon just to challenge your seven year old to a computer game.
In the mid-late 1980s the evolution of hard disk storage and network capabilities took us into a brave new world. The 1990s saw the revolution of the data centre becoming part of everyday IT parlance and then as we exited the 1990s with our ever-shrinking mobile phones the convergence of internet and private leased line connectivity enabled that data to be interconnected between sites over public or private bearer.
Fast forward nearly 15 years and a new world order reinventing the concept of outsourced IT and infrastructure as a service or managed infrastructure services is in full swing. Engineers and architects with wristbands and piercings staring out over Linux laptops and multi headed LCD displays using ever more agile technologies to move data around faster than ever previously thought possible.
However, having spent a few days at trade shows in the last few weeks and also attending some Meetup / Eventbrite gigs, I do sometimes feel that there is a lack of focus on the bigger picture. What I define by “the bigger picture” being the fact that enterprise IT still has a need for stability and business-as-usual computing and more and more there is a significant gap between the DevOps communities and the “grey power” of us wrinklies in our comfy Hush Puppies and sensible family cars and appreciation of BBC Radio 2.
“Embrace the experience of elders in your enterprise.”
Everybody wants to appreciate a launch window or the needs of the program manager. Everyone wants to be a team player and deliver to a fixed business need but in Cloud the inherent missing part of being able to mitigate that middle piece – “the hinterground of virtualisation”.
So, ladies and gentlemen, my starter for ten urges you to embrace the experience of the elders in your enterprise to facilitate and mentor process and personnel to enable safe change control and agile provisioning. Whilst we may have flecks of grey in our hair, look fondly at DAT/DLT tapes and can remember the excitement of double sided floppies we may just be the difference between getting to Cloud safely or not.
We might not be down with the kids but who wants to be down? I’d much rather be up and running.
The views expressed on this blog are Richard’s personal views and do not reflect or represent the views of his employer, Red Hat.
