Computer world has an interesting review of a British company’s outsource strategy for IT. It has the provocative title of How the Cloud Changed World’s Oldest Newspaper.

It shifts IT from keeping the lights on to delivering customer-facing value. Wright presented a chart showing the changing makeup of IT headcount and how cloud computing supports delivering business value. Over a four year period (2008-2011), IT headcount shifts from 90% “Run the business skills”/10% “Change the business skills” to 20% “Run the business skills”/80% “Change the business skills.”

This sounds good but it’s hard to tell from the review whether there was a proper accounting of cost. Moving the IT headcount to just 20% run the business means the skills are not removed, they are elsewhere (outsourced). Thus it would more accurate to include the outsourced staff in a total cost of IT estimate, rather than say it’s a straight drop from 90% to 20%.

More to the point, the review is weak on security data and analysis.

[H]e feels that security has improved, in that the cloud providers implement a far higher set of security practices than the Telegraph had in place or could afford to implement.

He “feels” security?

I am not so quick to believe that high security practices are less expensive at a cloud or service provider than in-house. Perhaps it is true for the Telegraph but then where are the 90% to 20% numbers like those given for staff load? Suddenly data is missing when it comes to measuring security.

That is because validation alone becomes significantly more expensive when it has to be done in a cloud. An argument can certainly be made that a giant company will have the resources to spend on doing things the right way, as opposed to a small company focused on another business. The problem with this argument is that companies like BP, Ford, Enron, Worldcom…show that you can not simply assume that things will be done right. Show us the numbers.

Photo by Harriet Ottenheimer