Daniel FlaxCIO

TheStreetCloud Evolution

1

Outsource components that are commodity in nature and focus our personnel on areas

that can provide distinct business value and

competitive advantage.

2

How is this different for IT vs. Product

Development?

3

IT Themes

• Open Source

• Mobility

• As a Service

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Open Source

• Open Source does NOT equal free!

• Mature products with phenomenal communities behind them

• Open Source can also provide new opportunities to mess up – just like proprietary technologies and products

• In 2010, Open Source deserves a seat at the grown up table when you are evaluating products for implementations

5

Mobility

• The mobile web is growing by leaps and bounds faster than the desktop web

Figure 1: Quantcast’s Mobile Pageview Observations

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Mobile Web vs. Desktop WebMobile Users > Desktop Internet Users

Within 5 Years

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Desktop Internet Users

Global Mobile vs. Desktop Internet User Projection, 2007 – 2015E

Source: Morgan Stanley Research.

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Why?

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In the past, the mobile web sucked. It doesn’t

any more.

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Building for Mobile

• Users want easy

• But you’ve got less with which to build!

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Building for Mobile

• Context

• Scale

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As a Service Offerings

• Going into the cloud

• Cloud computing is making the same journey that Open Source made!

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Outsourcing vs. Cloud Computing

• Where do you draw the line?

13

A Classic CIO might say:

“We do everything in house. It’s the only way we can be sure we’re getting <good enough>, <fast enough>, <security>, <control>….”

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Really???

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Does that CIO make their own:

• OS?

• Computer hardware?

• Telephone lines?

• Electricity?

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Outsourcing provides:

• Shared access

• Some economies of scale

• Some process improvement

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Outsourcing is paying someone else to do what you would

have done anyway.

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Cloud Computing

• Well done Cloud Computing takes your business needs and applies all of the lessons of the past 50 years of computing to provide you with services.

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How can this be so?

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Platforms Moving to the Cloud

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21

Multi vs. Single Tenant Architecture

Dedicated App Stack for Each Application

Single-Tenant (On-Premise or Hosted)

Multi-Tenant

One Single App Stack for All Applications

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Cloud Benefits

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Physical and data security models

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World-wide reach and deployment

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Instant availability of features

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Seamless upgrades

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You get to leverage the highest common

denominator

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Cloud is a dial-tone for innovation.

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How do you get there from here?

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Here’s the secret….

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It’s no different than any other IT project.

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Really. It’s no different.

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Pick a project.

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Pick any project.

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Pick something today that you want to get

done soon.

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Example: Customer Service

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Understand your requirements

• Customer Service Representatives in multiple locations across the US

• CSRs need to access a knowledge base and generate tickets, with escalation when needed

• Integration with our VOIP phone system

• Capable of integration with our Proprietary Commerce Engine

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Understand your security needs

• Our Customer Service Platform doesn’t store PCI or HIPAA data

• For this use case, we need generally good security, not Fort Knox

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Understand your budget and time line

• We need it to be affordable!

• We need it yesterday

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Build it.

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Test it.

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User Acceptance Test it.

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Deploy it.

44

Sound familiar?

45

46

How about backup?

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Why not?

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TheStreet.com’s Production Facilities

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We currently backup to tapes.

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Why?

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I asked that very question when I got

here.

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Why does this stink?

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The hardware is expensive.

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The tapes are expensive.

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Changing tapes is expensive.

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Shipping tapes offsite is expensive.

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Managing tape libraries in multiple locations, some of

which are lights out for us, is very expensive.

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Tape restores and testing is complicated, a hassle and … expensive

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There’s got to be a better model, right?

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Use a Cloud Backup Service Provider

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Cloud Backup Service Model

Courtesy of Iron Mountain

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A better operational model for:

• Managing backups

• Managing restores

• Managing our entire DR process

• Leveraging our bandwidth investment

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Cloud Evolution

• Outsource components that are commodity in nature and focus our personnel on areas that can provide distinct business value and competitive advantage.

• Key Themes: Open Source, Mobility, As a Service

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Thank You

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