It’s no surprise that all enterprises endure shadow IT (sometimes known as rogue IT) and there are potentially detrimental outcomes to business units that source their own external compute resources. Business units go out on their own and secure the solutions they need because their internal IT departments struggle to keep up with the speed and frequency of requests.

In our most recent edition of the Enterprise Cloud Forum, we welcomed Rackspace CIO Steve Mills to tackle this issue. Mills explained how his IT organization uses shadow IT to its benefit. By establishing guidelines through service catalog development, Mills created a self-service model that promotes innovation and frees IT resources to work on driving true business value initiatives. And now Mills has an army of 4,900 empowered Rackers (Rackspace employees) who create their own solutions, and they’re doing so out in the open, with nothing to hide.

In this transformation Mills found a major opportunity for IT. IT talent can now become strategic advisors to the organization by partnering with the business and creating self-service options. Embracing cloud and partnering with a service provider is the only way for IT to maintain relevancy in a cloud world.

That’s why it’s imperative to treat cloud computing like a new business model, not just a technology.

Mills, myself and Rackspace Senor IT Strategist Anand Bhadouria discussed all of this in the latest Enterprise Cloud Forum virtual roundtable discussion, “Adopting a Service Provider Mentality and Empowering a Self-Service Organization.” Here is a recording of the audio and a copy of the presentation.

We hit on several topics during this discussion, including:

• The importance of IT meeting the demands of the business
• How to protect from the dangers of shadow IT and leverage its benefits
• How to create an army of empowered employees
• How to approach service catalog development
• How IT can drive business value back into the organization through the apps

And be sure to register for the next installment of the Enterprise Cloud  Forum (Wednesday, February 13 at 11 a.m. CST): “Tearing Down Silos to Build Your Enterprise DevOps Engine.” In this roundtable discussion, Rackspace Senior IT Strategist Brian Jawalka and Rackspace Vice President of Software Application Development Krishna Prasad will help steer your organization toward DevOps success with topics including:

• Why DevOps integration is essential for successful cloud adoption
• How to promote healthy cross-functional collaboration between your development and operations organizations
• How to implement a mandate for DevOps
• How Rackspace IT is employing DevOps in its Journey to the Open Cloud

Sign up now for the next Enterprise Cloud Forum and get ready to tear down the silos and create an organization where development and operations are driven by business strategy.

Acquity Group already leverages a wide array of Rackspace’s product portfolio, including dedicated, cloud and hybrid hosting – more than 250 devices in all. It relies on Rackspace Advisory Services, a team of senior IT strategists, to create custom cloud strategies and solutions that allow Acquity Group to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing. Advisory Services lets Acquity Group maximize the efficiency of its infrastructure while keeping client information locked down and secure.

“Advisory Services has always been absolutely necessary for us,” said Kevin Ellenwood, Acquity Group’s vice president of national technical services. “We’ve always relied on having people that understand our business, that understand data center needs and necessities, and that are smarter than us in those areas.”

Recently, Rackspace Advisory Services helped Acquity Group build out a storage strategy to leverage its NetApp NAS device more efficiently, which involved using the NAS appliance as a media files repository for a client’s migration to Adobe CQ – a specific request from a high profile client. With Advisory Services’ help, Acquity Group was able to use its NAS appliance to save the client a significant sum of money. This innovative approach reduced the amount of disk requirement for large enterprise customers by more than 80 percent while making Acquity Group more competitive in the Adobe CQ space.

Acquity Group also depends on its Managed Virtualization environment to keep client information secure, and engaged Rackspace Advisory Services to build its virtualization strategy. Managed Virtualization lets Acquity Group customize its environment to suit its security needs, and the virtualization environment allows the company to uphold a high security standard even when handling massive data loads.

“We’ve met our security requirements within our virtualized solution,” Ellenwood said. “We can make certain security guarantees…We are running large brands in our environment right now, whether it’s in our content or commerce platform. Like all global platforms, we are getting attacks on a daily basis, yet we’ve never had a breach, and we’ve always been able to react in a timely matter to any type of issue that has come up. Our Rackspace team is on top of it and our security team is on top of it.”

Ellenwood recalled one major client’s IPO, where security was of the utmost importance.

“We were running their investor-relations data on our system,” he said. “We were hammered with attacks, because if you can disrupt something of that size and get on the news, that’s a big win for people that are looking to do this type of thing. Even though we’ve had attacks, we’ve had zero outages, zero downtime, and a very reactive team. All of that comes from spending an awful lot of time with my team, working with our Rackspace team, working with Rackspace Advisory Services, and leveraging that relationship.”

Layered on top of Acquity Group’s solutions, Ellenwood said, is Rackspace’s trademark Fanatical Support. Together, Rackspace Advisory Services and Acquity Group team up to enable Acquity Group to better support clients and offer innovation and security. Rackspace provides Acquity Group the freedom to focus on customers without worrying about infrastructure. Acquity Group also has the confidence to try new, innovative things because it has the support of Rackpace.

“Our mission is not that different, from a support perspective,” Ellenwood said. “It’s unacceptable for us to have any type of outage, and quite frankly, our team at Rackspace has the same attitude. That’s why we’re here. I expect that from our service providers, and we’re on the same page.”

What’s coming up?

Each month Rackspace Advisory Services hosts a panel of cloud computing experts in the Enterprise Open Cloud Forum. It’s an hour-long virtual roundtable with a rotation of different industry experts who discuss a variety of cloud related topics. Each discussion is followed by 30 minutes of open Q & A.

Adopting a Service Provider Mentality and Empowering a Self-Service Organization:  January 9^th, 2013 @ 11 a.m. CST

Ring in the New Year with me, Lisa Larson, and join our next roundtable on January 9^th, 2013.  I’ll address the No. 1 misstep enterprises make in cloud adoption: treating cloud computing like a technology, rather than adopting cloud as a new business model.   Join me and Rackspace Senior Strategist Anand Bhadouria with our guest Steve Mills, Rackspace CIO, as we discuss the importance of transforming the business of IT in the enterprise.  Steve will share how he is creating a self-service organization and meeting the increasing demand for IT services.   Register today to be one of 50 limited participants and be prepared to change the way you think about the business of IT!

Turning Big Data into Big Dollars:  December 12^th Presentation Recap

Hosts:  Brian Jawalka and Anand Bhadouria, Rackspace Senior Strategists

Big Data is the flood of digital information streaming in through everything from social media to embedded sensors. It’s too big to handle with traditional tools, and is growing at the astounding rate of 40 percent to 60 percent a year.

Any enterprise can benefit from Big Data. In fact, research shows that a typical Fortune 1000 company that uses data only 10 percent more effectively can generate $2 billion in added revenue. In the consumer space, retailers can increase margins by 60 percent. The U.S. healthcare system can save a shocking $200 billion a year. With existing competitors and new startups jostling for position, every enterprise must pay attention to Big Data.

But there are big challenges, including incompatibilities with existing infrastructure, high capital expenses and the threat of vendor lock-in. Further compounding the challenge, the strategic skills needed to use Big Data are in short supply.

To generate cost-effective results from Big Data, enterprises need to look beyond on-premises IT to cloud computing. The cloud is perfectly suited to Big Data with massive storage, elastic expandability and pay-as-you-go billing. Instead of maintaining your own costly infrastructure, cloud computing allows you to pay just for what you use when you need it.

Enterprises can save time and trouble when developing their Big Data solution by working with a proven technology partner.  Rackspace is an ideal technology partner with a broad portfolio of offerings; open source software for building public and private clouds; and a stellar reputation for professional services. (download the mp3)

The Rackspace Advisory Services team wants to help you answer that question. We’re a dedicated team that lives and breathes cloud computing in the enterprise. The mission for Rackspace Advisory Services is to help enterprises take advantage of and leverage cloud technologies and to plot their cloud strategy.

We know that enterprises have a lot of questions about the cloud and how they can transform into a cloud enabled business. And we’re here to show you how to IMPACT your cloud strategy.

The Rackspace Advisory Services Team will host a series of virtual roundtable discussions in the Enterprise Cloud Forum. These discussions bring together leaders from across the organization to tackle the difficult issues and capitalize on opportunities associated with cloud adoption.

During the sessions, Rackspace’s enterprise architects will offer real-world insight to what makes successful moves to the cloud possible.

Key topics will include:

• The Latest Technologies Available to IT
• Turning Big Data into Big Dollars
• Our Approach to Cloud Adoption
• Rackspace’s Own Journey to the Cloud through our Central IT Transformation

These talks are designed to be interactive, conversational exchanges and create an open dialog. Attendees can pose questions and actively contribute to help their peers solve their most pressing technology issues.

The goal is to help you lower your technology TCO and provide innovative solutions to support your journey to the cloud.

The Enterprise Cloud Forum will take place the second Wednesday of each month.

Here are the details of the first two:

Rackspace Central IT Transformation: Journey to the Cloud
11 a.m. CST on November 14, 2012

In the first Enterprise Cloud Forum, co-hosted by myself, Lisa Larson; Arrian Mehis, Advisory Services Practice Manager; and Rackspace IT Vice President Rich Murr, we’ll discuss Rackspace IT’s own transformation to the cloud. We’ll lay it all out there and discuss our struggles and challenges with cloud adoption … just like any other enterprise IT organization.

Topics will include:

• The demand for IT services exceeding supply
• The business expectation of near instantaneous delivery
• The challenge of recruiting and retaining talent
• The capital intensive nature of IT
• The difficulty of managing increasingly complex environments

We’ll also answer the latest question: Why can’t we just move to the cloud?

The Rackspace Advisory Services Team, as well as Rackspace Central IT leadership, will discuss how we uncovered key challenges within our own IT organization and show you how, through a Rackspace Advisory Services engagement, we developed a plan to become our own largest customer.

Other items we’ll share with you:

• Key challenges we’ve identified
• How we define success
• Steps taken to define our business plan
• Our fears, challenges and internal struggles

No one said this was going to be easy; and we’re prepared to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly!

Turning Big Data into Big Dollars
11 a.m. CST on December 12, 2012

Big Data is already too big to handle with traditional tools, and it’s growing at the astounding rate of 40 percent to 60 percent a year. It’s estimated that 80 percent to 90 percent of this data is unstructured, meaning it doesn’t have any predictable format, like a pro-forma report. And there’s simply too much of it for an enterprise to manage with the same database tools used for routine business.

According to a study at the University of Texas, if a median size Fortune 1000 business increased the usability of its data by only 10 percent, it could earn an extra $2 billion a year!

In our second Enterprise Cloud Forum, we’ll tackle the Big Data challenge and help you turn your Big Data into Big Dollars.

Join Enterprise Architects of Cloud Strategy Anand Bhadouria and Brian Jawalka as they discuss how enterprises are overcoming the Big Data challenge. Anand and Brian will share how Rackspace equips its customers with the necessary tools to drive their data into submission.

You’ll learn how technology can help you crunch, sort and use Big Data so it is valuable to your business.

We hope to see you there. Space is limited, so register now for Rackspace Central IT Transformation: Journey to the Cloud and Turning Big Data into Big Dollars, the first two Enterprise Cloud Forums. And be sure to bring your questions.