What a year it has been. There has simply been so much going on in the last 12 months that it is almost impossible to try and recall every significant event. Yet, what is even more incredible is that I have no reason to imagine that 2011 will start any slower than 2010 ended. I mean, who would have thought that we would see the cloud capacity being auctioned off before anyone could even define it ?

It’s hard to believe that 2010 is almost a memory. Going, going, gone.

I don’t do predictions. Never have, never will. The reasons for this are primarily because there are already countless attempts at gazing into the crystal ball from those who are infinitely more qualified than I (my favorites being this by Bernard Golden and this by James Staten) and also because I tend to want to reflect on what I have experienced personally in my real work role throughout the year.

By doing this, it helps bring a little more of a practical focus rather than an industry view. If, however, you’re looking for a fantastic wide-ranging review of the wonderful gifts that fell from the cloud during 2010, look no further than this post from James Urquhart).

So, with that in mind, I have finally found enough quiet time to jot down (in no particular order) the top six of my main experiences and observations from 2010, which I am sure will continue to occupy a fair amount of my time in 2011 and beyond ! The original post did not have the “bonus observation” (but the more I thought about it, the more I felt compelled to add it) and deliberately omitted the content around service catalog. However, after discussions with my good friend Rodrigo Flores, it made sense to tack it on to the end of #2 - thanks much for the feedback !

1. Server virtualization alone isn’t going to make an enterprise CIO your new best friend
Yes, it absolutely IS a critical element of the next generation of efficient computing platforms but CIO’s are keen to understand what it does as part of a solution to enable their business and not what it does only for their data center operations. If you can’t get an application workload delivered to the business significantly faster with virtualized servers than without them, then your value proposition to the CIO is somewhat weakened. Concentrating solely on a density factor is not conducive to figuring out how to deal with all the layers of the application stack and ultimately, the fulfilled promise of agility is what counts to the CIO (and probably his or her boss too).

2.The Private Cloud is real and definitely achievable
It may be real and it may be achievable, but it certainly isn’t easy, so be prepared for some interesting times ahead. Traditional enterprise application deployment methodologies (installed base) don’t readily lend themselves to “cloudifying” so expect a very long and hard slog in trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Thankfully, there are great emerging technologies available for building and managing private clouds, at all levels of the stack, and the folks behind them are very smart and very willing. One of the hardest decision points is whether you want to build a proprietary private cloud environment atop the leading hypervisor vendor, or give yourself some “no lock in” options and roll your own from the various products available. Another critical element of a truly successful private cloud deployment is service catalog driven “end user self-service provisioning”. In a similar way to how AWS’ Console and prior to that, the ElasticFox plug in for Firefox, made EC2 a much better experience than navigating the service offerings by command line, a true consumerized approach to “empowering users” must include a  simple but intuitive UI that provides authorized users with “point and click” capability to manage their application workloads through the entire lifecycle.

3. Support models are changing radically
When you build or move to the cloud, private or public, and especially when you throw desktop virtualization into the mix, supporting what you deploy is a very different proposition from the traditional one-to-one ratios. Organizations should expect many more moving parts than before and be prepared for a concentrated effort around both organizational and people change. It is incredibly tempting for folks who are not fully engaged in the “moving to the cloud” process to “take their hands off the wheel” when asked to support what has been built or provided by others. “I don’t know anything about it” are the six words you really want to avoid hearing, so never underestimate the value of having true buy-in from all stakeholders at all stages of your transition.

4. Enterprises can’t afford to rebuild applications en-mass
Unless you happen to be in an organization of unlimited budget and infinite patience, it is highly likely that you will not be handed a golden ticket to rebuild and re-platform all your line of business applications to “work in the cloud”. It would simply not be cost effective. It is also highly probable that you will encounter a mixture of architectures and technologies, from client-server to n-tier web apps, which are not easily portable into a vertical software appliance style mainly due to how shared enterprise grade database instances had been previously allocated. Figuring out a solid strategy and executing upon it to allow consolidation and virtualization of widely distributed client-server apps is a great first step in “herding the cats”.

5. Security may not be the biggest barrier to public cloud adoption
Although the issue of Security is, and always will be, a primary topic for consideration for organizations when considering moving workloads to the public cloud, I am not convinced that it is THE NUMBER ONE barrier to adoption. With a hat-tip to my friend, Chris Hoff, I also don’t believe that survivability is the main barrier to adoption either. By adoption, I mean actually moving the existing full workload from on-premise to an off-premise provider, such as AWS. From my experience, the majority of enterprise applications would just absolutely, flat out, not work in the cloud, period. Many of them are not web apps, and even if they are, they are so intrinsically linked to the traditional “behind the firewall” technologies, such as Active Directory, that the amount of work required and the complexity added to make them function off-premise (with the same performance and supportability) in an alien environment would hit a point of diminishing return so quickly that it becomes apparent to all that it is simply isn’t worth the effort. I’m not considering federation here, so in reality, there are very few opportunities for organizations to do anything other than “learn what they don’t know” in the public cloud – very few can really expect to be able to pick up existing workloads and move them easily.

6. Unlocking information can be more important than you realize
It’s a well-documented fact that, on average, there is a significant percentage of an organization’s data locked up in proprietary systems that can not easily be accessed by the workforce. It is probably a lesser known fact that in our organization, for most of the major LOB applications that we operate have approximately an 80/20 split in what we called “Reviewer and Expert”. What this means is that for every application, only 20% of the user base actually “puts the data in” (Expert)  and 80% of the user base “wants the data out” (Reviewer) yet we have historically provided the same application, same UI, same training, same everything to the entire 100% of the population. This is where a comprehensive “API” strategy begins to make sense as a method for unlocking the value of the data contained across the silos. Allowing developers to create lightweight applications across multiple device types and more importantly, empowering the users to create their own “information views” (mashups) and  with enterprise data provides a tangible value to the business and does not rely on huge, expensive, monolithic application stacks being rebuilt or re-platformed.

Bonus Observation – The path of least resistance might just be the smoothest

There may be plenty of organizations out there who are actively looking for alternatives to their traditional hardware, and maybe more specifically, their software vendors as concerns around vendor lock-in, long product cycles and inflexible commercial models begin to hit the agendas of CxOs. There are plenty of options available too, from database to desktop and collaboration to cloud, but it would be a very lucky (and brave) CIO who gets carte blanche to commission such radical change. Why ? Because there is just something a little too comforting about the “promise of the next version” of the software (or hardware) that has underpinned the core of Enterprise IT for the last 10-15 years, especially if it only has a very small impact on the user base. It’s an interesting quandary – “change for the better” – but it remains to be seen if CxOs will support wholesale change in return for the promise of agility, however that is defined.

Of course, there are literally hundreds of other observations and thoughts I could have added to this post. I’ve tried to stay away from the deep discussions around what it takes to actually achieve any of the above and what the implications are of new and emerging technologies and paradigms for 2011 and beyond. I find it truly fascinating that we are collectively moving so fast in our thinking and adoption of all kinds of technology, which I firmly believe are closer than at any time I have experienced before to affecting real business change.

My only real concern is that organizations will not be able to move fast enough, nor rely on traditional “engagements” to reap the benefits from this new wave of innovation.

I hope 2011 proves me wrong.