I had the opportunity to attend the Tenth Annual West Coast Infosec & Technology Growth Conference put on by AGC Partners on Monday, February 24th. I wasn’t able to stay for the entire day but I was able to run into a few people who I hadn’t seen in a while, couldn’t remember meeting, and people I had only ever “met” on Twitter.
The panels are led by security industry experts, bankers, and investors with executives (or their designates) from various companies as panelists. What do they talk about you might ask? Well, the people leading the panel ask hard questions about the industry, threats, and opportunities. The majority of the panelists answer in a way that can be explained by the following tweet:
Answer with your pitch…rinse, repeat.
— Andrew Hay (@andrewsmhay) February 24, 2014
You’re the CEO of a company. I get it. You’re passionate about your company, its products, its accomplishments, and its “innovation”. That doesn’t mean, however, that you get to take the current mature market, completely dismiss it, and say “the way my company does it is the only way that matters”. Case in point:
@451wendy he just wants all of your eggs in his basket #AGCconference
— Andrew Hay (@andrewsmhay) February 24, 2014
Not only is this particular “way” 5, 10, or a “mythical factor of never”-years away, it presumes that people are willing to completely re-architect their compute environment, IT delivery strategy, and, well, business simply to operate in a cloud environment. As I tweeted during the event:
Wow…dude, you don’t forklift to cloud overnight! #AGCconference
— Andrew Hay (@andrewsmhay) February 24, 2014
I stand by my statement that:
Saying “everything will be cloud” is a myopic view and pure vendor posturing #agc
— Andrew Hay (@andrewsmhay) February 24, 2014
The biggest companies in the world are not going to throw everything into the “cloud bucket” tomorrow, next week, or whenever your fiscal year closes. The baby is certainly not getting thrown out with the bathwater so perhaps a migration-based, staggered adoption message is more palatable? Want to run your messaging by me? I’m happy to help.