Cloud Cruiser: Bean counting in the heavens There seem to be a zillion companies that want to help you build cloudy infrastructure, but Cloud Cruiser, a startup that has just come out of stealth mode, wants to help you do something else: keep track of the money you are allocating for clouds. Cloud Cruiser was founded in January 2010 by Dave Zabrowski, who among other …
Take something that has a limited Market already plus that's not even out of alpha testing from an unknown company.
And expect to get major level licensing fees for it?
Most supplier management orgs in the big corporates would throw it out because of it's newneess and lack of good accounts.
Would love to understand if it can support the complex charging and allocations models big corporates use.
Colour me unconvinced.
Cloud Map, Cloud Optimizer, Cloud Report... Where's Cloud Security, Cloud Stability, Cloud Backup, Cloud Where's My Data? And most importantly, where's Cloud Cover (Your Ass), which will be sorely needed once LoB VPs realize the only metric is cost - and then shop accordingly.
To paraphrase Deming - "Tell me what you're going to measure and I'll tell you how I'm going to perform."
I consult with enterprise class clients. My general conclusion is that most shops do NOT do a very good job of financial management. I personally believe this is due to technical people not liking financial matters and financial people not understanding technology.
When I perform an IT infrastructure financial assessment, I am often creating something from a bunch of disparate, out-of-date, disjointed sources, to which I always have to make a bunch of assumptions that place risk on the accuracy of my conclusions. I can't even count how many asset registers have large financial records just labeled "IT Equipment" or "Computers", or PC's being depreciated over 5 years. The good news is that I have been running IT infrastructures for 20+ years and have created my own financial management capabilities enough times, that the degree of risk is mitigated. I'm getting pretty good at matching such records to installed dates on hardware inventories. Enough blatant self promotion.
So, I read this article with interest. The concept is phenomenal. I want to see a demo RIGHT NOW!!! Of course, it is not even in BETA yet, so I will have to wait. When I do finally get to see it, I do NOT expect it to be perfect. I just hope that it can begin to help IT shops automate giving IT (and business) management a view towards the true costs of IT services.
BEST OF LUCK. Keep us posted.
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