In my work here at Cloudstep we have two distinct sides to our business, a consulting practice “Jtwo Solutions” and a cloud modelling software and services practice “Cloudstep”. Working on both sides of these businesses affords me the benefit of hands on consulting, technical architecture and implementation as well as scenario based cost modelling activities with a wide range of government and commercial customers.
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on what it is that makes me happy about working with customers within these businesses. I decided to set my self the challenge of coming up with just two words that could be used to articulate this in a concise form.
After reflecting on this for some time, two words come to mind, “Anagnorisis and Peripeteia”. After sleeping on it for a few days, these words seem to have stuck.
So what the hell is Anagnorisis and Peripeteia. . . ? In short, Aristotle made these words famous (for me anyway).
Anagnorisis: the transition or change from ignorance to knowledge.
Peripeteia: a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation.
When considering the meaning of these two words, I think they elegantly describe the two way street that is IT consulting and cost modelling. I’ve always enjoyed the excitement of the changing IT landscape, ever evolving, disruptive yet inspiring and endlessly yielding of new opportunities.
Opportunity is what business thrives on, competitive advantage can be found here. Businesses that capitalise on the right new knowledge / technology win. The trouble is, that new is only short lived and you have to stay ahead of the curve. In the fast paced, evolving IT space, anagnorisis is something you are constantly chasing.
I repeatedly find myself in the position of educator and student, both assisting clients with the relentless learning and learning myself. This is delightful, challenging and terrifying all at the same time, but it’s what makes IT interesting and enjoyable for me.
This brings me to the second word. . . peripeteia. Cloudstep provides customers with a multi-dimensional view of the cost of delivery of application workloads. We do this by modelling, teams of people, the functions they carry out, the applications they use, the infrastructure the applications live on and the underlying hosting costs of the infrastructure (servers, storage, networks, data centres).
With this data we can accurately articulate the true cost of a specific workload and conduct fair comparison with alternative delivery models like software as a service or a public cloud implementation.
Anagnorisis happens here too, but what is really beautiful is the peripeteia that this knowledge can enable. Cloudstep helps provide businesses with clarity and can enable them to see the most cost effective path forward. For me, I find happiness is the situation where a business can shift their focus from any undifferentiated workloads and shift the focus of their IT resources towards workloads that are specific to their core business, directing efforts towards innovation in their own space.
The future in IT that, I imagine, is one where we don’t have to spend as much time on undifferentiated workloads rather, one where we have more time to thrive on the new opportunities that are yet to come.
