By: Peter LoBrutto >> Back in 2011, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop penned what came to be known as the “Burning Platform” Memo. He told the story about a man working on an oil platform in the North Sea, which one night burst into flames imposing a life or death situation on the man. Should he stay on the platform and die in the flames or should he jump off the platform into the icy waters. It was an analogy for the situation that Elop felt Nokia was at the time. He felt that Nokia was standing on a burning platform. The mobile device industry has changed from a battle of devices where Nokia had historically done well to a battle of ecosystems where Nokia was being decimated by Apple and Google. It was a call to action to make a radical shift in strategy away from the burning platform.
I would like to propose that today’s IT organizations that are primarily providing value to their stakeholders via on-premises data centers are also standing on a “burning platform.” During this week’s AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington DC, Andy Jassey, the CEO of Amazon Web Services and Amazon Infrastructure, gave a fireside chat in which he described both the history and ongoing evolution of AWS. Amazon is innovating and providing additional value at such a rapid pace that it is inconceivable that on-premises data centers will have any chance of keeping up.
At Zenoss, we provide Unified Infrastructure Monitoring for today’s modern technologies and hybrid IT environments. We work closely with our customers and our partners to help them maintain visibility into their infrastructure as they increasingly transition to the cloud.
Stephen Elop urged Nokia to take a leap off of their burning platform into the unknown. I would encourage companies with on-premises data centers to consider the same. Zenoss is here to help.
