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October 23rd, 2010 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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I am preparing a more lengthy comment on the impact of the new healthcare law on how healthcare companies and professionals interact with patients in the new regulatory environment . I would really welcome comment from all interested players.

Lets begin with the view that there is no good reason why individuals and their doctors should not have access to personal medical records stored in the cloud. Lets also acknowledge that payors–insurance companies and government–should have interaction with that information if it serves efficient delivery and payment goals. So let’s ask the questions– should government induce this activity? What requirement must the corporate players and professionals understand –how does this impact patient care and risk management?

Thanks for your comments.

Cloudy with a Chance of Pain.

August 4th, 2010 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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“Good morning boss, I have the solution for us–we will change our local and wide area network configuration based software platform to a hybrid cloud solution with several SAAS applications interfacing with our client software in a mix and match mish mosh with storage from yet another provider. The integration specialist is providing up front pricing, consulting fees, and we have recurring costs for SAAS applications, off site storage, hosting and a secondary back up.”

Hmmm.

We are in a moment in time where a fundamental technology transition is afoot. Problem is –the choices are diverse, the experience short, competition fierce, and unbiased  experts hard to find. As the book Outliers might call the question–does anyone have the requisite 10,000 hours of experience to make good baseline decisions here on the best migration path for mid to large business systems to benefit from the cloud (or to simply do a programatic tech refresh?).  Most troubling is the fact that the resource balls are in intense motion. My bet is that lots of strange configurations and funky adivice is being directed at CTO/CIO types –this is an unusually challenging  moment in IT systems design for organizations.

So I am going to try my best to do a list of principles to help guide systems acquisition decision making –its a work in progress and I would love to get comments that help us get this to “KISS” as much as we can.

1. To the extent appropriate, the user experience from remote locations should ne improved by a cloud solution. Location flexability is a benefit of cloud systems.

2.Multiple SAAS applications should be able to trade data–agnostic database management among subparts of the system. This can be via a common database or via api or even by compatible reports (Excell to the rescue)–but the measurement of success should be speed and cost based. In other words, do multiple SAAS applications create complexity or simplicity–simplicity or bust.

3. Internal labor costs need to be evolved into application and user support–not to integration, hardware, syncing issues, facilities–that should be materially reduced in the new configuration.

4. Decisions should be guided by benefit gained from elimination of network management and hardware issues. Look at cloud as infrastructe centralization or outsourcing, enabling significant user experience improvements and redeployment of existing IT personnell supporting applications and user functionality rather than under the hood hardware and back up issues.

5. Test for speed and transparency improvements in the business process. Hold vendors accountable for realistic improvement goals.

Ok–that’s a lot to think about. Now I am going to go contemplate the future of technology in healthcare and why I can go to the cloud to see exactly where I ate out last year and how much I spent,where I took planes and trains,  and what I bought for my house–as well as manage the story of my family in photos—but none of my medical records are there except some limited tracking of health insurance claims and payments.

http://lbbslaw.com/attorneybio.aspx?id=5478

HostingCon 2010

July 21st, 2010 . Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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It is only appropriate that I begin this blog as I leave the first hosting industry convention almost completely dedicated to “the cloud”. For me, I have in the past attended this convention as a hosting company executive–I co founded LayeredTech , a really superior dedicated host which innovated “on demand scalable resources” positioning among hosters in 2005. That is what cloud computing is all about, and today I was here mainly to be on a panel talking about the practical issues around buying and selling hosting and web infrastructure companies.

That said, here are a few observations fresh from the meetings and exhibits:

1. People who should know better are using cloud to describe just about anything to do with getting resources from the internet. I am convinced that AOL was the first cloud service by these definitions.Unfortunately, that means “cloud” is in danger of not really describing anything except the current state of mind and vocabulary around the provision of anything touching the internet. I have been using the Domino’s pizza cloud ordering system for a couple of years by this definition–again, pretty dilutive of the definition. [Note--I have better taste in pizza , but that's for another blog, Domino's seems to be the most reliable when we need the babysitter fed ].

2.Cloud seems to be describing a movement, not just a technology, at this point. I can relate to that–the idea of reducing hardware costs and labor costs on site and pulling what you need over the internet from a more centralized resource is very appealing. It can be liberating, eliminating redundant efforts to run computers and applications at the user site as well as at the vendor site.

3. However confused and over used the term has become, cloud computing seems to make it easier for users to get what they need and have it work–I will gladly trade local control for remote configuration by experts any day. That may not seem great for local network hardware jockeys in IS departments–but I believe the opposite is true. Having local IT more focused on user application needs than running hardware infrastructures in companies is a good thing.

So the hosting industry is working hard to align itself around this purpose–enabling the right work to be done at the right place, better connecting us all and improving the ability to be less likely to be interrupted in our work, or internet play, by suboptimal local technology approaches.

From this lawyer’s perspective, the question is , how does this change the duties of the players providing IT to those using IT, and what are the ramifications for risk management, contract management, security, and value. One could also ask about competitive advantages of businesses more reliant on the cloud. In short, how does cloud computing impact business risk and value, and how might it change the way we contract, develop intellectual property, share information, and adjust the way we and our clients do business .

This blog hopes to explore those issues , and solicit comments as well.

Michael Platner

http://www.lbbslaw.com/attorneybio.aspx?id=5478