Ian McDonald started working for News International in January of this year, with the newspaper industry in the middle of its biggest operational transition since the invention of the printing press – the switch to digital newspaper content consumption.

“We are trying to use technology that gives us the agility and flexibility to support us in that endeavour. What we've saved, we're trying to use on innovation in other areas.” 

He also says there are no plans to make any reductions in headcount as a result of the implementation of cloud functionality. He adds: “If the staff are not running around worrying about the Exchange server, they can put their talents towards innovation instead. Essentially, you stop running servers and start running services.”

Wall of cloud

One of the biggest moves that News International has made in its digital strategy so far is to introduce pay walls on some of its sites. It was a front runner from the major national publishers in this regard and remains one of only a handful of its peers to have made such a move. When the move was announced, many commentators scoffed. They said the public wasn't ready to pay for newspaper content online, especially when they could get it elsewhere for free, and that News International risked losing large swathes of its audience. In fact, the organisation has declared the move a success, with the Times Online garnering up to 79,000 paying members by the end of March 2011, which included a 60 per cent increase in a year.

When they are paying, though, customers will not tolerate unreliability. While it was not initially cloud based, more and more of the systems have been moved into the cloud. McDonald says this has been a great help in ensuring flexibility to adapt to new requirements and to cater for growth.

Some advice

McDonald's advice to businesses that are embarking on cloud implementations is to “stay committed and see it through.”  They need to consider whether or not the solution they are weighing up is 'truly cloud', in that it realises all of the benefits – versatility, pricing, and whether or not you can get in and out easily – instead of just being hosted in the cloud.

“Make sure you are not locked in,” he says, “that you know what the process will be for getting your data out, and that you know what will be happening to your data afterwards. Don't go for big up front fees or long, locked-in contracts as these go against what the cloud is supposed to offer.”

Some things don't change when you are looking at cloud services from when you look at internal services; you still have to be aware of the rules of the service, you have to consider the security implications and you have to keep a check on your SLAs. “You have to approach them in different ways, though,” says McDonald. “If you try and replicate your work in exactly the same way, that's when you get problems. For example, I’ve made a mistake in a previous role where I tried to shift a virtual host straight over to Amazon but you need to re-architect it into the same type as the platform. You have to do more than just skim over things, you have to re-examine the entire architecture and how you make your systems work.”

When seeking Google services, he advises working with one of the company's official partners, rather than dealing with it directly, to make it easier to get support when needed. By the same token, he advises that when working with Amazon, it is worth taking out one of the company's tiered support packages. He advises caution if you use outsourcing companies for your IT needs. As a former director level manager of one such company in his native New Zealand, McDonald has a good idea about how they work and the barriers they might put up to the cloud. “They might well envisage that they will lose most of their revenues by people moving to the cloud as they won't need to manage the servers and software and things any more. They will have to adapt or die, but  in the meantime they may resist. It really is a false dichotomy to fight the cloud.”

Where personal careers are concerned, for those aspiring to an executive position within IT, “It's really about being someone who can move things forward rather than being a blocker,” he says. “That's the way the cloud will move things, particularly. If you don't go and provide it for your users they will go and provide it for themselves.”

He says the biggest obstacle is people being scared. “But there's no need to be. Just test it and see how it  goes – that's the beauty of the cloud.”