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As I flew into Minneapolis, I turned off the reading light and looked out the window. The night was beautifully clear. Surrounded by a geometrically perfect array of lights, the city itself, rising out of the plain, appeared as a complex, luminous crystal.

It’s easy to forget to look at what we see. When we remember to, we walk, as the Navajo say, in beauty far more often than we realize.

The Greek island of Santorini formed when its more ancient predecessor, Thera, exploded some 2,500 years ago with a power that dwarfed the later Vesuvius and Krakatoa. Stand on its cliffs around sunset and you’ll see a marvelous vista. I’m jealous of geologists who regard the same view: I’m sure that in their minds they can see the eruption itself in all its terrifying power.

I learned this in the Black Hills of South Dakota thirty years ago. On a college field trip I looked at a spectacular landscape, admiring the beautiful view. Then our geology professor explained what we were looking at — how and where the earth had folded into mountains, then partially eroded away. As he did so, my sense of the place’s magnificence increased immensely, but he, I think, in his mind’s eye, actually saw the mountains form.

There are those who think that analyzing and understanding something exquisite somehow negates its beauty, making it cold and emotionless. Nothing could be further from the truth. Renaissance artists studied human anatomy to become better painters and sculptors and their increased knowledge improved their sense of beauty as well as their works: The difference between a craftsman and an artist is, after all, in the mind, not the hands.

By the time of the Renaissance, if not before, humanity had amassed more knowledge than any single human could learn in a lifetime. Certainly by the time Sir Isaac Newton died he had personally discovered more than most modern Americans ever learn, and the human race has learned infinitely more since then. Perhaps discouraged by the impossibility of ever learning even a tiny fraction of what’s known, many appear to prefer ignorance and make a virtue of it. What, after all, is the point in trying?

If there’s no other point, there is always this: While ignorance might be bliss, it certainly isn’t a pretty thing. We live in beauty, if we only know how to look. As evidence, those who truly understand music find gorgeous sound even in the ghastly (to me) twelve-tone compositions of Schönberg and Webern, impossible as it seems.

The more we know, the more we’re able to see beauty, since it is, in the end, in the mind of the beholder, not in the eyes and ears.

This holiday season, take the time to find it.

ManagementSpeak: We’re taking your proposal to the board this week.

Translation: There’s no way they’ll approve it, but maybe they’ll approve my pet project instead.

Or not, but the KJR board overwhelmingly approved this translation.

The Cloud is, too often, a solution in search of a problem. For many IT shops it is no longer a tool to be used in achieving a goal – it has become the goal.

Exacerbating the problem are the IT strategists who talk about the cloud without explaining which of cloud’s many definitions they’re talking about.

As always, KJR is here to help. And so, the next time the subject of “moving to the cloud” comes up, make yourself annoying by asking which cloud definition the speaker wants to move to. Among the possibilities:

Public cloud: A wholesale hosting solution, where IT can provision and de-provision (if that’s a word) virtual computing resources quickly and easily by just filling out a form.

Private cloud: A retail hosting solution, where IT can provision and de-provision virtual computing resources quickly and easily by just filling out a form, so long as IT has enough spare capacity on-line in its data centers to provision them.

Hybrid cloud: Public plus private cloud computing resources, seamlessly combined to use private cloud resources until they’re exhausted, then supplementing them with public cloud resources.

Software as a Service (SaaS): Commercial Off The Shelf Software (COTS, and no, I don’t know why the acronym only has one “S” in it) hosted in a public cloud.

Cloud as panacea: A version of public cloud that’s the driving force behind conversations that begin, “We don’t want to be in the data center business.” Sadly, like all acts of delegation, when IT outsources its infrastructure to a public cloud provider, the vendor is merely responsible for hosting IT’s applications. IT remains accountable however it hosts them.

Cloud as architecture: Establishing and enforcing the use of a standardized set of virtualized computing resources, so that all applications have identical hosting configurations.

Cloud discussions that don’t include cloud-as-architecture are likely to be pointless; also needlessly long.

Cloud-as-panacea discussions while even more likely to be pointless, will, in contrast, be mercifully brief.

Which brings us back to the SolarWinds fiasco.

An old but reasonably accurate critique of management consulting has it that management consultants will, if your organization is decentralized, recommend you centralize it to achieve efficiencies from economies of scale. If, on the other hand, your organization is centralized, we’ll recommend that you decentralize to encourage innovation by shortening decision chains and cutting down on bureaucracy.

The arguments in favor of IT’s collective move to public cloud computing is, for the most part, little more than an assertion that centralization is all upside with no downside – a panacea.

My concern: Not only isn’t it a panacea, but it creates enormous risks for the world economy. Why?

First: Public or not, without cloud-as-architecture it isn’t cloud. With cloud as architecture all computing resources a cloud provider delivers are, through the miracle of standardization, identical. While this certainly makes scaling much easier, it also means everything they host shares the same vulnerabilities.

Which in turn means public cloud providers will be more and more attractive targets because the very factors that make them appealing to IT make it easier for malicious actors to scale their attacks.

Bob’s last word: As SolarWinds-type breaches become more common, IT organizations will have to become increasingly sophisticated in performing cloud due diligence – not only on the cloud provider itself, but on its entire supply chain as well.

Bob’s sales pitch: What I’m selling is fame and fortune. Well, not exactly fame, but sort of; not fortune at all because I’m not going to pay you anything.

What’s the subject? ManagementSpeak is the subject. My supply is running low, and the demand is the same as always (one per KJR if I have any in stock that fit the subject).

So how about it? Keep your ears open and your translator engaged, and send in your juicy management euphemism … translation optional but appreciated. And make sure to let me know if I can give you credit as the source or you need to remain anonymous.