Why the Telegraph group is glad to have its head in the clouds

The Daily Telegraph appears to have its head in the clouds, though this is not meant in any way to be a criticism.

Indeed, in cyber circles, it is regarded as a major plus that the paper has embraced, to use the jargon, "a cloud adoption strategy".

Bernard Golden, reporting on the recent Cloud Computing World Forum in London, was full of praise for a presentation by Toby Wright, chief technology officer at the Telegraph Media Group.

It was both fascinating and compelling, to say the least, observes Golden, claiming that the Telegraph's IT approach can be summed up as "let someone else run operations."

He says Wright outlined his firm's use of SaaS (software as a service) applications as follows: Salesforce for customer interaction; Google for email and collaboration; Ooyala for video distribution; Disqus for blog comments; and Cordys for business process management and workflow.

Golden writes: "Essentially, Wright wants to get out of the business of running kit, recognising that specialised providers operate less expensively than he could in a self-hosted data centre."

More from Wright's presentation (as reported by Golden):

SaaS-forward strategy lets the Telegraph IT organisation focus on delivering application functionality that helps the Telegraph offer more value to its readers (or more accurately, content consumers).

In fact, the Telegraph's IT strategy is that 100% of new business ventures will be cloud-based. No software procurement or hardware provisioning looms on the horizon.

Wright also gave a practical example of the way in which editorial staff are interacting with website users. He described how a Telegraph writer preparing to review a digital camera began by posting a picture of the box in which the device arrived.

Then, over the course of a couple of weeks, she posted updates of her progress in evaluating the camera, with lots of photos and comments about her experience getting up to speed with it. By the time her final review was written, she had created a group of followers looking forward to the piece.

Golden writes: "This kind of engagement is the hallmark of social media, and community involvement is the sine qua non of the business environment of the future.

"Applications that make it easy to publish and support rich involvement via comments and online video help the Telegraph play in the changing world of media, content, and community engagement."

Golden argues that the Telegraph "didn't have a choice about changing the way it did computing" because its "wretched financial situation... forced a re-evaluation of its IT practices." (Well, it's not really wretched, given that TMG makes a profit, but that's Golden's take (or Wright's), not mine).

Anyway, back to Golden's narrative.

The Telegraph's experience provides evidence of how cloud computing supports IT becoming a value provider rather than a cost centre.

As long as IT conversations are dominated about investing capital in infrastructure, and the majority of its budget is devoted to 'running the business,' it will be placed with the other internal service organisations and excluded from discussions about how IT can help frontline business units deliver greater value...

The Telegraph provides an instructive lesson in how rapidly the business world is changing and how imperative it is to move to an IT approach that supports it.

Ten years ago the newspaper world was one of the greatest industries extant, with net profit margins well north of 20%. Today, it's a wasteland of red ink, layoffs, and mergers. Ten years from first to worst. That's how quickly... When change is afoot, it's critical to be nimble.

Indeed, it is. And that's the lesson we journalists - desperately trying to preserve old practices - also have to embrace, despite the pain.

Source: CIO