Managing, Planning and Leading in the Cloud

Here is what to focus on as we move into another wave of new and world-changing technologies:

1. Policies. You are going to have to manage by policies, and those policies are going to have to be objective and measurable. In the past we could all get away with having subjective policies because nobody, in fact, read them or paid attention to them in the slightest. Policy based management was usually considered to be a convenient way to keep managers occupied and out of the worker’s way. In the coming cloud, your policies will be programmed right into your computing environment to govern how information is used and managed. Policies will be the organizing principle for virtual information management.
2. Metadata and Taxonomy Organization. You are going to have to track metadata about information being created and used in your organization. The information is going to move freely between knowledge workers, governed only by the policies that you implement in your computing environment. Metadata is going to be the only method of tracking and managing the pedigree and circulation of information in your organization.In my humble opinion, metadata is NOT primarily about finding things. Metadata is about traceability, quality control, audience management and security. Metadata is not about location it is about context.