Issue solving in the cloud

This time not a story which I did a bit of research. This time not a long story, at least the intention is not to write one. This time about a thought I want to share with you.

The trigger for this thought was the failure of internet. As often I didn’t had the phone number available to call some service desk. Therefore I used my mobile and twitter account to express some #fail moment using a #service from some #provider

Within 10 minutes I got response from a service desk who noticed my call and asked for more info over twitter. Wow, I was taken serious, even more serious then providers took me before. They came to me to help me instead I asked them to help.

I provided some info with the idea: “We will see, perhaps it might work for me.”
Approximate 15 minutes later they came with the information that there was some kind of capacity shortage and they are working on it and asked me to have some patient.

Wow, not only they contacted me, they also shared information with me. How powerful twitter can be.
I shouted in the cloud and got help from some kind of desk. This made me think about the concept: “Issue solving in the cloud.”

Imagine that all apps, information, data etc are in the cloud. As user the chance of identification the service who can help me might even more challenging then solving the problem. Nowadays if we have an issue, we make a ticket or call someone to make a ticket and we have to wait and see. If I don’t know who to contact, why not make the provider responsible to monitor. We just need some rules, or perhaps even not. Who will tell.

Assume the following
- I want help
- I don’t know exactly who should help me
- apps are every where and nowhere, at least I don’t know were
- I have a tool which I can use to communicate

If there are a huge number of applications, you can do several things, use several issue tracking systems, (how can I monitor all?) Buy some service who does this for you (why do I need to pay more for something I don’t control?) or just communicate about it and use only those apps of organizations who also care.

Perhaps this can twitter also be for us. In this example I know what was not working for me I used the identifier #fail and a #provider name. Surprisingly, someone cared and responded; and informed me.

Perhaps this is the new way of issue solving, not writing huge reports what went wrong (only 140 characters) get help by interaction (question within time) taken seriously as a customer (provide service). No issue tracking list about metrics, no waste of time by spending more attention how to get the numbers right for management instead use that same time to investigate, learn, question and adapt.

I know this might be far away from the future how to deal with issues and provide service in the cloud. In my opinion if cloud is a new way of serving then also problem solving must be adapted to the this new way of working. Let change the roles. As we placed the apps in the cloud, the data in the cloud and the people in the cloud. The not store the issues on the ground and use the processes for solving as we do know. It might not fit. So let look fore other solutions out side the box into the cloud.

Just a few thoughts about issue solving in the cloud to share with you.