Knowledge 14: 'We're closing all our data centres' - Creative Artists Agency CIO

Speaking to Computing at Knowledge 14, Michael Keithley explains why he's moving all the celebrity talent agency's infrastructure into the cloud - even if some of his peers remain wary.

Worldwide talent and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which boasts celebrity clients including George Clooney, David Beckham, Kanye West and Christina Aguilera, is closing its data centres and moving almost its entire IT infrastructure into the cloud. It's a move that Michael Keithley, CIO at CAA, hopes will be completed this year.

"We're trying to close our main data centre in Los Angeles," he told Computing during an interview at ServiceNow's Knowledge 14 conference in San Francisco.

"We hope to have that done by July then consolidate everything by closing down all of our data centres globally. Of what's left, we're going to own and operate in Switch [a data centre provider] in Las Vegas and everything else will be in the cloud."

Keithley, who has held the position of CIO at CAA for 23 years, said the firm started working towards moving its IT infrastructure to the cloud after the owners spoke to technology industry luminaries at an event earlier this decade.

"My principals, who own the company, were at a retreat talking with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, people like that and they got the cloud vision. They came back and asked what's my cloud strategy? I replied that I don't really have one. So I got on board and that was probably three or four years ago," he said.

Keithley is glad the company made the move, with cloud technology now enabling agents to access important documents and email on any device as employees move away from desks to become more mobile.

"It's great, because it's really dovetailed with reality, what's happening. Here at ServiceNow, when I think about what I saw this morning compared with the previous half a dozen vendors that I've dealt with, it's night and day," he explained, adding that, like software updates for consumer devices, cloud technology is also regularly updated, allowing for the highest level of efficiency within the organisation.

"And it's like the expectations consumers have with the devices they use in their normal life, it's at the pace of innovation. Every six months I get a new version with new functionality. It's wonderful and that's what's driving it."

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Knowledge 14: 'We're closing all our data centres' - Creative Artists Agency CIO

Speaking to Computing at Knowledge 14, Michael Keithley explains why he's moving all the celebrity talent agency's infrastructure into the cloud - even if some of his peers remain wary.

Keithley described how CAA is rapidly moving towards being almost entirely cloud-based, describing it as "80 per cent there". He told Computing that the agility cloud offers has already been helpful to the agency, which has 10 subsidiaries across the globe from Los Angles to Beijing and is still expanding.

"We're acquiring companies on a global basis so being able to get people up and running rapidly is key," he explained, highlighting how the cloud helps to free up IT staff to perform important tasks.

"It frees up resources - both budget dollars and headcount. Because instead of people in data centres patching, racking, stacking, doing all the plumbing, you've outsourced all that to vendors like ServiceNow who take those dollars and headcounts and reapply them into great value for the business."

But while CAA has embraced the cloud, Keithley believes there are still many other CIOs who "don't get" the cloud, something which he believes can only have negative consequences for those firms.

"Quite frankly, among my peers, there are a lot of CIOs that still don't get it, that are terrified of the cloud. But there's a growing number that do understand the business proposition here. I imagine that most of the folks at the conference here probably get it, not all, but most," he said, adding that he believed some IT staff were resisting cloud due to fears it'll make their job obsolete.

"And when you get down to the individual contributor level, there's a lot of people whose whole identity of self-worth is 'This is what I know, I'm an Oracle database administrator, I'm an Exchange administrator' or whatever. And they're fighting this, resisting the cloud because it's their job, it's all they really know."

However, Keithley doesn't believe this is the way forward and that, in order for IT staff to ensure that they're still needed, they need to acquire the skills required to work with cloud technology.

"Some people can recognise this is reality and upgrade their skillset to be better in other areas, but others don't. And if you don't, your job prospects aren't very good," he concluded.