eWEEKChat

A7: (1) Multicloud does not solve vendor lockin (2) Multicloud does not mean you are free to move workloads on a whim (3) Multicloud does not magically provide resilience or solve complexity...infact it only makes it worse

A7: Myth: It’s all about the costs. While cost efficiencies are part of the equation, having a #multicloud strategy isn’t strictly about $$ but about optimizing fit for your needs. It’s about efficiently & effectively delivering your service or application first & foremost

@bmcsoftware Indeed. I think cloud was sold early on as a cost saver, but it's never been the real value. Instead, think scale and function.

A7: Flexibility will result in efficiencies. Multiple engagements can grow to unnecessary or mismanaged spend.

@ramsba yes. no magic bullet. and abstraction and layers only create more complexity, latency, cost. Best execution venue still wins.

@bmcsoftware ...and I have my cloud-provider's bill to prove it :-)

A7 That's there's an easy button to make it happen. https://www.crowdchat.net/s/96a7k

@bernardgolden We all want that button! Does it have AI? :)

Next version of button

you're going to have multiple cloud providers in your shop regardless of best intent. There are no central IT dictates -- BUs will do what they want because they can.

@bernardgolden LOL

@cloudDay_2 That BU piece is golden. Seen too many cases where BUs are simply given autonomy to choose cloud & region as the need dictates. Tough job for central IT team if there needs to be one

Autonomy is like entropy, there is only one direction in reality, central teams need to accept this and plan for it. More governance, less mandates

A6. Unless you are a company that was formed in the last 3-5 years, hybrid cloud is the normal - onprem + lots of public cloud. Public cloud piece here could be multicloud, single cloud etc.

A6: In my experience, large enterprises are rarely 1-cloud only shops. The reality is that most customers are "hybrid multicloud" - i.e., they have some applications & infrastructure in data centers that they manage & the rest are spread across multiple public cloud platforms.

@bmcsoftware This does appear to be true: "The reality is that most customers are "hybrid multicloud""

Now unless the onprem piece is <10% of the problem, you want to have consistency in operations - so naturally cloud providers focus there ... 2 viewpoints here. Cloud-Out (vs) Onprem-in - choices will differ depending on center of gravity

There's too many BS terms floating around, generated by vendors that want to sell old stuff. @JamesMaguire

@cloudDay_2 True that!

A6 As others have said, all enterprises have significant on-prem environments, so "hybrid." What I find interesting is how many enterprises are planning to completely exit their own data centers and move everything to public cloud.

A6: Hybrid cloud strategy invites multicloud solutions. Multicloud vendors focus on hybrid, because prospects looking at the hybrid model are primed for change and a partner.

@cloudDay_2 The marketing teams will be up in arms desperately seeking to show differentiation - but agree with you 100%. Too much focus on terminology and we haven't even touched "Edge" yet

We live in a hetergenous world with lots of old and new. Important we leverage the old, not dismiss it, but actively seek to pay down tech debt and build new, leveraging the latest, greatest. Talent is attracted to the latter, not the former.

A6: Biggest challenge with hybrid is orgs would love to make on-prem cloud-capable, but legacy environments (and esp) control plane make that very challenging. That's why hypercloud providers exist!

I'm more interested in cross-cloud solutions than multi-this or that. Focus on security, policy, governance, standards, cost -- that's critical to create value from tech investments.

@cloudDay_2 +1

@bernardgolden It's easier said than done for those companies. Hybrid is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Vendors use hybrid to rationalize their old stuff -- survive another day. There's no doubt there are enterprise requirements at the edge, in remaining DCs and in the public cloud.

A5: My advice - cost optimization is not a 1-time event. Orgs planning to move from on-prem to #cloud need to look at costs & optimize not only their choice of cloud platform but how best to adopt their chosen platform and continuously adapt.

A5: If a company is in the optimization phase without a solid architecture or operating model underneath, then I'd start with the arch / ops first. But assume they have the arch, team structure and operating model down ... then few things that I've seen across co

Arch - choose what u want to consume cloud-native, vs what will be layer on top

A5: Devise cloud strategy and architecture based on vendor strengths and in-house needs in your niche. Align with a true partner that is forming public partnerships with other cloud providers.

A5: I always suggest separating app-specific functionality and artifacts from core systems (monitoring, security components, IAM, etc.). Ensure consistency across core systems and then let app-specific choices be made to achieve specific functionality

Team - invest in a cloud center of excellence COE for good X-functional decision making.

Ops - have a good mix of domain expertise and programmability. If you strive too far right or left, you'll have a mess.

A5: If your use cases warrant multicloud, embrace it. Optimize for the business outcome rather than platform feature / function type tradeoffs.

(edited)

A5 Example of app-specific functionality is database choice. I don't think there's any advantage in a company operating its own, say, MySQL implementation rather than letting an app use a managed MySQL service. More important is ensuring sec reqs for database imp

A5: In a #datacenter world it was all about one-time or periodic #Capex optimization. With #multicloud, it really becomes a challenge of continuous Opex optimization - so you're not surprised by that cloud bill at the end of the month.

@BMCSoftware Spot on - The "continuous" part of this is the hard part. Doing this one time is great but waking up next day to see a completely different set of optimizations screws this up.

A5 @bernardgolden great point. Don't use least common denominator thinking to stay "cloud neutral", its about being "cloud leveraged" to help your business get the best outcome

(edited)

A5 reskill your people, ruthlessly standardize, set policy, enable the business to succeed.

A5 Establish the right metrics so you can tell if multicloud is the right option for your company, and if your implementation is actually yielding the results you are after.

A4: Proactive market standardization, building with open-source, built-in security, and security vendors as secondary measure

A4: Adopting tools that accurately map the business service across the #stack, ingest a large volume, wide-variety of #data (metrics, events, logs) from multiple sources & use #AI-powered intelligence, #ML & analytics to proactively prevent & quickly fix issues.

@Chris_Ehrlich completely agree, open is the best way to avoid trading off one type of lock-in for another

First deep breaths always help :-). But in all seriousness, invest in a layer on top of cloud-native capabilities. Think about how to achieve outcomes / experience / simplicity. We have several examples of this - Terraform for IaC, Redis / snowflake for data/DB

A4: Also, specialist vendors will solve the central management issue. The opportunity to own the category is too large to leave unsolved.

(edited)

@ramesh Is this top layer a management layer?

@Chris_Ehrlich +1 for using opensource and strive for some level of standardization. Challenge is knowing when to use cloud-native (because of its advantages) vs when to invest on top

A4. there's a serious resistence to change that is preventing orgs from capitalizing on new technology.

Management & visibility certainly, but it cloud also be a shim on top of core capabilities. In the infrastructure space, this could mean security APIs, proxies etc. Ultimately you want to operating on top of this common layer - not the underlying constructs

@ramsba When adding a top layer across different cloud environments is important and key is mapping that to business services.

@BMCSoftware 100%

you can always hire a bunch of consultants. :-) But seriously, orgs need to take responsibility and establish a Dev_Sec_Fin_Ops approach with consistent policy, security and oversight.

@cloudDay_2 critically important to realize that the vendors, skills, tools, workflows that worked for you in the past, don't necessarily apply to the future.