Procrastinating The Cloud Adoption

While there is no official and documented evidence of who actually first coined the term “cloud computing”, the current public cloud leader Amazon, started selling Infrastructure services to businesses in 2006[1]. However, centralised computing being accessed remotely (the conceptual architecture of cloud computing) can be traced back to Mainframe computing of 1970s[2]. 

However, we still see many organisations not yet there in cloud adoption – many have not even started or the ones who have, are not getting the benefits that the business cases of cloud adoption portrayed. The reasons are justifiable, fundamental and appropriate, as:

1.     Models and services are different for each provider. For instance, an entry level virtual machine – should it be 1 vCPU and 2GB memory (a1.medium from AWS) or 1vCPU an 1GM memory (B1S from Azure)? And models (pay-as-you-go, reserved instances and so on) are evolving regularly. By the time technology team gets the handle, the procurement team has lost their will to sign the contract or wrong models are signed.

2.     Licensing impact – is it better to stick to Azure and go with Microsoft ecosystem or try Google Cloud Platform as it seems to have better integration with open source products? What will be the impact of buying ‘x’ amount of hardware on the software licensing? Why not delay the migration as software renewal cycle is still two quarters away? These are quite common and correct reservations.

3.     Multi cloud – this one is especially overwhelming for organisations who have either not yet moved to “any particular cloud” or are beginning to get used to “a particular cloud”. Now the sales pitch of cloud providers has found a new theme in spreading the risks by adopting a multi-cloud strategy. But, does this mean more cash outflow to setup and support? Will it really provide business continuity - as in will it work when the disaster really strikes, with so many different technologies inter-operating?

4.     Skills gap – well, almost every day we can see someone’s certificate on Linkedin from some “cloud provider”, becoming an “expert’, “architect” and other marketable certifications. Still plenty of roles don’t fit the bill. Where’s the gap? Every organisation wants all such skills with practical exposure to design, build, migrate and support across all clouds. Add to it the automation, standardisation and other such functionalities. No wonder, it ends up in designing a solution that’s different from the one envisaged and mostly a half-baked one. To play an orchestra (read adopting cloud) you need to have a conductor who is well versed with which instrument (read skills) to use and when. And there are very few conductors in the market. 

The list can be even bigger. But yes, am sure you got the message by now.

This all leads to Procrastination of The Cloud Adoption.

But if we look closely, we already are consumers of various cloud services - email and other collaboration tools, sales, marketing, HR applications and so on. Skills are being developed and enhanced, some on the fly and others consciously. 

A pragmatic way to adopt a multi-cloud (well, yes that’s what is going to happen eventually) environment could be to:

1.     Start with use cases across various business units within the organisation. Yes, often repeated but not religiously followed. The one who have a need and the ones who have money are usually better options.

2.     The technology roadmap, addressing the roadblocks, cited above, needs to be built in an agile way, with each sprint implementing the business use cases. Start slow and deliver results. This will ensure the business trust the technology and technologists develop skills in a seamless way.

3.     An overarching technology governance and assurance model with skills from various inhouse and external partners. Yes, we need to bring back the partner culture. “we and them”, “vendors and hence live by SLAs and commercials” etc is surely a short-sighted view. A collaborative approach is the mantra, as the type and amount of skills and experience needed can come from multiple sources only.

Cloud (any type, model or size, in your premises or someone’s else) has become a metaphor for transformation, and that’s what is needed for businesses to move to next level in order to survive and eventually grow. It is the foundation for automation, blockchain and other such concepts, models and technology evolutions. Let’s avoid the Procrastination of The Cloud Adoption in 2019.

[1]https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/

[2]https://www.ibm.com/blogs/cloud-computing/2014/03/18/a-brief-history-of-cloud-computing-3/