Don't Get Lost in The Cloud: Why Hybrid Cloud Should be Rooted in Guiding Principles
By now, it’s almost certain that you’re no longer able to walk up to a server farm – either in your own data center or a colocation facility – and create a physical inventory of machines that collectively host each of the applications used within your enterprise. Chances are that something runs, at least partly, in the cloud.
It’s likely that you’re familiar with the “Pizza as a Service” analogy that makes the concepts of who does what in on-prem, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) configurations more easily consumable. If not, this is one of the better summaries, and adds in Containers as a Service (CaaS) and Function as a Service (FaaS) for good measure:
Image adapted from: https://engineering.dunelm.com/pizza-as-a-service-2-0-5085cd4c365e
Most of today’s enterprises leverage a mix of pizza options to meet their dining (technology and hosting) needs. For some enterprises, it’s evolved gradually over the course of years. Others are leveraging this mix only to accommodate interim, tactical solutions. Some companies may be implementing a variety of pizza options as pilot projects. In rare instances, hybrid environments are being deployed according to a planned roadmap in a truly strategic way.
There is no “right” answer to what the mix of pizza options are for all situations, but organizations must remind themselves that variability adds complexity, and decisions made based only on isolated considerations (e.g. speed or cost) can lead to problems down the road.
This post does not attempt to steer your mix of pizza consumption in one direction or another. Rather, we assert that “the genius of the AND” is your friend, as long as you’ve taken steps to consider the strategic and operational impacts and have guiding principles that drive consistent decisions and implement controls that ensure safe (secure), predictable (quality), and affordable (total cost) consumption when living in this Hybrid Cloud world – and they’re aligned to driving IT objectives and business outcomes.
Let’s explore some of these guiding principles and considerations:
Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles exist to help in decision making, and to ensure a consistent application of “best practices” adopted by an organization. These are wholly independent of, but should guide, the Hybrid Cloud discussion.
Guiding Principles should be established and considered a living document. Update them when needed. (I’m reminded of the 7th point of the scout law: A Scout is Obedient. A Scout follows the rules of his family, school, and troop. He obeys the laws of his community and country. If he thinks these rules and laws are unfair, he tries to have them changed in an orderly manner rather than disobeying them.)
Guiding Principles should include (but not be limited to):
A definition of the “Why” for your business to ensure every decision is grounded in and serves to further your company’s core purpose
Definitions of how success is measured, and in what timeframes
Build versus Buy preferences to guide investments
Staffing / sourcing preferences to guide hiring vs contracting
…and more
Top Cloud Considerations
Once a decision has been made to leverage the Cloud, considerations must be made to determine how this new model will impact your day-to-day processes, roles and responsibilities, and to what extent it simplifies or introduces complexity into the environment. Here are some examples:
Operational Considerations
Will operational responsibilities be centralized, or will the adoption of DevOps processes cause responsibilities to be shared?
Development teams may monitor their own applications and bring their own tools. Do policies, procedures, and standards support that?
Does existing tooling serve to provide monitoring insights covering all aspects in the Hybrid Cloud model, or are there gaps? Will new tools be introduced? Will the resulting data be consolidated into a single view?
Do current monitoring capabilities enable business-level insights, or does the monitoring stack provide only technical up/down information?
Do Cloud-based environments provide deeper insights that cause you to reconsider your existing capabilities / approach?
Do your support staff have the skills needed to support your hybrid environment? If not, what is your plan to close that gap?
Cultural Considerations
How does the introduction of Cloud complicate existing roles and responsibilities? Are there people who might feel threatened by Cloud adoption? It’s best to surface these issues and address them head-on to prevent adoption challenges.
How will you foster a culture of change across the organization?
How will you encourage adoption of new tools and technologies?
Security Controls
Do legacy security policies support a Hybrid Cloud operating model, or must they be updated?
Are On-Prem and Public Cloud permissions enabled and controlled by a common solution?
What will firewalls protect, and what other tools/processes/controls need to be deployed to enable a secure environment?
Are the blind spots in your various architectures that need to be addressed? Do you continually audit to look for additional exposures?
FinOps
Do your financial planning processes account for “rent” versus “own” realities presented by Cloud-based solutions?
Are budgets defined and reported against to ensure actual spend and planned spend amounts are aligned over time?
If spend overages occur, do you have processes in place so that it’s a learning opportunity versus an individual’s “fault”?
Do you have monitoring capabilities to detect changes in Public Cloud spend before month-end billing?
These are but a few of the many considerations as well-managed Hybrid Cloud must address. As stated, there is no “right” mix of pizza options, so for additional thoughts, or to bounce ideas around in attempts to improve your current environment, please feel free to reach out – Burwood can help with current-state assessments, strategy and roadmap development, implementations, operations, security, and more!
March 6, 2023
