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Cloud-First, Cloud-Smart to Cloud-Minimalism – A Strategic Shift

Before we discuss the strategic shift in cloud computing adoption and various connected developments, let’s revisit the basics of cloud computing.

According to NIST, the essential characteristics of cloud computing are:

On-demand, with self-service capability: The consumer can provision the capacity without human intervention when required.

Board network access: The capability is available over the network and can be accessed easily through a standard mechanism.

The consumer benefits from resource pooling: The resources are dynamically assigned and reassigned. Capabilities are scalable as per consumer needs. The service should be measurable.

According to a report by Forrester, The State Of Cloud In The U.S., 2022, most U.S. enterprise infrastructure decision-makers are using at least one type of cloud deployment. Forrester released similar reports for Asia, covering Australia and New Zealand, China, India, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Asia is witnessing targeted growth for cloud-based deployment for applications and infrastructure portfolios.

With more and more companies realizing the benefits of cloud adoption, it is fast becoming a battleground, where companies aggressively pursue their plans to quickly onboard cloud at a near-to-limitless scale. These massive plans come with the “cloud-first” strategy.

Cloud-First Strategy — An Overview

Many organizations have attempted to define and refine the “cloud-first” strategy. Let’s highlight some common principles that can be the baseline for further analysis. Cloud-first strategy is often described by the following:

1. Using cloud services as the default, considering the five characteristics of cloud computing.
2. Designing for the cloud, architect cloud-native and limit customization.
3. Adopting cloud service functionality, automation practices, cloud-based security and other features.
4. Monitoring and measuring cloud services in real-time.

Prioritizing cloud services has led to short-term gains, providing the edge on agility and scalability. However, it also poses some challenges, and cloud-first is not a “one size fits all solution.” To top that, many companies have indicated cost sprawl and overrun, security & compliance concerns. Recognizing these challenges in the “Report to the President on Federal IT Modernization,” released in 2017 by Executive Order 13800,1 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pledged to update the Government’s legacy Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (“Cloud First”).

Cloud-First to Cloud-Smart Strategy

Cloud smart seems like the next step in the adoption of cloud computing. Gartner estimates that 60% of organizations that have adopted a cloud-first approach will switch to a cloud-smart approach by 2023.

Cloud smart addresses the practical implementation challenges. It shares a more comprehensive outlook, providing critical guidance toward security, procurement and workforce alignment.

Finally, it provides more mid-term gains for organizations, rather than focusing on “the here and now” problems.

The CIO Council created a list of actions as concrete steps to be cloud-smart. It outlines several topics, including developing methods of optimizing cloud usage, security architecture enhancement and implementation of security control at scale and collaborative processes to develop innovative models, considering sustainability, vendor lock-in and workforce development. To maximize the value of cloud computing, the cloud-smart approach enables organizations to assess, plan and execute the right mix of private, public, edge and on-premises needs without sprawling into the cloud providers. The top considerations are:

1. Setting realistic goals aligned with the key business outcome.
2. A selective investment strategy toward cloud computing, tools and services.
3. A roadmap toward cloud optimization keeping sustainability goals in mind.
4. Tight control of security and compliance.
5. Cloud exit strategy.

But how does cloud adoption maturity exploit cloud computing? One of the possible ways is to transition into more cloud-minimalism, which is decluttering, refining the value dimension of cloud computing to a more meaningful level of adoption keeping sustainability in mind.

Cloud Smart to Cloud Minimalism

Cloud waste rose at an average of 30% of cloud budgets in 2021. In 2022, it was 32%, according to Flexera. Stormforge reported that 75% of organizations suspected cloud waste. According to a report by PWC, about 53% of enterprises were yet to see “substantial value” from their investment.

Organizations must look at decluttering and refining the value dimension of the cloud. There is a significant focus on security and data protection. Mixing clouds with on-premises cloud computing capabilities is on the cards.

Organizations are also willing to take the next steps toward sustainability. Cloud minimalism focuses on a few optimized activities rather than a big-bang approach toward onboarding. One of the main drivers to investigate the next-generation cloud computing strategy is due to competing visions, goals and future scenarios triggered by complex cloud-based supply-chain models, a substantial shift in security and privacy, regulations and adoption of machine learning and data-driven models.

Cloud minimalism does not mean rejecting or following a specific big-bang way but consciously selecting and intentionally moving workloads to the cloud effortlessly.

Some factors influencing the choice for long-term strategic evolution are:

1. Sustainability Goals Take Center Stage: Sustainability is not a checkbox item. For example, Amazon targets to power 100% of its data centers with renewable energy by 2025. Microsoft aims to be “carbon negative” by 2030. However, operationalizing sustainability is more than just looking at these CSP targets, it is about sustainable engineering practices, controlling and managing waste and underutilization.

2. Security and Privacy Reimagined: Mega cloud security to micro cloud security, the future is about everything. Specifically regulatory and compliance-related guidelines will refine geographical boundaries for hosting applications, and categorization of sensitive information will lead to new security controls, and in some cases, limitations around cloud onboarding. Moreover, the explosion of data-centric applications will need additional controls seen as overheads for cloud providers to host such applications.

3. From Cloud-Native to Edge-Native: With the development, we will seek on-premises, cloud and edge hosting models as a mix for cloud-native to edge-native applications. Architectural evolution and modernization will help to optimally define boundaries.

4. AI Goes Mainstream: The AI era demands more systematic handling of data resources. It is critically important to define ownership, rights and governance posture. In the context of the cloud, it becomes more important to be selective and pragmatic: Where who and how the data is handled. Cloud and data minimalism are disruptive ideas to start but can reap long-term benefits. Developing and evolving AI applications toward processing clean, optimized and precise data with a mix of cloud and on-premise capabilities.

Applied Cloud Minimalism

Recently, we have experienced an explosion of tools and services in the cloud. Cloud computing strategy requires careful due diligence, moving forward. It is time to think “lightweight cloud playbook”. Applied cloud minimalism focuses on the existing workload, decluttering and simplifying the architectural posture, meter usage and optimizing the footprint. Applied minimalism will guide redundant workloads, lift and shift-based workloads and outdated or legacy tools and services.

Applying cloud minimization principles is not a “one size fits all solution”. However, mindful onboarding can bring new opportunities to cloud technology, for example, cloud management tools, responsible sharing and data optimization algorithms, etc.

Conclusion

It is important to look at the strategic goals and outline the short-to-long-term needs of the organization for cloud adoption. It might seem lucrative to embrace the cloud in its entirety in the short term, but it can bring some bottlenecks in the mid-to-long term. Short-term benefits around wholesale cloud onboarding can quickly vanish if there is limited pragmatic thinking and planning. Selectivity in investing in the cloud can bring more benefits in the mid-term to long term. With a more visionary approach toward selecting use cases and determining architectural choices, measuring and metering the impact to further optimize the footprint can be one option.

This article presents a disruptive approach to clouds. We do not know if cloud minimalism is the only answer to cloud complexity and clutter, but it provides some more pathways to meaningfully onboard and explore cloud computing.

June 26, 2024
From Cloud Chaos to Cloud Smart With Multi-Cloud Services

Organizations that embrace multi-cloud services experience real results and a heap of advantages—including greater resiliency, agility and data sovereignty. This is why it’s no surprise the majority of enterprises today are using two or more public clouds, with 81% reporting in a recent survey that they plan to adopt a multi-cloud strategy by 2024.

But despite the benefits, it’s also been proven that multi-cloud can be complicated and even overwhelming. It requires an entirely new approach to optimize workloads, simplify development and tackle a growing pattern of operational complexities. This has been described as cloud chaos, where greater cloud choice has led to a massive spike in complexity. Most report that building new apps is slow and cumbersome, and managing their entire app portfolio across disparate clouds is difficult and expensive. No wonder, when each cloud requires its teams to use proprietary tools that are siloed and incompatible with one another. Meanwhile, for the average employee, getting fast, secure access to critical apps from anywhere is imperative, yet it’s often a challenge. All this complexity has broad repercussions on the business, from managing costs to attracting and retaining top talent.

Tackling this multi-cloud complexity needs to start with creating a layer of abstraction that spans various, diverse cloud environments and doesn’t hinder access to each cloud provider’s unique services. However, organizations must take it a step further to solve the challenge of how best to build, manage, govern and optimize apps and workloads across a multi-cloud environment.

Multi-Cloud Services

Multi-cloud services—a fast-emerging category of IT services—are the key to helping organizations implement a multi-cloud strategy that simplifies and streamlines development, operations, networking and security across clouds. A multi-cloud service provides a consistent API, object model, identity management and other core functions across clouds. And, it has one or more of the following characteristics:

1. Runs on a single cloud but supports interactions with at least two different clouds
2. Runs on multiple clouds and supports interactions with at least two different clouds
3. Runs on any cloud or edge, even in disconnected mode, and basic operations are fully automated

Multi-cloud services can be used to standardize cloud infrastructure and operations into one platform to reduce the complexity of individually building or consuming the equivalent native services from multiple clouds. In this model, public clouds, data centers, private clouds and edge locations are all verticals, and multi-cloud services are horizontals that provide functionality across these environments.

Let’s take a closer look at the five most common categories of multi-cloud services and when to use them.

1. Application Services

Application services allow teams to use core services in a standardized manner across clouds. These core services include observability, replication, backup, and restoration. By implementing application services, enterprises can increase their speed of innovation and make their technologies easier to use. Examples of application services include developer tooling, databases, modular development platforms, artificial intelligence, machine learning and serverless and CI/CD capabilities.

2. Infrastructure Services

If your organization chooses to run its applications as VMs, containers, or both, using infrastructure services is the right move to standardize management and operations across the clouds. Different types of multi-cloud infrastructure services include the ability to manage and observe compute, storage and network services leveraging VMs or containers, infrastructure automation and Kubernetes management solutions. When applied, infrastructure services can improve resiliency, security, performance, interoperability and portability.

3. Security Services

When using multiple clouds, an issue enterprises run into is that each individual cloud has its own security tools and approaches, making it difficult to ensure your enterprise is protected against cyber threats. That’s where multi-cloud security services come in – centralizing security operations and secure software supply chains. Some examples of multi-cloud security services are network detection and response, endpoint detection and response, next-gen antivirus and secure access service edge. These services enable organizations to achieve cohesive visibility, context and control by providing a single interface.

4. End-User Services: Access to Data and Services

No matter how big your enterprise is, or how many applications you use, it’s necessary to provide the right level of access to applications and data. But this can prove difficult when you have a multi-cloud infrastructure. Multi-cloud end-user services, which consist of virtual desktops, device management and end-user application delivery, will provide your organization a uniform way for all employees to have quick, secure access to your applications, all while simplifying device management.

5. Data Plane

In the past, workloads were restricted to a single data plane contained within a single public or private cloud or edge location. Now with the rise of multi-cloud services, enterprises can run workloads in the multi-cloud data plane. A prime example of workloads running in the multi-cloud data plane is a distributed application that runs in multiple cloud provider environments. Part of the application might run in the private cloud and the other services are deployed in a public cloud. The multi-cloud data plane is where the containers, services and data exist and where user interaction occurs.

From Cloud Chaos to Cloud Smart

The desired destination of every multi-cloud journey should be to move from a position of cloud chaos to one of cloud smart. Being cloud smart means taking an architected and planned approach to multi-cloud and digital transformation. As more enterprises adopt multiple clouds, multi-cloud services will be key to becoming cloud smart by helping to reduce complexity and risk and proving the freedom to select the right cloud for all situations based on technical and business requirements.

October 4, 2022
Tackling the Complexities of Multi-Cloud With a New IT Model

The pandemic put incredible pressure on organizations to modernize and accelerate digital transformation efforts, with many businesses rushing to embrace cloud strategies in response. According to this year’s Enterprise Cloud Index from Nutanix, multi-cloud—an IT operating model that combines multiple clouds, public or private—is the most commonly deployed IT environment and the only IT model on an upward adoption trajectory. In fact, nearly two-thirds (64%) of organizations plan to operate a multi-cloud environment within three years.

But there are complexities and challenges of managing across cloud borders that organizations are still grappling with, and concerns about security, data integration and cost remain. Enterprises will need to find ways to leverage existing cloud investments and redefine best practices and what it means to have agility and resilience in IT.

Current Challenges

Businesses have traditionally been designed around managing costs, increasing efficiency and streamlining operations, but lean IT teams find themselves under new pressures to support the challenges we’re facing today. The pandemic forced organizations to prioritize implementations and view the public cloud as a quick solution for everything without proper due diligence at the expense of optimization. This approach lacked focus on strategic business outcomes, and ultimately led to increased complexity, higher costs and less flexibility. According to the study, 87% of respondents agreed that multi-cloud success requires simpler management across mixed-cloud infrastructures.

Enterprises also continue to rank improving security as a top IT priority, yet managing security was among the top multi-cloud challenges cited. Additionally, the majority of respondents (80%) say that moving apps can be time-consuming and costly, and 77% agree that workload portability is a significant challenge. This underscores the need for uniform management and operations across different cloud environments to avoid costly and time-consuming efforts to move applications.

“Cloud-Smart” approach to IT

Current cloud thinking is that there’s a “best” cloud environment for each workload or application, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the cloud. Organizations will start to move away from blanket cloud-first approaches to IT, and instead, be more thoughtful about which workloads run where. It is no longer a foregone conclusion that taking every app or workflow to the cloud permanently is the best course of action. The adoption of this “cloud-smart” approach, leveraging the most appropriate cloud environment for each use case, is likely a primary driver behind the proliferation of multi-cloud.

The use of IT infrastructure by organizations is becoming more strategic over time. Nearly three-quarters of IT professionals (72%) feel that the IT function in their businesses is seen as more strategic now than it was a year ago. While businesses are now viewing and using IT more strategically than ever before, the complexity of multi-cloud is creating challenges that are standing in the way of cloud success. Despite challenges, a strong case is made for why the future of IT is hybrid multi-cloud, a model that enables more operational consistency across clouds. In fact, 83% consider it ideal.

Multi-Cloud Supports New Ways of Working

The pandemic has changed how nearly all organizations operate, and the top reasons cited by businesses for changing their infrastructure and deployment models are improving remote work and collaboration. While an organizations’ remote workforces may fluctuate, they are here to stay for the foreseeable future and IT will need to be nimble to support a remote, hybrid workforce and keep people productive and connected regardless of location.

Over half (61%) of organizations are focused on offering more flexible work setups because of the pandemic, and multi-cloud supports this new way of working. It offers the most agile IT environment for supporting this kind of flexibility by distributing data and allowing remote access to business applications from diverse geolocations for user proximity and business continuity, and enabling organizations to implement technology that helps retain and attract talent.

Multi-cloud is here to stay—and is the only operating model that is expected to increase in the coming years. 2022 will bring about a shift towards hybrid multi-cloud deployment as organizations look to take advantage of what each cloud has to offer while still having the flexibility and freedom of choice around their applications and data. This would deliver on the flexibility and agility that most organizations seek to compete in today’s digital world while enabling enterprises to significantly simplify operations. Future-proofing cloud strategies is the key to building IT resilience.

April 25, 2022