Your multicloud strategy is all wrong

Multicloud seems like such a great idea. It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t work. It would be OK if multicloud helped customers but vendors were hurt in the process, but the opposite is true: Vendors are cleaning up by selling multicloud snake oil while customers keep getting stuck with lowest common denominator cloud strategies and sky-high expenses.

There’s got to be a better way.

The multicloud dream

Much of what enterprises say about their multicloud strategies is complete and utter rubbish. The idea of buying into multiple clouds to pit them against each other for price negotiations is one of my favorites, because the end result of buying into multiple clouds is multiple ways to lose track of cloud expenses. Not only that, but it’s beyond bizarre to think that, hard as it is to master just one cloud, adding others somehow will result in less cost, as Steve Chambers has written:

It is an indisputable fact that to be good at just one cloud, never mind many, you have to invest in trained and experienced people, evolved processes, and new tooling and technology. This can cost millions of dollars and months of experience. Some people never get good at one cloud, [therefore…]
1: You will have much higher overheads the more clouds you have
2: The more clouds you have the more shallowly you will experience each cloud.

That “shallow” experience, in addition to increasing costs, will tend to diminish the very benefits enterprises seek in the cloud: agility and innovation. I’ve seen this up close, when the decision to embrace a second cloud sent costs skyrocketing as we straddled two clouds with our workloads. The workloads never worked as well on the second cloud as they had on the first, partly due to a lack of familiarity with the second cloud and partly because the second cloud simply lacked many of the features we needed. Worse, it became that much harder to achieve resilience and security when juggling workloads across clouds.

“But… but… but… vendor lock-in!” you say. Well, as Derek Martin posits, the idea of being vendor agnostic is just that: an idea, and one that doesn’t work well in reality:

From a strategic direction perspective, it can make a great deal of sense to back multiple horses. “No vendor lock-in,” they promise. The fallacy here is that if you don’t back a horse, you will lose all vendor safety valves the very moment you go beyond the “least common denominator” of cloud services: storage, network, compute. To some in the C Suite, we hear that this is a good thing! “We’ll be vendor agnostic and move workloads between any cloud we choose.” No. You. Won’t. And if you try, you’ll lose time, money, and, tragically, data….
The naysayer will say, “Oh, we’re just gonna use containers for everything and then we’ll truly be agile and cloud agnostic.” No. You. Won’t. All cloud providers offer a common denominator of compute, storage, and networking—this we’ve discussed. But you cannot possibly take into account all of the nuances of each cloud’s specific implementation of containerization technology or governance any more than you could have a common storage endpoint for all clouds or a common networking model for all clouds or a common…. And if you try, kernel panics and failed PODs will happen. I’ve seen it, I’ve hugged the engineers that have tried it.

In short, the reasons enterprises often cite for going multicloud don’t hold up when put into practice. And yet Dominic Briggs, Sabre’s senior director of enterprise technology operations, isn’t wrong when he said in an interview that multicloud makes sense for enterprises that want to use “particular clouds for particular workloads.” So what’s an enterprise to do?

Partnering for success

As one cloud vendor told me, “If you want consistent management across clouds, you can’t use any of the unique features of those clouds. As soon as you decide ‘I’ll use RDS or Cosmos DB,’ then all of a sudden your application isn’t portable to another cloud.”

Forced to choose, my guess is most enterprises want the higher-order services from particular clouds more than they want that portability across clouds. The latter may appeal to accounting, but the former appeals to the teams tasked with driving agility and innovation within an enterprise. If you had to pick one of those teams to appease, pick the developers. Every. Single. Time.

However, siding with developers doesn’t mean that an enterprise needs to cede control of its IT to a vendor. Rather, by going deep with a vendor, not only does that enterprise put itself in a position to develop more expertise with that cloud, but it also sets itself up as a VIP with that cloud.

Anyone who has worked in enterprise software knows that while “all animals are created equal,” following Animal Farm logic, “Some animals are more equal than others.” Vendors always tend to listen to their most committed customers, and that “commitment” isn’t merely a matter of money. The cloud vendors, like all enterprise IT vendors, will tend to partner with those customers who help them to push the envelope on innovation and publish success stories (case studies, conference keynotes, etc.).

As Martin writes, “Back a horse and become a partner to that provider, not merely a customer. Trust me, we’re looking for a few good true partners to not only help you digitally transform, but help us digitally transform with you.”

This is the right way to think about agility, security, innovation, and cost in the cloud. Multicloud sounds nice, and it offers second-tier cloud vendors hope that they can serve some niche role within your cloud stack. Don’t be fooled. Enterprises that spread themselves between multiple clouds will slow innovation and agility, not increase them, while increasing costs and decreasing security. There’s not much to love in that “strategy.”

Reprinted From:

https://www.techworld.com.au/article/664864/your-multicloud-strategy-all-wrong/?fp=4&fpid=9

With 91 percent of business leaders considering hybrid cloud to be the ideal IT model, investments in it are skyrocketing.

Industries like manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare are heavily adopting the multi-workload environment approach with hopes to modernise their operations and improve customer service platforms.

But while there is a shift towards cloud-first across key enterprise IT markets, the reality is that cloud isn’t always the answer for all businesses, and while Cisco predicts 94 percent of workloads will run in the cloud by 2021, many workloads aren’t ready for the cloud just yet or the economics still stack up in favour of on-premises.

Because of this, application ecosystems are becoming increasingly more complex as they grow in size, scope, and exist across multiple mediums.

Integrating and managing application workloads across private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise is the new norm – a ‘hybrid IT infrastructure’ approach – but can leave businesses contending with the challenge of not just dividing workloads between each of them, but also then being able to effectively connect a geographically-spread workforce to them.

How are organisations addressing these challenges?

Organisations’ approach to networking hasn’t kept up with their infrastructure.

As more Australian businesses come to rely on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications for mission critical functions, increased bandwidth becomes more important. Because of this, businesses have increasingly been turning to software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) solutions to address this and other challenges. In fact, 33 per cent of Australian enterprises have already deployed or are in the process of deploying an SD-WAN solution.

The main benefit of SD-WAN is that it dynamically combines private MPLS networks, public fixed line broadband internet and mobile broadband, routing data traffic in the most efficient way possible for the given application. Ultimately, SD-WAN intends to improve the end-user network application experience without compromising security or increasing routing management complexity, and provides networking application visibility in the process.

SD-WAN is not just private networks over the public Internet, done cheaply as some service providers attempting to enter the telco space are touting. The confidence and control offered by MPLS connections still form an integral part of SD-WAN.

Hybrid networking: The best of both worlds

Every business has IT infrastructure that is unique to their needs and requires a tailored set of systems and applications across the entire stack. A one-size-fits-all SD-WAN solution may not cover all bases and a blanket MPLS solution might not cut it, but by incorporating the two into a hybrid IT model, businesses can get the best of both technologies.

A hybrid networking model that layers SD-WAN over the top of underlying MPLS, integrated with low-cost broadband, allows businesses to carve out their own bespoke solution that is suited to their unique requirements.

Through a hybrid networking strategy like this, businesses can have the predictable, low-packet loss, private, and reliable backbone provided by MPLS, whilst simultaneously benefiting from the advantages of aggregate bandwidth and reduced operational costs by using SD-WAN.

For example, say you have SaaS applications running in both the cloud and on premises. Deploying SD-WAN in the cloud as well as over a traditional MPLS network allows businesses to leverage their application bandwidths intelligently. And because SD-WAN routes data packets at the edge, mission-critical applications can then be prioritised over less-important applications without having to be back-hauled to a centralised data centre – saving both time and resources.

SD-WAN’s edge capabilities also ensure businesses are secured at every point across the business through unified visibility and monitoring of traffic, creating a unified security of devices.

The decisions ahead

When looking to implement the latest technology into your organisation’s IT stack, stop and think of whether you need to go all-in or not. More often than not, businesses will find themselves needing a mix of both cloud and on-premises solutions – or that that is in fact the most cost-effective, secure and high-performing solution. It should naturally follow, therefore, that they’ll need to adopt a hybrid networking approach to facilitate it.

Don’t get caught up in all the buzz around SD-WAN. Yes, it’s a great solution, but is rarely going to be the best one on its own – would your organisation be able to cope if/when your NBN connection goes down?

So what’s next? Figuring out how to create the best networking backbone for your organisation can be tricky. Businesses need to identify their unique needs before investing in any network solution, but those who fail to realise the benefits of combining technologies and adopting a hybrid networking approach that can work hand-in-hand with your hybrid IT infrastructure approach, risk losing out on reduced costs and improved operational efficiencies.

Reprinted From:

https://www.techworld.com.au/article/665759/why-businesses-need-hybrid-networking-strategy/?fp=4&fpid=9

The cloud has long been touted as a way for enterprises to save money, whether it’s through reduced on-premises servers and storage systems, decreased software licensing, less need for equipment maintenance, or fewer requirements for in-house expertise.

But do cloud services actually result in cost savings? The quick answer is, it depends. A number of factors come into play, including the types of cloud services a company uses and from which providers, how well the services are managed by the customer, the terms of the contract, the level of existing IT efficiencies within the organization, and more.

When discussing the benefits of the cloud, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not just about cost savings. There are non-monetary reasons to adopt a cloud service, such as increased agility, faster time to market, and lack of in-house resources.

It always seems to start with money, however. Here are four organizations that have actually seen cost benefits from using the cloud, compared with deploying applications and workloads on internal systems.

Avery Dennison: Cloud first approach

Avery Dennison, a global materials science and manufacturing company specializing in labeling and functional materials, has a goal of making IT a core competitive advantage. One of the ways it’s doing this is by building a hybrid cloud environment designed to deliver flexible and cost-efficient tools and services to users.

As part of the strategy, the company has invested in four key cloud-first programs: digital workplace, modern telephony platforms, cloud storage gateway, and secure cloud solutions. “Together, these programs are improving scalability, cycle times, reliability, and security so our workforce can work smarter, faster, and safer,” says Nicholas Colisto, vice president and CIO.

The digital workplace program revamps traditional processes, with the goal of boosting productivity, protecting digital assets, and increasing efficiency, Colisto says.

“By creatively integrating on-premises and cloud technologies, our IT team has enabled our employees to effortlessly embrace a culture of collaborative productivity,” Colisto explains. At the same time, the initiative has driven an annual run rate savings of US$5 million. “We are looking forward to a similar magnitude of cost avoidance in the upcoming years,” he says.

As part of the modern telephony initiative, during the past three years Avery Dennison has gradually replaced its legacy PBX systems with a cloud-based virtual phone system.

The program supports a broader business strategy of using capital effectively, as it avoids costly on-premises products and reduces the company’s total cost of ownership. “Our approach is to migrate sites to the cloud telephony service during the refresh cycle, largely for cost avoidance,” Colisto says.

The costs of procuring a local PBX exceedes $1.5 million, and while savings varies based on individual sites, Avery Dennison has realized a 25 percent to 40 percent reduction in costs. Today, 47 of its 190 global sites are on the cloud telephony platform.

Another cloud effort, the storage gateway, began in 2013 as the company realized the cost benefits of a cloud data backup and archival service by implementing a storage gateway into IaaS cloud computing.

Avery Dennison achieved $500,000 in savings from removing off-site tape storage and backup infrastructure. The latest iteration of the storage offering features tight integration of the company’s backup software and IaaS storage provider, enabling a faster recovery of servers to increase availability.

Finally, the company has been adopting cloud-enabled security technologies to accelerate the migration of mobile apps to the cloud. The cloud security stack consists of next-generation end point protection, security information and event monitoring, identity controls, Web security, vulnerability management, threat intelligence, and cloud application security broker services.

“As a result of this program, we have been able to onboard security solutions more quickly, while allowing our team to focus on cyber security without having to manage the complexity of the underlying on-premises infrastructure,” Colisto says. Although there’s no measured cost benefit, the company has reduced the time to gain security enhancements from more than six months to just weeks.

“We have also achieved a higher level of protection by leveraging the shared intelligence of the security community,” Colisto says. “As a result of our hybrid cloud strategy, we are achieving the flexibility, scalability, reliability, and security to enable our digital transformation,” he says.

Riso: Upgrading the IT environment

Riso, a manufacturer of printers and digital copiers, faced a number of challenges with its existing IT environment. These included running business applications on outdated servers, storage and network hardware that didn’t deliver the needed performance, operational expenses that were too high, complexity of managing an infrastructure that spanned multiple locations, and working with multiple IT vendors and support contracts that led to significant management overhead.

“We knew it was time to make the move to the cloud, especially as it was holding us back from focusing on our core business of selling and maintaining cost-effective digital printing,” says Chris Gattoni, manager of IT at Riso.

The company worked with Apps Associates, a managed services and cloud migration provider, to migrate its on-premises applications to Amazon Web Services. First, Apps Associates executed a complete study of Riso’s existing IT infrastructure and costs.

Next, the services provider created a proof of concept and validation for moving Oracle Enterprise Business Suite (EBS) and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), as well as backup operations, to the cloud.

With a detailed plan in place, Apps Associates began migrating Riso’s applications to AWS, an initiative that took about six months. Apps Associates started with the SQL server, Oracle EBS, OBIEE and Active Directory Domain controllers, as well as support applications.

Riso also replaced tape storage backups with a cloud disaster recovery service using Amazon S3, and included a site-to-site VPN between AWS and its warehouses and corporate headquarters, enabling access from five separate locations.

“We quickly realized the cost savings of this new architecture,” Gattoni says. The switch to AWS reduced total IT operational costs by 55 percent and cut its backup infrastructure costs by 35 percent. “We also were able to reduce the number of IT vendors from six to three—a huge cost savings,” he says. “Operating on AWS also allowed us to start and stop nonproduction services on demand to reduce operational costs.”

The migration to AWS has significantly improved the availability of the staff and allowed them to focus on achieving business goals.

“For example, one time we had rolled out a new product model that required testing and setting up in different environments,” Gattoni says. “In the past, we would have had to go out and source servers and set them up in a lab. With AWS, we now have the ability to spin up a server and immediately grant access to it, set up rules, and have everything complete in a week.”

Myers-Briggs: More efficient storage

Myers-Briggs, a provider of people development products and services best known for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, has moved primary data storage, backup, and disaster recovery for its California office into ClearSky Data’s cloud-based, on-demand storage service. The company plans to do the same soon for its U.K. office.

ClearSky’s service doesn’t depend on the cloud alone, because the enormous distances between public cloud facilities and Myers-Briggs’ locations introduce too much latency, says Michael Johnson, director of global infrastructure.

ClearSky deployed a fully managed, 2U, all-flash appliance on premises, and that’s the full extent of its data center footprint, Johnson says. “Hot data, which accounts for about 10 percent of our complete data set, is cached locally to provide performance,” he says. “Both hot and warm data are stored in a nearby point of presence on the metro edge so that if the requested data is not available locally it can still be retrieved without noticeable latency.”

All data, including archives, is stored in multiple locations within the cloud for backup.

As a result of moving storage into the ClearSky service, Myers-Briggs has seen a reduced total cost of ownership for storage of at least half, a 70 percent decrease in total data center rack space, and a 75 percent decrease in colocation operating expenses.

Not including savings from reductions in employees’ time spent managing backup, storage, and disaster recovery systems—which Johnson says is substantial—Myers-Briggs expects to save $150,000 over five years on the cost of backup system licenses and storage capacity alone.

Savings would be even greater were the company not still paying for depreciation of legacy storage equipment.

“Just eliminating our all-flash arrays and backup systems alone more than paid for the service,” Johnson says.

An additional benefit of moving storage into ClearSky’s hybrid cloud service is having fully automated data protection and disaster recovery. “We no longer need to devote any resources to managing backup and have been able to decommission storage for backup targets,” Johnson says.

Myers-Briggs can now move compute capacity wherever it’s needed and then easily connect it to ClearSky’s storage service, which gives the company much more agility.

Accenture: Cloud is the future

As part of a digital transformation, professional services firm Accenture is completing a three-year journey to cloud. Its goal is to deliver a more scalable, reliable enterprise IT infrastructure in the public cloud.

In January 2015, the internal IT department organized a global cloud team to spearhead the move. Its first step was to develop a comprehensive plan for a rapid cloud adoption. Then it adopted new environments and services, and then it transformed IT processes, responsibilities, and capabilities to support a cloud-centric infrastructure.

Today, the company has more than 95 percent of its IT operations in the public cloud. “We believe that cloud technologies today offer new IT potential through faster, more flexible, more resilient capabilities,” says Merim Becirovic, managing director in Accenture’s IT organization.

To make an immediate big impact, the first migrations were the most costly data centers. This could have been a risky move, but Accenture used a Cloud Factory that it created to test and execute new technical migration procedures.

The team created standards for best practices and trained people on the supporting processes needed to execute a successful shift to the cloud. “The result was a smooth transition that showed immediate cost savings, securing support for future cloud initiatives,” Becirovic says.

For instance, working in the cloud allowed the firm to run multiple test scenarios prior to putting its SAP S/4HANA platform into production across the company. “We set up test environments in one day, and automated the testing of about 300 downstream S/4 application services to determine which services might be impacted,” Becirovic explains. The S/4 deployment went live in 2018.

Accenture chose to work with a small number of cloud providers for its workloads to help prove out multicloud operations, to mitigate risk, and to help compare and contrast cloud service providers.

Thus far, the shift to the cloud has helped Accenture realize $14.5 million in benefits. For example, applications that have a consistent and predictable demand now have cloud instances reserved in advance at a lower cost, which yielded $1 million in savings, Becirovic says.

“But the benefits move beyond cost savings, and if that is your only goal, you are missing out on other opportunities for innovation,” Becirovic points out. “Our provisioning times have dropped by 50 percent in some cases. With a more flexible and scalable infrastructure, we can also deliver new services to stakeholders more quickly.”

Reprinted From:

https://www.techworld.com.au/article/667738/yes-can-reap-cost-benefits-from-cloud/?fp=4&fpid=9