Cloud computing: who knows where it’s going next?

Cloud com­put­ing has grown up. In the past two decades, the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try has fought against an occa­sion­al­ly brit­tle approach to secu­ri­ty pro­vi­sion­ing, with an increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed set of cloud func­tions begin­ning to emerge. 

We now have access to a far more evolved notion of soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice (SaaS)-based tech­nol­o­gy. This is the era of ‘cloud native’. Native­ly built cloud ser­vices – which nev­er exist­ed in any kind of ter­res­tri­al ver­sion – are now com­ing to the fore. What fac­tors, then, should you con­sid­er when work­ing with cloud com­put­ing?

Adam Selip­sky is CEO of Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS). He’s been can­did about cloud computing’s some­what dif­fi­cult ado­les­cence: at the start, he says, it was expen­sive, slow and inflex­i­ble. 

From the begin­ning, cloud ven­dors sought to achieve cus­tomer lock-in where they could, with inter­op­er­abil­i­ty far from an engi­neer­ing imper­a­tive. That time has thank­ful­ly passed, and a new, more demo­c­ra­t­ic and open approach to the cloud has pre­vailed.

“Peo­ple used to ques­tion me about Ama­zon Web Ser­vices and ask what the con­nec­tion with books was, but I think things have moved on,” said Selip­sky, speak­ing at his firm’s Decem­ber 2021 AWS re:Invent con­fer­ence.

Consistent efforts

Ven­dors large and small are today putting a huge effort into mak­ing cloud ser­vices more con­sis­tent and eas­i­er to con­sume and use. Cloud spe­cial­ists like to call this a sim­pli­fied uni­fied plat­form expe­ri­ence, but we could just call it cloud that works.

One of the com­pa­nies talk­ing in these terms is enter­prise cloud spe­cial­ist Nutanix. The firm has described its lat­est plat­form refresh as a sim­pli­fied port­fo­lio that brings togeth­er ‘rich prod­uct capa­bil­i­ties’ across pri­vate on-premis­es and pub­lic clouds. This aims to deliv­er con­sis­tent infra­struc­ture, data ser­vices, man­age­ment and oper­a­tions for appli­ca­tions in vir­tu­al machines and con­tain­ers.

Senior VP prod­uct man­age­ment at Nutanix Thomas Cor­ne­ly has said the firm has focused on deliv­er­ing a sim­pli­fied port­fo­lio that deliv­ers a con­sis­tent infra­struc­ture with data ser­vices and man­age­ment tools. 

This theme res­onates through­out the cloud ven­dor glit­terati. It fur­ther echoes in the wider enter­prise soft­ware plat­form space, such as Enter­prise Resource Plan­ning (ERM) or Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM). 

It’s easy to see why it mat­ters. Enter­prise soft­ware is often too com­plex to pur­chase, let alone run; some­times that’s down to acqui­si­tions, or it could be due to prod­uct launch sprawl or rela­belling exist­ing ser­vices. 

Understanding the cloud

The resound­ing mes­sage com­ing from the cloud indus­try is a promise. The ven­dors tell us they under­stand that cus­tomers need to work across pri­vate clouds and pub­lic clouds with a sim­pli­fied appli­ca­tion and data ser­vices prod­uct port­fo­lio that is charged with more straight­for­ward billing.

In prac­tice, while cloud billing might be a dry top­ic, it’s a hot issue. Let’s remem­ber, there is no actu­al cloud, as such. It’s just a glob­al col­lec­tion of serv­er units housed in inter­na­tion­al data cen­tres, run­ning man­age­ment soft­ware with var­i­ous dif­fer­ent opti­mi­sa­tion para­me­ters to make dif­fer­ent vir­tu­alised cloud ser­vices behave and per­form in dif­fer­ent ways. 

But how that’s all pack­aged and sold mat­ters a great deal. The cloud indus­try has worked hard to sim­pli­fy its pack­ag­ing, meter­ing and pric­ing struc­tures. Take the use of so-called ‘reserved instances’, where cus­tomers agree to a spec­i­fied amount of cloud based on knowl­edge of their own pre­dictable IT work­load require­ment. That’s helped in some cas­es, but not in all.

Facebook’s Mark Zucker­berg famous­ly com­plained that cloud is too expen­sive back in 2019. Still, the real­i­ty of cloud that can be turned on and off, pro­vid­ing the ulti­mate OpEx-only flex­i­bil­i­ty, is still some­thing of a pipe dream. 

Not every­thing is quite as per­fect as the brand­ing claims would have us believe. Even the most ardent evan­ge­lists typ­i­cal­ly agree that cloud per­fec­tion – and indeed cloud-native – is still a work in progress.

We should also remem­ber that enter­prise cloud is not just for Christ­mas. Cus­tomers need to think about ongo­ing sup­port­ing ser­vices, from load bal­ancers to spe­cialised accel­er­a­tors to advanced secu­ri­ty mon­i­tor­ing – and that’s just a start. Then there’s upgrades, test­ing and sys­tem main­te­nance: just like Win­dows, clouds need patch updates, too.

Making a plan

If cloud com­put­ing has been guilty of any­thing, it has been too shiny and new. The idea that we might all be able to tap into hyper­con­nect­ed com­put­ing ser­vices built on vir­tu­al ‘machines’ run­ning in cloud dat­a­cen­tres was always quite rad­i­cal. Giv­ing every­one mas­sive com­put­ing pow­er in the palm of our hand was a dra­mat­ic ampli­fi­ca­tion of the internet’s ini­tial­ly promised free­doms. In short, it was a lot to take on.

The dri­ve to cloud migra­tion is of course one of the cen­tral moves repeat­ed­ly cit­ed in the oft-dis­cussed jour­ney to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. But to make this jour­ney, enter­pris­es need a plan, a toolset and a capa­bil­i­ty arse­nal. 

Brent Schroed­er is chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer for enter­prise-grade open-source solu­tions spe­cial­ist SUSE. He says his firm has seen com­pa­nies dra­mat­i­cal­ly shrink their cloud migra­tion win­dows. With the effects of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic obvi­ous­ly still play­ing out, Schroed­er reminds us that ‘tra­di­tion­al’ IT deploy­ment win­dows of per­haps 90, 60 or even 30 days are now too long.

The way for­ward, says Schroed­er, is process, plan­ning and pre­ci­sion-engi­neered soft­ware pro­duc­tion. SUSE insists cus­tomers work with pri­vate and pub­lic cloud infra­struc­ture that is con­sis­tent­ly deployed with­in robust secu­ri­ty and gov­er­nance guide­lines. 

In oth­er words, organ­i­sa­tions shouldn’t make the change to cloud with­out change man­age­ment. As we make these changes, we can now shoul­der a good deal of our total cloud soft­ware appli­ca­tion life­cy­cle by using infra­struc­ture as code (IaC), though that’s anoth­er sub­ject for analy­sis in and of itself.

Cloud com­put­ing offers flex­i­bil­i­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty and change­able man­age­abil­i­ty, but only if we under­stand which direc­tion the wind is blow­ing. The pow­er of this weath­er sys­tem is still form­ing, so please wear a coat.