#NEXTGENCLOUD: Single or Multi-Cloud – Business and Technical Perspectives
Author: Markku Tuomala, CTO, Codento
Introduction
Traditionally, organizations have chosen to focus all their efforts on single public cloud solutions when choosing architecture. The idea has often been to optimize the efficiency of capacity services. In practice, this means migration of existing applications to the cloud – without changes to the application architecture.
The goal is to concentrate the volume on one cloud service provider and thereby maximize the benefits of operating Infrastructure Services and service costs.
Use Cases as a Driver
At our #NEXTGENCLOUD online event in November 2021, we focused on the capabilities of the next generation cloud and what kind of business benefits can be achieved in the short term. NEXTGENCLOUD thinking means that the focus is on solving the customer’s need with the most appropriate tools.
From this perspective, I would divide the most significant use cases into the following category:
- Development of new services
- Application modernizations
I will look at these perspectives in more detail below.
Development of New Services
The development of new services is started by experimenting, activating future users of the service and iterative learning. These themes alone pose an interesting challenge to architectural design, where direction and purpose can change very quickly with learning.
It is important that the architecture supports large-scale deployment of ready-made capabilities, increases service autonomy, and provides a better user experience. Often, these solutions end up using the ready-made capabilities of multiple clouds to get results faster.
Application Modernizations
The clouds are built in different ways. The differences are not limited to technical details, but also include pricing models and other practices. The different needs of applications running in an IT environment make it almost impossible to predict which cloud is optimal for business needs and applications. It follows that the right need is determined by an individual business need or application, which in a single cloud operating environment means unnecessary trade-offs as well as technically sub-optimal choices. These materialize in terms of cost inefficiency and slowness of development.
In the application modernization of IT environments, it is worth maximizing the benefits of different cloud services from the design stage to avoid compromises, ensure a smooth user experience, increase autonomy, diversify production risk and support future business needs.
Knowledge as a bottleneck?
Is there knowledge in all of this? Is multi-cloud technology the biggest hurdle?
It is normal for application architects and software developers to learn more programming languages than new treatment methods for doctors or nurses. The same laws apply to the development of knowledge of multi-cloud technologies. Today, more and more of us have been working with more cloud technology and taking advantage of ready-made services. At the same time, technology for managing multiple clouds has evolved significantly, facilitating both development and cloud operations.
The author of the blog Markku Tuomala, CTO, Codento, has 25 years of experience in software development and cloud, having worked for Elisa, Finland’s leading telecom operator. Markku was responsible for the cloud strategy for Telco and IT services and was a member of Elisa’s production management team. The key tasks were Elisa’s software strategy and the management of operational services for business-critical IT outsourcing. Markku drove customer-oriented development and played a key role in business growth, with services such as Elisa Entertainment, Book, Wallet, self-service and online automation. Markku also led the change of Elisa’s data center operations to DevOps. Markku works as a senior consultant for Codenton Value Discovery services.
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