Hybrid Cloud - Bernard Golden

I attended Bernard Golden’s presentation on Hybrid Cloud: Myth and Realities.  Hybrid Cloud is and will continue to be the most common Cloud implementation.  There will be some companies that are 100% cloud, especially newer and smaller organizations and some companies that have no cloud but these will be fewer and fewer.

Each day AWS adds enough computing to power one whole Amazon.com circa 2003, when it was 5 Billion dollars in business.  Estimated to be $20 B in hosting by 2016.  Mr. Golden pointed out that we have seen this shift before and uses Henry Ford as an example.  In 1908 the Model –T was introduced. In 1913 the assembly line implemented.  From 1913 to 1920 the price of the Ford Model-T dropped 75% and Ford gained 75% of the auto market share!

 IT will be significantly larger in next 10 years!  New applications will be introduced and there will be challenges on how to implement and improve.  The biggest issue is legacy.

Questions to consider regarding building up your data center or moving to Cloud:

Can you build and operate world class data center?
What do you do with existing apps?
What is your scale plan?
How can you manage security?
Can you carry utilization risk?
Do you know your economics?

Bernard Golden described three scenarios for IT in Cloud:

1. Cloud/Legacy Mix in Data Center
         Agile development and traditional operations
          "Avoids Big Bang" requirement
          Not as disruptive
          No need to retrofit existing apps

Key questions

       Where do agile apps go?
        Reducing costs in IT infrastructure
        Need to build cloud operations capability
Probability :  50% Short Term, 15% Long Term

 2. Mild Hybrid

          Legacy data center, CSP for cloud apps
          Avoids Cloud ops requirements
          No need to retrofit legacy apps

Key questions:

          What about high cost existing infrastructure?
          What about shadow IT?
Probability: 50% Long Term

 3.  Maximum Hybrid

           Legacy Data Center Squeeze
           Service provider / SaaS forward strategy
           Shrinks high cost infrastructure
           Redirects budget to business objects

 

Key questions:

           Cultural resistance
           Managing infrastructure not assets
Probability: 30% Long Term

Action Items:

Recognize critical IT role in today's business.  
Understand the urgency for your future.  
Recognize the sea change in IT economics.  
Analyze application portfolio and look for application "life events."
Be prepared for process, policy, and skill changes.  
Be prepared for internal resistance.
Determine your cloud scenario going forward.

Netflix Architect Adrian Cockroft at InformationWeek Conference

While attending InformationWeek Conference I had the pleasure of attending Adrian Cockroft's, presentation on his pioneering experience as the Netflix Cloud Architect.  Adrian Cockroft's primary motivator was speed wins in the marketplace.  He also points out that Netflix growth rate was very dramatic and without using a cloud strategy it would have been much more challenging to scale at the rate Netfllix grew.  Netflix strategy was all in on the cloud and this is much easier to do now then back then.  Some recall outages during Netflix growth but Mr. Cockroft points out that datacenter kept breaking Netflix not the cloud and that 80% of outages were data center. Netflix is now made up of 600 micro services so the parts can fail without failing entire system - highly available design

 

What learned at Netflix:

1. How fast can we move -Speed wins in the marketplace
2. Remove friction from product development
3. High trust, low process, no hand-offs between teams
4. Freedom and responsibility culture
5. Don't do your own undifferentiated heavy lifting
6. Use simple patterns automated by tools
7. Deploy as micro services to separate concerns into bounded contexts

Peoples reaction

2009 - "You guys are crazy"

2010 - "What Netflix is doing won't work"

2011 - "It only works for "Unicorns" like Netflix

2012 - "We would like to do that but we can't"

 
Read:
The Phoenix Project
Lean Enterprise

Adrian Cockroft made a very compelling argument that cloud infrastructure and Software as a Service is the future.  Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others will continue to compete for hosting and the prices will continue to decrease as they did recently. Moving IT operation onto the cloud will be more and more compelling and easier to accomplish. 

Source: InformationWeek Conference, Adrian Cockroft's Presentation