The number one question I ask every IT Director, CIO and CTO is “What is your cloud strategy?”. I have only ever had one company say they had a cloud strategy. The CIO told me they give their developers a corporate credit card and they can use any cloud they want to use. That is the epitome of no cloud strategy. Let’s consider that today applications and updates are rolling out at a rate never experienced. Every industry is creating apps for mobile devices to attract and retain customers. Think about the banking industry, ease of use of a mobile app to deposit checks, transfer funds and provide other quick and easy online banking transactions is a requirement to be competitive today.
Developers do not like to wait for resources to be provisioned so they can begin projects, in today’s society we not only want but expect self-service. Public clouds provide self-service and by entering a corporate credit card, a server can be spun up almost instantaneously. This luxury leads to several problems. Use of public cloud without governance can cause unforeseen cost and may compromise the security of company resources. Second, applications developed in public cloud will need to be recompiled before moving to other public clouds or on-premise. When looking at a cloud strategy serious consideration needs to be given to modernizing application development methods and use of containers which are portable. Self-service can be realized with an on-premise data center through automation and orchestration. Software Defined Networking is often a first step to move in that direction. It is important to have a vision of how your data center will serve the business in the next three to five years so that you can begin today taking the steps to make it a reality.
Every company needs to create a group to develop a cloud strategy. That strategy should include, public, private. hybrid and multi-cloud and should ensure that security and mobility between clouds are determined early in the process of creating a cloud strategy.