Cloud journey : The most important aspect is the organization culture
For organizations that are embarking on Cloud journey, there are many misguiding advises masquerading as well-known cloud best practices. These advises have the same drawbacks that existing on-prem implementations face over a period of time. Let’s try to focus on practices that really work whether it is meant for large enterprises or SMEs.
In one of my architectural due-diligence exercise for a US based electric company,
The first and foremost thing that was recommended and implemented was having a center-of-excellence (CoE) that would ensure
- ⏺Standardization across the organization; across all departments; across all projects
- ⏺A proof of concept and real implementation for a department before it could be rolled out organization wide
- ⏺Looking at cloud from business case implementation point of view and not just technological feasibility point-of-view
- ⏺That organization doesn’t fall into a cloud lock-in trap
- ⏺That cloud vendor suggestions are vetted by independent consulting and opinion of CoE based implementations
The other aspect was that infrastructure, application, database team are made to work together and not be allowed to work in isolation which was the preferred way for on-prem implementation.
- ⏺ Gone are the days when application team could make do without having any knowledge about networks, firewalls and underlying infra. Just as Java developers of yore now have to be full-stack developers to survive, application teams have to have knowledge of Subnets, IOps, firewalls etc. so as to ensure proper DevSecOps pipeline. So, it is imperative that all teams sit together and chalk out cloud-specific best practices together and in consonance
Pay-as-you-go model does not always mean low costs and auto-scaling does not necessarily mean that application should not be architected for future-readiness.
- ⏺ Architecture has to be designed keeping in mind future needs. Even though pay-as-you-go means paying only for what is used, cost optimization is the biggest point of contention and that’s why the rise of cloud economists and FinOps experts. Architecture and cost have to be spoken in the same breath.
Final and the most important aspect is the organization culture.
- ⏺ The company culture has to shed its rigid old ways/processes and embrace new processes and way of thinking as outline above. The organization has to slowly adopt to the new architectures and processes that are outlined by the CoE.
