NB: This article was adapted from a video I recorded for YouTube, here.
Something that’s come up recently in conversations with enterprises is the topic of building a cloud operating model. No, I don’t mean cloud architecture, nor do I mean cloud management per say, but a model to actually define and improve how you operate your clouds.
But, why bother with a cloud operating model, what’s the point? But more importantly, where is the value for the business?
Business Innovation – Driving Technology Complexity
As we know, technology is at the center of every business’s plans in today’s age.
In pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and machine learning was recently leveraged to develop the COVID vaccine. This would have been almost impossible to achieve as quickly without innovative and complex technology.
In finance, the world has moved beyond the desire to have an up to date, fancy smartphone app. Consumers are now starting to move their savings away from banks and into digital currencies like Bitcoin and Etherium (with winners and losers in that space recently!).
In retail, Amazon is a prime (pun intended) example of innovation through technology,with their massive use of AI and intelligent Robotics increasing the efficiency of their warehouses.
Businesses are finding more and more opportunities to leverage the latest and greatest tech to push them forward in the market and these very demanding business requirements have driven more and more complexity with I.T. services.
All this is happening with an intensity we have never seen before.
Specifically, we’re all leveraging cloud services more than ever. With these globally available marketplaces of software and data, available to use and customize instantly, businesses don’t need to start from scratch anymore.
These marketplaces of cloud services are available across various different clouds, for example, if you have skills in Lambda specifically, you will want to go to AWS. If you want BigQuery, you use Google Cloud.
Business and commercial decisions drive the consumption of different clouds too. Who do we already have a relationship with? Who has the best deal right now? Is this hyper-scaler a competitor of ours in another area?
All of this combined leads to a multi-cloud strategy for many, many businesses today.
