Cloud Computing Is Important and Not Optional Anymore
The fourth industrial revolution is already here. And to go along with this revolution, cloud computing is important and not optional anymore.
After the steam and water enable powered mechanics electricity allows mass production and electronics to facilitate automation, it is time for being able to adapt and respond to changes faster on the information technology.
The need for computing power to support new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and big data analysis for complex and predictable systems increases the challenges of managing the delivery of such capacity.
Those systems require more and more processing power on very high volatility, which becomes harder to sustain with our own data centers.
Traditional Data Centers
Traditional company data centers require the constant management of hardware, dealing with updates, and the provisioning of systems capacity for growth.
Forecasting the computing power, memory, disk, networking, and all the hardware needed to run your applications is not an easy task.
To save money in the long term, usually, the buy of new hardware is done in bulk and with spare parts and computing power. It often leads to computing power waste.
And how many times have you seen an application owner requesting a server way beyond the needs of the application just because he doesn’t know the expected load of the application and fears not having enough computing power to attend the demand? Worse when it’s ordered two servers for load balancing and failover.
The result is a high-cost CapEx where all the hardware and infrastructure cost must come ahead. And you will have paid for equipment that is now underused and becoming obsolete every minute.
We also must put on the invoice all the cost of maintaining the data center, with physical infrastructure, security, power, air conditioning, racks, networking, cabling, staff, and the list goes on and on.
The Paradigm of Cloud
But in 2006, this scenario was about to change with the creation of Amazon Web Services, an Amazon subsidiary. Amazon was already one of the biggest online retailers, and to keep its business running, required a lot of computing resources.
But a considerable slice of this computing power was not in use. Amazon was ready to attend the peak of demands for select dates, but the downside is that a lot of computing power was idle most of the time. So they decided to sell this spare computing power that was not in full usage.
Amazon was then followed by Google, with the Google Cloud Platform in 2008 and Microsoft with Azure in 2010.
The game is changed, and a new paradigm created. Now with the cloud, we have virtually “infinite” computer power, storage, and resources to run our applications.
It took a few years for the general market to get used to this new concept as we were always used to know which server, which hardware our application, database, and files were running and stored. The idea of not knowing where those files are was terrifying in the beginning.
But with the advance of technology, mobile applications, and new services, this paradigm became a new model. For example, if you have an email account on Gmail or Hotmail, you are using the cloud. Onedrive? Gmail? Dropbox? Yes, those are in the cloud as well.
And with the implementation of compliance and regulations, companies were adopting cloud for the most diverse solutions.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
The most noticed benefit when starting a new application running on the cloud is the exchange of the CapEx for OpEx. It means that you don’t require to make the substantial initial investment in buying hardware and build your data center, but contract it as a service from the cloud provider and paying for only what you need.
Then if you have an increase in your demand, you can scale vertically and horizontally as needed. This ability is known as scalability.
You also don’t need to have a lot of power computing idle awaiting that peak on a special holiday on for a particular market campaign. The elasticity ability of the cloud allows you to dynamically and automatically identify the need for more resources and provision it on demand. Then, when the load comes back to normal, the additional computing resources are released, reducing the operation cost.
Another aspect of cloud computing is that you keep your focus where it matters, on the development and evolution of your application. You don’t need to worry about the hardware maintenance, updates, and patches of host systems, because it is handled by the cloud provider, making sure you have the current and up to date infrastructure
Cloud services also are reliable, offering backup and replication solutions, with SLAs and redundancy, to ensure failover capabilities.
Finally, the big players allow you to be global in a matter of minutes due to the number of data centers all around the world.
To have an idea of the size of the top 3 cloud providers, at the moment of publishing this article, Microsoft Azure has 56 regions, with a minimum of 3 availability zones per region. Amazon AWS has 22 regions with 69 availability zones. Google Cloud, 21 regions with 64 availability zones. And they are still growing, for instance, Microsoft just announced a new data center in Mexico as part of US$ 1.1 billion investment plan to drive digital transformation in this country.
A Startup Enabler
Because of the global availability and the capacity of not having the high upfront cost of creating a whole data center, using the cloud is an enabler for startups, medium, and small businesses.
Those categories of companies often depended on third party companies to host part of the infrastructure, and it was prevalent not having the whole solution available from one single provider.
Even worse, sometimes they didn’t have the CapEx expenditure but had to have contracts and long term deals that might not be suitable in a short period.
The Importance of Handling the Demand you Create
The alignment between the business areas and the IT area is fundamental for the success of a strategy.
As seen on The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, both by Gene Kim, Parts Unlimited had an aggressive marketing strategy but was not taking into consideration the current capacity of delivery and growth of the systems that supports the business.
Another real example from the Black Friday of 2019, it is estimated that Costco had lost approximately 11 million dollars. That’s because their website couldn’t handle the massive peak of traffic. So it is not only a matter of having a great marketing strategy and offers good deals, but being capable of attending the demand.
It’s impossible to affirm that the Costco issue is due only for infrastructure and capacity handling without knowing the details. However, checking a couple of job offerings, they don’t mention any cloud provider (AWS, Amazon, Google Cloud), but they require VMWare and virtualization experience. It leads me to wonder if they currently have a private cloud running on their environment.
Adapting to the Cloud
The cloud will sure give you flexibility and is often updated, with new products and offerings added by cloud providers every day.
When deciding to move to the cloud, it is essential to understand your applications and analyze case by case, understanding which model is suitable for every scenario.
It also requires in-depth technical knowledge for the configuration of access, networking, policies, resources, and a good governance model in place is fundamental to keep things under control.
New applications also must be designed with cloud concepts in mind, for example, using microservices architecture, retry patterns, and loose coupling.
Where to start
It is crucial to understand where you are and your requirements. Most of the cloud providers have their cloud assessment framework with guidelines and tools to help you on the cloud journey.
The framework will guide you on defining your strategy, understanding your motivations, and desired outcomes. It will support your plan and identify the skills required for your team to make you ready and used to the cloud tools and blueprint design.
After the adoption and migration, you will then start innovating by expanding your scenarios and use cases.
The final phase involves the governance of the cloud, applying methodologies and monitoring to make sure you achieve a cloud maturity.
For more infomration on the cloud adoption framework of the significant cloud players visit:
Changing the paradigm from the traditional on-premises data center to cloud-based environments wasn’t a smooth movement due to misgiving related to security, latency, and availability.
The adoption of security certificates and compliance by cloud providers, as well as the expansion of availability zones and the advance in the internet connections, suppress those concerns, and, today, running applications using cloud computing is not optional anymore, but necessary.
Thanks for reading, and have a pleasant journey to the cloud!