Cloud-First failed. Why Not Data-First Instead?!

The trend of the past years was all about the cloud, with CIOs concentrated on strategizing about how to migrate as much as they could to the public cloud. Only to discover that a cloud-only or cloud-first strategy doesn't really make sense. Fortunately, we are now past that euphoric moment and living the hybrid cloud era, with a lot of talking about repatriation and edge. Which, again, can be as exciting and detrimental as the first cloud wave.

The cost of public cloud only IT strategy??is simply unsustainable in the long term. This led to a series of afterthoughts and new methodologies, like FinOps, that are meant to mitigate the overspending issues. As we all know, you can't have it all: fast, good and cheap together can't be really achieved. FinOps is a byproduct of the attempt to find a balance between these three. It is like we need a tool now to deal with common sense, and maybe we need it looking at the complexity of modern IT infrastructures, but I think we should strategize differently from the beginning.??

Maybe you can't have fast good and cheep together but, with the right strategy you can surely have flexible, agile and balanced.?

• The public cloud is all about flexibility in the end. It costs more that On-prem IT but it adds the ability to start and change things quickly. It enables the IT team to be responsive to growing business needs.?
• The core, your on-prem IT, is about predictability. Lately, new subscription-based purchasing models also helped to build a cloud-like experience and reduce friction. You will never get the flexibility of the public cloud but costs can be easily controlled.
• The edge is both a need and a tremendous opportunity. Thanks to the connectivity and tools now available there are plenty of applications that can be successfully moved to the edge. With the right tools and infrastructure in place, edge can quickly bring the necessary balance between cloud and core. (more on this in future posts)?

At this point it is worth to be clear about one important fact that is often underestimated: cloud, core and edge are not the goals but the means necessary to implement your IT strategy. But how can you achieve flexible, agile and balanced? The answer is simple, with a data-first IT strategy built on three main points:

• Data mobility: this is the first step. Data and applications need the ability to move freely between core and cloud, and edge in some cases. This enables the IT team to move applications and data in the right place and find the balance needed to serve business needs at best while keeping an eye on the cost.?
• Data management: remove silos, improve visibility and make data accessible and reusable to more applications quickly when necessary. Not an easy task to be honest, but a necessity if you want to build a strong foundation and exploit the full potential of data that you have to store anyway. In the end it is all about enhancing the value while limiting the risk.?
• Data security: This is often hard to understand for many users, but bad actors are not interested in taking control of your infrastructure, they want your data. Everybody is now concerned about ransomware but this is the last of your problems. In fact, when your data start to disappear, it means that your infrastructure has been compromised?for months and the visible damages are only to be considered the last move of sophisticated attack. It also helps to cover any trace of previous activity and you'll never know what was actually stolen, by who, or how. You should start to think in different terms: 1) your infrastructure is always potentially compromised, 2) your data is an unreplaceable asset and has to be protected accordingly.??

There is much more to unfold here, but let's start with saying that with a data-first approach it becomes easier to achieve the necessary flexibility, agility and balance required by a long term IT strategy. There is no cloud-first, or edge-first or core-first, the only possible way to build a sustainable IT strategy is to think about a data-first strategy. Core, Cloud and Edge are only instrumental tools to build this kind of strategy.

At GigaOm we are working hard on these concepts. For example, a good starting point to learn more about data-first IT strategies is the?Key Criteria for evalauting Unstructured Data Management