A Cloud Operations Manifesto

Cloud computing is a revolutionary new model for IT services delivery, allowing on-demand utility consumption that can be fully automated via software. Being able to obtain IT resources like hailing a taxi is an essential characteristic of cloud computing. With such new capabilities,cloud computing enables completely new business models, such as e-commerce flash crowd sales (e.g. Beyond the Rack) and massively parallelized compute work (e.g. modelling drug interactions) while enabling us to improve on old business models, allowing for better, faster and cheaper services. These new and improved cloud business models require a new operations model to succeed and be cost effective. We call this “CloudOps” and we built our company to focus on helping companies with this cloud operations transformation.

The DevOps movement has captured hearts and minds about what it takes to develop and deliver modern software applications (think SaaS) with new practices encouraging product teams to work together in an agile manner with shared responsibility for operational success. We find the practice of building and running the cloud infrastructure (IaaS and PaaS) that supports modern software development has its own characteristics and challenges, some shared with DevOps but some quite distinct from what it takes to succeed at the application layer of the cloud.

We believe that “CloudOps” is an emerging practice of continuous delivery and operations of cloud computing infrastructure, 24x7x365 with nonstop service, competitive performance and usability, and the scalability and security required for modern online services. Many people think the hard part is the architecture and implementation of cloud infrastructure, but we beg to differ. The hardest part is continuous, reliable operations that out-deliver on user’s expectations!

Click here for 11 key success factors we have learned from our pioneering journey and nearly a decade of cloud operations.