Running close to the edge?

TL;DR - avoid tech debt by maintaining investment in classic infrastructure while planning and executing appropriate or native cloud transformation.

OPINION: Has public cloud?awareness bias?put investments and confidence in traditional technology platforms into paralysis?

Has the impact of?Koru lounge architecture?driven the C-suite and boards to hold technology platform owners to account for a?cloud-first strategy?

Is the public cloud possibly killing business transformation to put organisations into a high-risk pitfall of technology deficit or?tech debt?

I have been consumed by the narrative of these problems as I started my first six months at IBM. I can’t say I have all the answers or the complete encyclopedia on the subject. However, there are a few things I have come to learn about our current data storage market.

1.?????On-prem storage is very much alive and needed (plus IBM is innovating with leading technology and commercials – a must-have in your data storage considerations).

2.?????Storage is the most challenging variable to contain or predict for public cloud workloads, yet it is the highest cost contributor in new cloud renewal commits and contracts.

3.?????Many cloud-first strategies as based on Symbolic or Experiential value factors and driven by a “[insert hyperscaler here] is the answer – sorry, what is the question?”

Awareness bias?– the effective blinders put on where every cloud conversation or transformation motion has exclusively gravitated to the public cloud based on Symbolic or Experiential values.

Maxie Schmidt-Subramanian, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, wrote an interesting view around Value for Customers, which talks about the drivers of Economic, Symbolic, Functional and Experiential value.

In understanding these values and how they impact technology roadmaps and strategies (particularly cloud-first strategies) and dictate purchasing decisions, it is anecdotally easy to conclude that the impact of?awareness bias?towards the public cloud has directly and adversely impacted the existing technology that runs “the now”.

Tech debt?– applied to current and legacy platforms that are run out of warranty and into maintenance or at higher risk of no maintenance based on little or no investment into new infrastructure due to factors such as the pandemic (financial) or "faster" and "easier" cloud-first strategies.

In numerous discussions with platform owners, IT Managers and CIOs, it is not unusual, if not consistent, that top-down pressure to deliver a cloud-first strategy has:

• Driven up ongoing maintenance costs to support aging infrastructure, creating tech debt.
• Increased business risk with infrastructure out of support.
• Diminished the value of a skilled operating workforce.
• Consumed time and cost for upskilling on cloud and application administration and development.

Again, Symbolic and Experiential Values are the key drivers here. I do not doubt that the need behind the need is well intended “digital transformation”; however, could it be equally necessary to be seen doing the right things? Keeping up with the Jones? Following what is trending because it feels like the right thing to do?

Koru lounge architecture?– when senior non-operational staff are targeted to overseas events and conferences, returning with cloud-first strategies, influencing justification to change the status quo because everyone else is.

Koru lounge architecture was coined by a leading platform owner who has worked in some of the largest organisations in New Zealand. In hopes of not butchering it, my interpretation as it applies here feels correct. Hyperscalers have deep pockets. They are the rainmakers and change bringers. Their marketing is unrivalled, and when it comes to driving the hype, they leave infrastructure vendors in their hype dust.

Again, many platform owners have shared similar stories where for the public cloud, a lot of the convincing needs to be done at the bench, in the data centre or with the architects. These people already understand the benefits and balance of keeping the lights on versus introducing new technology and strategies based on best fit and evolving change. These people are often spoken with out of courtesy and then drop like a stone for the C-suite.

Creating revolutionary change can be the hotbed for koru lounge architecture, where a trip across the Tasman or a conference in Vegas inspires a cloud-first strategy. Symbolic and Experiential value hits an all-time high, as critical and influential business leaders and decision-makers can hear from very well-paid analysts, influencers, and billionaire business owners on important things. The ultimate “if you don’t act now, you will be left behind”.??

No business leader wants to feel left behind. No business wants its competitor to get a leg up on them. No business wants to be ill-prepared for an unknown offshore company to cut its lunch remotely.

Lets be honest, all technology companies do this to capture eyeballs and increase relevancy. Sometimes revolutionary change can come, but for the most part, the average New Zealand business needs more money to execute. However, the public cloud has also led with another value, which, if not done well, is becoming counterproductive over time.

Economic value.

It makes sense to pay only for what you use. It makes sense to have instant access to tools and capabilities that are constantly evolving and maintained. Removing maintenance, support and software audit risk is almost abolished! If done right, a business could save a lot of money.

It depends.

IBM’s own Institute of Research believes that today, the average organisation is yet to realise 75% of the value from the cloud. That’s a 2.5x improvement on what is being done currently. Today the most immediate transformation has been greenfield cloud applications or SaaS deployments; the rest has been the love child of koru lounge architecture and cloud-first strategies –?Lift and Shift.

And lift and shift is where the pain kicks in, and where the idea that “Public Cloud is nothing more than another person’s datacentre with an EFTPOS machine at front gate”. If you follow this analogy, a more expensive EFTPOS machine is actually on the other side of the gate to get out.

Containerisation of applications, changing business models and re-platforming onto the hybrid cloud is the hard stuff. And its rate of adoption and change is much slower and more impactful than lift and shift. Like everything in life – do the Mahi, get the treats. And the treats are a mix of all four values – Economic, Symbolic, Function & Experiential.

So what?

Newton’s 3rd law states that for every action (force) in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Can organisations recognise their?awareness bias?to the cloud and that their?tech debt?has built up due to a cloud-first strategy? That reality of the?koru lounge architecture?application of the public cloud is more brutal to execute than as guided. If yes, then action must be taken.???

Celebrate high value-based use of the Public Cloud; at least 50% of your IT Landscape should be there by 2026 (according to IBM Business Value Research) – SaaS applications, cloud-native applications etc… In my opinion, horses, for courses.

If you can’t get there yet, pause when someone mentions “lift and shift”, and reconsider re-investing in what is keeping the lights on whilst investigating application modernisation with containers and adding Hybrid Cloud proactively to the mix. Equally consideration of cloud-like terms and commercials for data storage at your premises, like IBM’s Storage as a Service (STaaS).

Containerisation today is where Virtualisation was circa 2001, on the verge of transforming everything we do. It is the basis of application modernisation and Hybrid Cloud and will deliver the remaining 75% of the value of public cloud.??

>45% of all production container environments run on Red Hat’s OpenShift. IBM’s Spectrum Fusion HCI now provides complete enterprise data service management of this environment, allowing application-aware backup and recovery on bare metal X86 servers, uplifting performance and agility and killing the VM tax.

It will take some time, and there is no silver bullet. However, it maybe time to re-invest in critical on-premises or managed infrastructure that will keep the organisation executing whilst architecting and implementing your transformative shift. These steps take longer than anticipated, and a strategic pause will allow the time to plan application modernisation and hybrid cloud and will bring a balanced transformation that leverages both Functional and Economic value alongside Symbolic and Experiential value.