Why use public cloud ?

I’m a public cloud fanboy – It’s probably for the best if we get that out of the way at the offset.

That being said, I often get asked why I’m so proactive in my use and recommendation of the platforms; after all there are other competitive technologies available. As above, I’m biased, but I’d like to think the bias has grown over the years based on consistent reliable delivery by my chosen technology platforms rather than a religious’esk ‘faith’.

My enthusiasm for public cloud is based on a few points described below. I should add, none of the points raised in this article are new, google ‘reasons for choosing public cloud’ and you will have 7 ‘almost-copies‘ of this article; I want this article to focus on my reasons.

Cloud provides quick, cheap and easy failure

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. C.S.Lewis

I’m a firm believer that success is delivered via experimentation and repeated attempts (successful or otherwise). In the ‘pre-cloud’ era, this wasn’t a cheap, quick or easy process. Ideas or projects require serious CAPEX investment in supporting infrastructure and are generally encumbered with business processes designed to assess their potential for successful delivery (Business cases & ROI documents to name two). I’d speculate that even now, many embryonic ideas are probably just dropped by their creators who simply don’t think the associated overhead is worth it. Traditional infrastructure also limits the agility of the ‘idea creation' process; many ideas are successful because they are the right idea at the right time. If the process takes 6-12 months from idea to proof-of-concept or final product, in many cases it’s too late.

Cloud allows the rapid production of supporting infrastructure for a software, infrastructure or business process idea. It changes out expensive up-front CAPEX expense, for iterative, proportionally scaling OPEX costs and leaves one real investment, time. Time is easy, the enthusiasm of people for their ideas often allows time investment at zero-cost to a business. Crucially if the project or idea doesn’t provide the expected value the whole thing can be ‘torn-down’ along with the ongoing costs. As a business you’re not going to be exposed to continuing costs for failed ideas.

Cloud provides agility – deliver at your own speed

I’m often reminded of an English proverb ..

A bad workman always blames his tools – It is not the tools we use which make us good, but rather how we employ them.

I’ll maintain this used to be true – but I’m not sure this is still the case working within IT and modern business. As a Solutions Architect I’m employed or contracted to analyse a business need and produce a proposal or design document detailing a technical solution to meet the need. If I view my ‘tools’ in this case as available infrastructure or business appetite for spend then I’m all too often limited in how effectively I can deliver by my tools. More so, I'm almost always limited as to how quickly I can provide a implemented working solution. Think of the usual lifecycle, initial meeting -> design document -> design discussion and workshops -> detailed design -> approval -> procurement -> delivery -> implementation -> testing -> acceptance. The whole process, end-to-end, can often take months, even for small projects.

By using public cloud, it becomes realistic to speed up the above process by a factor of 10 if you have appetite within the business. By extending businesses IT systems, the public cloud infrastructure becomes an extension of the existing business network or platform. Time taken from approval to initial proof of concept (POC) becomes days, or in some case hours, rather than weeks or months in traditional delivery. If the POC environment is accepted by the business it can be morphed into a production environment rather than being re-provisioned.

Performance and infrastructure is outsourced – 'undifferentiated heavy lifting'

Much of the work performed by design, delivery and general IT staff within business needs to happen. Think ‘cabling, cooling, datacenters, labor, networking, power, racking, servers, storage, etc’ – it’s all essential to running a business, just like other utilities such as water, electricity and a well working air-con are essential, but do you have an internal team running a power station?

Undifferentiated heavy lifting refers to tasks being undertaken within your business which while important, aren’t specific to your business. You use power, but you don’t (generally) generate your own power – you outsource it.

At a high level, public cloud allows the outsourcing of IT infrastructure, you don’t need to worry about connectivity, data center space, cabling, physical servers or much of the associated infrastructure and services. Public cloud provides either infrastructure or platform ‘as-a-service’, allowing your IT team to focus on delivering business specific software and services.

Why does this matter? anyone who has managed a project or an IT operation of any size knows that a huge amount of planning, cost and resourcing is consumed via the provision and maintenance of IT infrastructure. Conservatively in my own experience, 50% of a project delivery lifecycle is taken up with repeatable non specific delivery of an infrastructure platform, and that’s without even considering ongoing maintenance. Simply put, you outsource elements that you’re average at to a cloud provider, thereby reducing the project cost and risk. Get your teams focussed on what you’re trying to deliver; specifically the elements which are directly associated with your business.

There’s more ?

I could go on and on. Public cloud has many benefits which would either take too long, or go into far to much technical detail for a general audience. Any business or IT team not currently ‘at least’ evaluating or experimenting with public cloud is doing their stakeholders a disservice.  There are challenges and obstacles to overcome, but with an appropriately skilled Cloud delivery partner these risks/challenges can also be offset or outsourced.

What are you waiting for? go have a play, or better still get in touch for a no obligations chat…