Baking your Pie in the sky

Businesses have become increasingly comfortable with cloud service models with IT teams now reviewing what is the right strategic mix of Software, Platform and Infrastructure as a Service along with how the application architecture needs to change to take advantage of these service models.

Cloud Computing has evolved as the technology has matured and various services have been tested and then adopted by the market. As defined by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST):

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

The three service models are Software, Platform and Infrastructure with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) being the primary model for many New Zealand businesses over the last few years. Through to the middle of 2015, with some exceptions, the predominant deployment model has been Private Cloud, but crucially this has has lacked many of the essential characteristics such as rapid elasticity, measured service, and on-demand, self service.  A disappointment to some businesses but acknowledged by others as a necessary stepping stone, not just for the System Integrators who needed to adapt their business models but also for Technology teams that had to adjust to no longer owning the server and storage hardware.

As those initial IaaS contracts have renewed, requirements such as rapid elasticity have moved from Should to Must in the vendor selection process and are being joined by a need for a mixed deployment model that includes Public cloud. Technology teams are beginning to consider how a Database platform and not just a virtual machine running Database software will sit within its architecture and help to further enhance their ability to respond to customers. This change in expectation, coupled with a growing number of global suppliers, has meant the New Zealand market is beginning to offer its next iteration of IaaS that does now offer the essential characteristics, along with the competitive cost model to match. 

For workloads where cost outweighs the performance requirement, being able to integrate a low cost public cloud storage solution into your system can help reduce operational costs. Extend that thinking to how you could reduce complexity and refocus your highly skilled staff on business problems if your identity or database systems were provided to you by a specialist. Features such as resilience, GEO redundancy and federation could be enabled via configuration changes as opposed to a lengthy design and implementation project.

Your journey to 'as a Service’ IT can now consider not just how you will use basic Infrastructure services but also what ratio of Platform and Software as a Service makes sense for your business. Considering what your ‘Pie in the Sky’ looks like based on the complexity of your systems and number of truly unique business applications is something that can help to inform your strategic decisions and has finally become something that can be achieved.