Key Factors In The Success Of A New Era In Cloud Computing

Companies of all types accelerate cloud adoption as a central element of their IT strategy. But what about migration behind the scenes?

Over the past 10 years, cloud computing has become increasingly part of our daily lives. Initially, we perceived this as consumers in public email services or personal data stored in the cloud on tools like BOX or Google Drive.

At the same time, several startups were created based on cloud computing. How to imagine services like Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, WhatsApp and many others without the advent of the cloud? In addition to aspects such as consumption simplicity, resource elasticity and worldwide reach, the variable cost financial model has enabled these services to become viable and available around the globe. It is the “born on the cloud” business models that, as its name implies, could not possibly exist without the cloud.

Today, companies of all types accelerate cloud adoption as a central element of their IT strategy. So far, less than 20% of your applications have been migrated to the cloud. This points to two important issues:

1. Most of the transformation is yet to come;

2. Many of the legacy applications rely on security, availability, and performance features that limit some of the capabilities of today's public cloud services.

However, there is a peaceful point: Like any successful technology, cloud computing is "disappearing," becoming ubiquitous. We fail to notice its existence despite being present in our daily lives, in a taxi request in an app, in the recommendation of the movie that you will watch in the evening or even booking tickets on your well-deserved vacation.

But how does this work behind the curtains? What allows us to forget something that is one of the main foundations of our digital society?

Behind the scenes

There is no magic. Behind any public cloud provider are data centers, software, servers, storage, and network devices. But then, what is the difference between this model and the data centers operated by many companies?

There are some fundamental differences. The first is the scale. Hyper-scale cloud providers have volumes many times higher than those employed by any company. We speak of dozens or hundreds of data centres interconnected by robust data communications networks across 5 continents.

It is estimated that a public cloud service needs a scale of 1 million servers before it can start offering a return on investment. This the gigantic scale allows resources to be perceived as “infinite,” meaning that providers are working day-to-day to measure and grow their installed capacity in a balanced manner to meet the almost unpredictable demands of increasing user volumes.

In private data centres, however, companies constantly need to perform capacity planning, investment approval, and resource deployment cycles. All this consumes time and resources and it is common to be dissatisfied with the delay and the quality of the services offered, giving a feeling of always having a passive of unmet demands.

Another central difference is the extensive automation of access to cloud services. One user requests one-click cloud services anywhere in the world and it just happens. For most resources, it takes just seconds or minutes through self-service and without human intervention. Everything is orchestrated by a provider control software layer that can be accessed through a portal or public APIs. Few companies are able to replicate this feat internally, even at limited and much smaller scales like private clouds.

Finally, location is a key factor. Major cloud providers make constant investments to ensure that their services are as close as possible to their users. Here is an equation that balances a variety of considerations such as market potential and growth, geographic location, and issues such as regulation and the cost of doing business in one location. How many companies can reach this kind of global reach?

Where does the 80% go?

As mentioned earlier, enterprise cloud adoption is accelerating and just beginning. IDC estimates that by 2023 over 50% of corporate IT investments will be spent on public cloud consumption *, which demonstrates the upcoming movement. But what are the main factors for success in this new chapter of cloud computing?

1. Flexibility to deploy applications on any model, whether local or on a public cloud provider or any combination of these elements;

2. Open technologies to ensure access to rapid innovation cycles, multiple providers and to avoid situations of dependence on proprietary technologies;

3. A security that ensures horizontal protection on the infrastructure deployed in various providers and environments;

4. Availability and resilience through the use of cloud providers that offer features such as multiple availability zones and applications capable of distributed multi-cloud operation;

5. Transparency of use, management and governance in a new a reality where an application or business services may be on its own infrastructure, one or multiple public cloud providers.

Finally, there is one factor that can sometimes be critical is the location. Although public cloud services are designed for consumption anywhere on the planet and are offered from strategically located data centres, their location is often a critical factor for cloud migration. Some of the reasons may be regulation, when only one data can be used in a country, latency, data severity or even internal data location policies of the companies themselves.

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