Is your company an unconscious multi-cloud user? (Guest blog from Kyndryl)

Author: Ben Scowen, Vice President UK & Ireland Cloud & Core Leader, Kyndryl

Unconscious multi-cloud is a serious issue and affirmative action is the only answer.

Is your company an unconscious multi-cloud user?

If yes, then technical debt, skill shortages, cost control and operational risk will be the result. The answer is a conscious distributed-cloud approach and in this article, we will discuss the steps to get there. 
 
For a decade, multi-cloud has been possible due to the fact there is genuine competition and choice with AWS, Microsoft and Google leading the market. Fierce competition has driven cloud providers to move up the stack from just providing infrastructure services to now providing much more sophisticated platform services and in some cases software services. In summary, the choice has never been greater and you really can have a multi-cloud approach if you want one!
 
The problem is that most businesses have unconsciously taken a multi-cloud approach, organically building services on two or more cloud providers, leading to more technical debt and cost, coupled with increased operational and cyber risk. Sure, companies quickly deliver services to the market which justifies the approach, but there is a price. Put another way, we have effectively spent the previous 40 years building technical debt on-premise and the last 15 years building it in the cloud - unconscious multi-cloud is a major reason for this! 
 
Conscious multi-cloud, however, is something businesses should pursue if they want access to a wider portfolio of technology innovation, better commercial leverage over the cloud providers and an overall reduction in cloud technical debt. 
 
Another thing to consider is the advent of cloud provider appliances like Dell HCI Azure Stack or AWS Outposts, that allow businesses to create a public cloud experience on premise; i.e. hybrid cloud. This effectively unifies the IT experience for the business, simplifying the technology landscape, reducing technical debt and skills demand while allowing portability of workloads between public and private cloud. 
 
Multi-cloud combined with hybrid cloud leads to the term distributed-cloud and that is in fact what most enterprises will end up with. So, what does a conscious distributed-cloud approach look like?
 

• Understand and define your platform strategy. Platforms are what allow a business to scale out digital, and most companies have between 20 and 30 platforms that underpin their internal and external business needs. These range from “developer focused platforms” that enable fast delivery of market differentiating digital services, to “business focused platforms” that allow business users to do their day-to-day jobs and in many cases innovate new services by themselves using low-code. The point here is you need to map out what platforms you need.
   
• Define your application strategy and align with your platform strategy. Most companies make the mistake of focusing only the application / business function layer. The consequence is they duplicate effort and scale technical debt. Start with a platform strategy and then overlay your application strategy.
   
• Define the target distributed-cloud technology stack and its interim stages over time using 6 dimensions: data, apps, platforms, infra, security & ops. You are not going to get to your final state in one step. Map out the stages and be realistic about the journey. It will take multiple years, which can be a problem with most CIO posts lasting 2 years or less. You need a long-term plan and a team prepared to execute it and adapt it as technology evolves. 
   
• Design a target digital-cloud operating model covering people, processes & technology. The way that you organise your teams affects everything from the skills you need, to the throughput of your organisation, to the total cost of ownership of the services you deliver. Once you have a clear idea of your technology stack over time, you can create an organisation that can get the best out of it. Sure, we shouldn’t be driven by technology, the business is king right? The problem is if we only focus on the business outcome, we get enormous amounts of technical debt. There has to be harmony between the desires of the business and the technology that delivers it. The operating model is this glue that creates this harmony!

 Unconscious multi-cloud is a serious issue and affirmative action is the only answer. Moreover, for most enterprises a single cloud provider will be resisted by the organisation due to the natural attraction of innovation and religious nature of technology. So, taking a conscious approach accepts the inevitability of multi-cloud and allows you to address major issues like technical debt and operational risk. 
 
Follow the steps above mapping out your technology stack over time and implementing an operating model that exploits it. Be realistic about the journey. It will take multiple years, which can be problematic when the average tenure of technology leaders lasts 2 years or less. You need a long-term plan and a team prepared to stay and execute it. Adapt the plan as technology evolves. Be a conscious multi-clouder!