#163 Developing a Multi-Hybrid Cloud Operating Model

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on Thu Sep 28 2023 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

with Rajiv Mandal, Darren W Pulsipher,

In this episode Darren interview cloud solution architect, Rajiv Mandal, about developing a multi-hybrid cloud strategy in your modern IT organization.

Keywords

#cloudstrategy #digitaltransformation #cloudtechnologies #businessgoals #operationalefficiency #customersatisfaction #itinfrastructure #migrationplan #datasecurity #regulatorycompliance #hybridclouds #publicclouds #privateclouds #clouddeploymentmodels #governanceandsecurity #reducecosts #enhanceefficiency #customerexperience #strategicmove #clearvision #embracingdigital #edt163

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In today’s digital age, businesses are increasingly turning to the cloud as a strategic move to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer experience. However, before jumping on the cloud bandwagon, it is essential for organizations to take a step back and assess their specific needs. Developing a cloud strategy is a crucial step in this process, as it allows businesses to align their goals and objectives with the cloud technologies available to them.

Understanding Your Business Goals and Objectives

The first step in developing a cloud strategy is gaining a clear understanding of your business goals and objectives. What are you trying to achieve? Are you looking to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, or enhance customer satisfaction? By having a clear vision of your goals, you can better determine how the cloud can support and enable these objectives.

Evaluating Your Existing Infrastructure

After establishing your goals, it is important to evaluate your current IT infrastructure. This assessment helps identify any potential challenges or limitations in migrating to the cloud. Determine what systems and applications you currently have in place and consider their compatibility with a cloud environment. This evaluation will inform decisions about which applications and services are suitable for migration.

Choosing the Right Cloud Model

With various cloud deployment models available, organizations need to assess the different options that align with their business requirements. Public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid clouds each offer distinct advantages and drawbacks. Evaluating the pros and cons of each model will help you determine the most appropriate choice for your organization. Consider factors such as data security, scalability, and regulatory compliance when making this decision.

Creating a Migration Plan and Ensuring Governance and Security

Once you have chosen a cloud model, it’s time to create a migration plan. This involves outlining the steps and timeline for moving your applications and data to the cloud. Prioritize critical applications that need to be migrated first, and develop a strategy to migrate the remaining applications later. Additionally, implement a governance and security plan to protect your data and comply with any regulatory requirements. Cloud security is a top concern for many businesses, so it is vital to ensure that your data is protected throughout the migration process.

In conclusion, developing a cloud strategy is a complex process that requires careful planning and assessment. It is essential to understand your business goals, evaluate your existing infrastructure, choose the right cloud model, create a migration plan, and implement proper governance and security measures. By effectively embracing digital transformation and leveraging the power of the cloud, organizations can achieve their objectives, enhance efficiency, and drive growth and success.

Podcast Transcript

1

Hello, this is Darren

Pulsipher, chief solution,architect of public sector at Intel.

And welcome to Embracing

Digital Transformation,where we investigate effective change,leveragingpeople, process and technology.

On today's episode, Developinga Cloud Strategy, an operating modelwith special guest

Rajiv Mandal Cloud Solution,architect at Intel.

Rajiv, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thank you, Darren Hey, so, Rajiv,before we dive in into cloudstrategy and operating models and thingslike that, let's first hear about you.

Where do you come from?

What's your background and why?

Why in the worldare you an expert in in cloud?

Absolutely.

And again, thank you very muchfor having me on this year.

So my name is Rajeev Mandal, and I'm oneof the Cloud Solution architects at Intel.

I joined Intel about two and a half yearsback in the Cloud team.

I was actually the numberfive Cloud Solutions activist.

I remember when you got hired in.

Yeah. Yeah.

One of the early buzzwordsand ever since that journeyhas been super excitingbecause in this role I have been ableto talk to many different customersacross pretty much all businessverticals, both within commercialand within the public sectorand also across a vastecosystem of our partners,whether they be the partnersor technology partners, you know,creating specific optimized productsor our system integrator partners.

And in that experience,driving the abilityto learn about the different use casesour customers are trying to implementor migrate to the cloud,how they'relooking up on their cloud journey,how they're looking up on their strategiesfor a hybrid cloud, multi-cloud,private cloud and everything in between.

That's super powerfulbecause while we want our customersto architect the best on the whole field,we also want to understandwhat their use cases are and what makesthem successful to their customersso that we can bring in the besttogether from our sideand from our partner side as well.

Okay, So, so so obviously you understandcloud really well.

Wherewhere did you get all that knowledge?

You didn't get it all at Intel, right?

Because you haven't been here that long.

But to be I mean, all that knowledgeis still a very smalldrop in the ocean because that oceanis always increasing with.

Also always increasing. Yeah, Yeah.

But I would like to saythat I started my kind of cloud exposure.

Like I have been working in this industryfor more than 20 yearsnow, but my real cloud exposurestarted back in 2015when I was actually leading that qualityengineering team in Amazon French.

And my first projectwas to launch AmazonFresh in Londonas a delivery service and withinthat space understood the business.

But what came to mind is thathow do you scale the infrastructure?

How do you steal the application,the uptime of the application,

How do we monitor our application?

But have you cloud ready?

Because there are a lot of the productsand the services that my team workedon where cloud based.

So that's where I give you my vote.

Rich That's what I came to knowabout Amazon already.

That's what I came to know ofabout Lambda.

So Lambda functions.

So that passion started rightthen, and I got the opportunity to talk tosome of our leaders in the booth.

And it was very clear to me that if I haveto stay engaged in some of the realhappening things in this space,

I have to be much more focused on cloud.

So internally, I made a transitionthrough interviews from Amazon Freshand I supported a lot of our healthcareand licensed customers as the lead accountarchitect kind of being their technologykind of leader from my perspectiveand helping the customersnot only just migrate, but also modernizeapplications when they're in the cloud.

And that's okay.

So, so you cut your teeth on IWC, totalright?

Total IWC indoctrination.

But I knowbetter because you also work in Azure nowand also Google.

Yeah, that's the beauty of, of retail.

And I didn't realize thatwhen I was a nativebecause I could only talk about it.

I was, I had no knowledge or the needto know much about other providers.

I didn't have the need to knowabout data centers or on the nicest.

It was kind of outside of jurisdiction.

Firstly, I didn't need to know aboutany of the other cloud providers as well,unless there was a supercomputerenvironment that I was working on.

Also, I never needed to knowabout private cloud environments likethe last or HPV like, but in the last twoand a half years of my journey in health,that has been the phenomenalkind of the learning,the knowledge, the whole 360 degree viewthat I can focuson all these different aspects,whether it is one provider or multiplecloud providers or private cloudor even on premises,because I have the ability to workwith all these cross-functional teamswithin Intel.

And it was to bring that agnostic viewto the customer that really makesthe customer successful in that.

So so thatgives you a very unique position, right?

Because Yeah, so so does and that'swhy you're talking to usabout cloud strategy because

MWC, which they should do, is goingto come in and tell you everything.

You should be running on MWCand Microsoft's going to saythe same thing about Azure, but with you,you have exposure to all this.

So you you understandit has to be more strategicthan just lift and shift everything over.

So what kind of strategiesdo you employ nowwhen you're talking to Intel's customers,when you're talking to Intel's,what we call our end users, right?

The people using our technology,what kind of strategies do you usewhen approaching them,which what do you do?

Because you've got all these toolsand you know about all these differentclouds, private clouds, public clouds,hybrid clouds,you know, U.S., VMware, all is well.

Where do you start?

Yeah.

And the way I see this starting ismaybe ten, 15 years backor maybe even 5 to 5 or six years backwhen, you know,when everyone very excited about cloud.

A lot of our the leadership withindifferent organizations like once to cloudthink of cloud firstnow that strategy is a little moreprescriptive because it kind of you knowmandates in one wayto think of doing everything in the cloud.

So creating a new project, a newapplication, starting with cloud, right?

Unless unless there'sa super strong reason not to use it.

But over the years, as organizationsand enterprises have taken this youngand understoodkind of the values of differentkind of cloud environmentsof their multicloud or hybrid cloud,something that has translatedfrom the cloudfirst approach is something like a cloudsmart approach,and the way it resonates in my mindis that okay,when I do a new project,when I do a new application,

I want to do somethinglike a business value.

What does make sense for me?

I need to think about strategy.

Like obviously if I want to get holdof new technologies, cloudis probably the way to look for itbecause that's where the new technologieswould be available super quicklyand maybe ahead of, you know,you're on glasses and on them, but if I'mrunning my business for a long time,

I business is going to stay.

My users are going to expandand decrease exponentially.

Geographically, I need to think aboutis that an inflectionpoint where it makes sense for meto run that business somewhere else?

Is there a constraint on dataresidency requirements?

Is that a constraint on,you know, compliance requirementsthat are constrained for something?

Is super latency sensitive,even like a fraction of a millisecondwill be detrimentalfor the end user experience.

So thinking of all these things togetherand keeping cloud, we might make the bestdecision of what actually makes senseto Austin Cloud versus what makes sense.

Maybe startingwith the issue of developing cloudand then bring it backinto some more controlled environmentsdepending on the specific requirementsof your customers and.

I understand understanding the data.

I love that understandingapplications, data sovereignty,what benefits are thereto even moving to the cloud?

It sounds like a lot of work, frankly,right, to move to the cloudbecause I still have to architect stuff.

It's not liftand shift, it's not cloud first.

It's cloud smart.

So in order for me to get smart,what are the benefitsof using the cloud, our public cloud,over what I'm doing today?

Otherwise,why move just because everyone else's?

That doesn'tthat doesn't do well when you're talkingto the board of directors, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, absolutelythere is the benefits of movingto the cloud where it makes sense,and when it makes sensefor the phase of the project,it makes sense on so farthings like that, like scalability,scalability, like as we all understandcloud environment is almost like supereasy to grow and footprint, right?

You can grow and there's demand,you can strengthen the demand for stuff.

And this ensures that you knowyour applications can handle different,like varying levels of traffic and varyinglevels of workload and transactions.

We don't know what versioningor under underutilizationwhich might be some of the constraintsyou have on premises, you know,because there is no elasticitybuilt into the on premisesway of architecting buckets.

That's whythere is also the aspect of,you know, the super well-knownconcept of CapEx versus officebecause yeah,if you guys do cloud,you can be as you go,that's the model and you know, customersor organizations will payfor what they use and this can absolutelylead to force savings.

But what we have learned overthe years is workingwith all our different customersis that it needs to be,you know, governed and monitoredbecause cloudwithout the proper governance and propermonitoring, your your boss,

Victor and, you know, if it's super fastand exponentially so, yes,we can be cost efficientwhen it is used with the properconstraints of proper governanceand the proper monitoring. Yes.

Okay.

So so in order I want to

I want to touch on the cost thingright a little bit morebecause there's been thisbig pushto move to the cloud to save cost.

But what you're telling meis that that's not always the case.

I have to monitor that cost.

At much more. Tightly.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I give you one example.

And so mixing and on premises environment,if you are storingaudit information of thatto see when your information.

Okay.

Log information,there is no additional costbecause they've already purchasedwhatever storage you have.

Right. Right. Yeah yeah, yeah.

But in cloudimagine if someone has an S3 bucketyou in a booth where they have enabledversioning and those versionsare not being passed and there is no needto keep those versioning.

So every operation you do on the data,everything you do is going to adda new version.

So not only you're expanding data,you are keeping.

So the new version,so your storage is in fact a lot.

Same is logging.

Like look at all the logging informationthat happens in any cloud for the cloudfor cloud cloud life.

And these those, you know, audit logsor whatever logging information is notmanaged, are not deletedwhen it's not left and not managed.

And given your storage fileswill also increase information.

And not to forget our data you guys got,if you're architecting your solutionin such a way that you have to get datafrom your cloud environmentand bring that data somewhere else,

There's a lot of cost associatedwith the data movement.

So that's what I meant,that it makes sense.

It is cost efficient based on, you know,certain governance and certain monitoringand certain, you know, best practicesthat has to be built for that.

But yet you can dig back.

You. Yeah.

So it's funny you mention this because

I was working with the Canadian governmenton on several severaldifferent cloud projects years agoand it's when they were firststarting to use cloud, they put SAPinto the cloud, but not all of itwent over there.

Some of itstayed back in their data centers.

So they were communicatingbetween on cloud and on prem.

A lot of data moving back and forth.

And they blew their egress.

Their budget went through the roof.

I mean, they blew their budget outcompletelybecause of the amount of datathat was actually moving back and forth.

They changed their model.

They moved things in.

They also learned thatbecause it's a consumption model,the cloud is a consumption model.

I have something running. I'mpaying for it.

We're my data center, my costs to keepsomething up 24 seven is minuscule.

I already bought the equipment,which is the biggest cost.

There is some energy cost,but it's minuscule compared to my overallopera, my overall capital expendituresthat I spent.

But in the cloud you're paying,whether you're using it or not,you're paying to have that applicationup and running.

Yep. Yep. Right.

So they changed their model.

They changed the way that they thoughtabout things.

They said, Well, we don't need thisinstance running 24 seven, we only need itrunning 16 five yet 16 hours,five days a week.

And they saved a lot of moneyby going to that approach, byturning it down or off over the weekendswhen no one was using it.

So that I understand the cost thing.

But if you don't control it,it blows out of proportion very quickly.

And the other thing I think, you know, wewe have seen our customers also matureas they have been taking the journeysthat you need to distinguishwithin your production environmentthat is runningyour moneymaking applications versuswhere they're looking in this environment.

And how.

You need like huge machine sizesto support development.

Then have a governance policythat would prohibit peoplefrom speeding up machines in development,that policies that shut downthose environmentsmaybe on weekends, on holidaysand whatnot.

So the thing is, yes, I mean,the way I see is cloud is a new finitecapability place.

You can do many thingsand everything under the end of the line.

You have enough money.

Yeah, you have to put the rightcontrols in place, otherwise it's justgoing to blow up and it.

Yeah.

No, no.

I've seen the same thingin, in some startups that,you know, spun up a bunch of test serversto run all their testingand left them onand they were like,

Why is our bill $150,000 from Amazon?

And they go back and look and they say,

Oh, all of our test machines are still upand running, even though we only run testone one day a week.

Well, we kept them up and runningbecause it saved us 5 minutesbut cost you $150,000.

That that just doesn't make sense. So I.

So would you say that cloud almost exposesbad practice,bad process, the bad way that we dodevelopmentand product deployments.

Or perhaps I won't call it thatthe way I, you know, okay, you know,within the cloud you can get super,you know, super smart agility.

Like you can really have your developmentteams become really smart and agilitybecause you now have all the tools,whether it be, you know, foodfor infrastructure,provisioning as food that you can feedas food and drive through your offices.

It's pipelines.

You can have all the tools in place.

So everything is there.

But the point still remainsis that, you know,you need to make surethat you have the right kitsand the right decision pointsto make sure that those are being usedwithin the constraints of the project,within the components of the project.

So soyeah, it sounds to me thenlike I need some organizational changein order to change to move to the cloudbecause I'm operating differently.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And this is one of the biggest inhibitorsstill probably todaythat, you know, training and workforceenablementwith the new knowledge,with the new tools, are the new learning.

That is really one of the biggestkind of the biggest challengesthat most individuals have becausewe are all as developerskind of so used todoing things of we have been doingfor the last nine years, right?

Yeah, Yeah.

And trying to learn that in a new platformand you know, embracing thatand really understandinghow to use it to our advantage.

That takes quite a bit of learningin every organization.

You know, I think what more we are seeingis, you know, putting in moreand more emphasis and effortsin kind of encouraging that,encouraging that learning and enablementof all the engineering.

Very interesting.

Okay.

So we've talked about some factorscost, scalability.

Well, and with cost elasticity, right?

Because I can grow and shrinkwhat I'm using dynamicallyif I'm intelligent about it in the cloud.

Right.

Because I can I can turn things offand turn it back on very easily.

If if I put the effort into place.

What are some of the other benefitsof of moving to cloud that?

Because otherwise why would I change.

Yeah.

I mean there are many, right?

So we've talked about a few.

But think of, you know, the accessibilityof these types of creative team, you know,developing something in the cloud.

They can access it anywherewhere they have an Internet connection.

They don't need any specialized equipmentor anything.

So that's, you know,that unleashes the whole kindof the extensibility, the collaborationthat people can do in cloudthat is also super strong,the global reach of the global reach.

Because, you know, most of our cloudproviders, they have datacenterspretty much in every corner of the globe.

So if you know, if an organizationhas to support customers in Asia

Pacific or somewhere else in the world,they don't need to set up their serversin memory instead of the serversto read the users out.

So that waythe malignancy will be lessthe customer experience.

And not to say thatsovereignty requirementswe talked about, they can fulfillthose kind of requirements.

So so this was big during COVID, right?

Companiesare already moved to the cloud morethan likely had a lot smallerhurdle to overcome to keep people workingbecause they could work from anywhereas long as they hadan Internet connection,they could still access their resourcesin the cloud.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

I'm one of. But you were saying?

Well. Well,

I was just saying it's that flexibility.

It's an accessibility.

And I love how you take collaborationin there.

In there, too, because I can access itfrom anywhere and anyone on my team.

And we do this at Intel, right?

I mean, my team, we're scatteredin five different time zones.

Yeah,right.

So I can access my data anywhereand I'm not hitting the corporate networkto do it.

Yeah, which is pretty slick. Yeah.

The other thing I wanted to mention,

I mean, this is really a new anglethat has come up.

So, I mean, if we if we see let's,let's take the example of eight of us.

So when within within eight of usthere is something called the windactivated spinwhere there are five pillars.

Beforenow there's a six below sustainability.

So the environment impact.

So a lot of our enterprise customersfor very right reasons,also have a sustainability knowand cloudis really something that helps to fulfillthat to some extent because most of thesecloud providers, they offer itat such a gigantic global scale.

They have all the goodnessof taking in allthe sustainability controlsand the carbon footprint and everything.

So customers using cloud,they inherently get some of those benefitsthat they can establishwithin their sustainability goalsand their environmental goals.

They have as part of the revenue.

And so it's a new angle, it's developing.

But this is also something I'm hearingfrom some of the customersin some ways, and.

That's really interesting.

So if I have a sustainable goalin my company, I can leverage what

IWC and Google and Azure are doingas far as sustainability,because they can run their data centersmore green than I can do, right?

And it much, much higher scalethan than I can.

So I'm actually I'm actually contributingto my sustainability goalsof the company as well.

That's,that's a really interesting angle. Yeah.

And the way

I kind of see this intersects with how wekind of drive our, you know,brand optimizationstory from the perspective iswhenever we have come upwith a new generation of beyondcloud, that is obviously betterperforming than any previously, right?

So that means when customersare making an effort or,you know, legitimate reasonsand the reasons we operate their workloadon the latest generation of one,they can actually use thisand compute cycles to do the same workthat they were doing before.

Now, if you translate that compute cycleinto some metricthat gives you some reading this onhow much energy you're using,you are going green because nowwith the new addition,you can use this company to do the same.

What?

So that's another way a lot of customerscan see the benefit of usingcloud services on maybe some regularbasis, eco architecture to be ableto address some of these often for.

If I wantthe latest and greatest technology,

I don't have to buy itfrom my own data center.

I can try it out in a cloud first,but the cloud serviceproviders are getting

Intel's latest Xeon processors.

At the same time, the OEMs are right,so they're able to deploy itmuch faster than medeploying it on on prem.

So maybe I do have a workloadthat I want to keep on prem in production.

I can do my developmentand try and out in the cloud firston that new siliconbefore I bring it in-house.

That's, that's pretty clever too.

Yeah. Okay.

Any other things around?

Around my cloud strategyis I'm trying to put this all together,giving me some business thingsto think about and some understanding.

On the benefits of cloud.

What other things do I need to worryabout around my cloud strategy?

When I'm developing mystrategy and operating model?

Absolutely.

I mean, you need to like I was talkingabout, you need to think of, you know,how to determine that, you know,what applications you will wantto move to cloud when you are migrating.

And so it's not an easy, easy decisionbecause a lot of our enterprisesthat have been built over the yearswith hundreds and thousands.

Yeah, yeah.

With many, many dependencies in place.

So there, you know, there is one phasein every cloud migrationwith this kind of,you know, planning and assessment.

I feel likethat is one of the most important phasesbecause in that planning and assessmentphase iswhere you really want to discoverwhat you have your environment.

And then as you look at it,you figure out, okay, what applications

I have, what licenses do I have,what are the termsand conditions of those licenses.

You know, looking at the applications andreally trying to understand that, okay,is this an application that would benefitfrom the benefits of cloud?

So the benefits of cloud, likewe talked about flexibility, scalability,you've got applications for something inyour back end report that runs the data.

What else report at the end of the day,

I mean, really there's a need to move thatapplications as well versus anotherapplication with your customer facing.

And actually the are kind of,you know, floodplain or like moneymaking application.

So those kind of considerationsabsolutely need to be done andthere are many ways to do it.

There are, you know,things like 6 hours of migration.

We've talked about whether you wantto reach all three platform refactor,which arewe have also seen some applicationsthat don't have much business valueso they can sunsetand do that at some point with the right.

So so this is a really good timewhen you're doing your cloud strategyto clean house with all the applicationbecause everyone has it.

Everyone has application sprawl.

Oh, I bought this stuff,but I'm not really using itor I've got one person using it, but it'scost me a lot to keep it up and going.

So interesting.

And it sounds likethis is just an opportunityto really changethe way that you do business.

Whether you move to the cloud or not,your strategy is to understand betterwhat's going onwith your data and applications and.

As. Your. Organization and as you do that.

Also, you know, look up on the applicationand really understand that whether it isbetter positioned as a hybrid cloudoffering versus a private cloudversus a public cloud,because again, applications willthere is no one size fitsall that's different is so true inany aspect of,you know, a cloud conversation.

So so has your opinion changedmoving over here into

Intel, where now you're talking to severaldifferent clouds and customers.

That that's I'm glad to seebecause during my days

I have this the only thingthat I really wanted to do two things.

Number one, with my customer,be that they're less impressed,but at the same time, you know,bring value back to Amazonby migrating the applicationon on the cloud sector.

But here there, you know, as you know,

I have been part of,you know, conversations where customershave decided to create from some cloudto somewhere else or repatriate one cloudversus multiple cloud for legitimate.

We see that a lot in governmentbecause in governmentthere's a lot of applicationsthat need to work, you know,cross-border right in the last year.

Right.

So things like thathave come to much more lightand much more significant in my experience, which industry didn't have before.

Well, this has been wonderful.

Rajeev, thank you.

Thank you. Absolutely.

Thank you for coming on the show,giving us insight into strategy.

And for those that are listening,

Rajiv is going to be joinedby several other cloud solution architectsat Intel talking about different aspectsof this migration and theand this cloud strategy.

So, Rajeev,thanks again for coming on the show.

Thank you for the treatment.

Thank you.

Thank you for listeningto Embracing Digital Transformation today.

If you enjoyed our podcast,give it five stars on your favoritepodcasting site or YouTube channel,you can find out more informationabout embracing digital transformationand embracingdigital.org.

Until nexttime, go out and do something wonderful.