Software & scaleups with Mike Martin

Today on the show: we give you the vocabulary and tools to buy cloud in an intelligent way.

Prologue

So, you have decided to buy cloud! Good decision. Cloud provides a lot of benefits such as flexibility, evergreen versions and cost effectiveness. If you look around - surf the internet or visit an expo - you'll find that there are so many options for a cloud provider. Each and every one of them claims to be the best in some metric, and they are the one you should choose. However, how can you evaluate them? You might be wondering, which provider should I trust? What should I ask them? What should I keep in mind when purchasing cloud.

In this episode, we give you the vocabulary and ammunition to buy cloud in an intelligent way. To get to the bottom of purchasing cloud, we will first have to discuss and figure out what the cloud actually is. Usually the cloud is categorized into 3 different sections. They are Software as a service also known as SaaS, Platform as a service known as PaaS and Infrastructure as a service, IaaS.

See the pattern? It’s no longer about old-school servers, now it’s all about services. The choice is between level of control and responsibilities: This means that in Infrastructure as a service we get most control but have more responsibilities than in the Platform as a service or Software as a service models. A handy way of thinking about this is that with Software as a Service you buy ready made solution, like a stuffed bear or a Star Wars figure. With platform as a service you build the figure from building blocks -- like you would build up a Lego set from given blocks. And with Infrastructure as a Service you literally build the blocks yourself, for example by 3d printing them and then building the toy from the blocks that you built yourself.

Understanding the differences in cloud areas is particularly important to avoid cloud washing! That happens when a company is selling traditional datacenter capacity as cloud, meaning that you don’t get the benefits of the cloud. So you gotta be careful! Most companies who are "in the cloud" use Software as a Service: for example Google Gmail for email service in the cloud, Dropbox for storing your files in the cloud or Microsoft Office 365 for emails and file storage. You can learn more about cloud service models in the episode - What is the cloud. For this episode, we are ready to get to the juicy stuff.

Cloudwashing, contract length and migration readiness

We are going to highlight some of the biggest obstacles companies might face. They are cloudwashing, contract length and migration readiness. We will begin by looking into the first notorious obstacle, cloudwashing, through an example.

In this case a company was facing the end of their email software lifecycle: they needed to upgrade their email software. Last time they upgraded, it took them 6 months and multiple failures to get the new system running. And on top of that, their best email administrator had since retired. They wanted to move into an “evergreen” system - meaning that the email service is always upgraded to the latest version. They chose to go to a traditional service provider who promised them all the power of the cloud without the downsides. However, it turned out that the email service provided was actually the same version that the company was trying to move away from. And the service provider had a larger customer using the same email service. The larger customer had their own business reasons to upgrade in a slower pace. So the company got stuck with the old version until the other customer allows the service provider to upgrade the email service. Our unfortunate company is a victim of cloud washing: they had paid for a cloud service, but got traditional it solutions.

Let's look into the second obstacle, contract length. A company might have an existing contract that lasts for multiple years. During that time, even if they stopped using the service, they would still pay the same amount. This means that even if they would have migrated their software to the cloud, they wouldn’t achieve the cost effectiveness of the cloud. They would essentially pay for two contracts at the same time.

And about the third obstacle: migration readiness. Migration means the movement of software from one server to another. This is a huge change, so it requires careful planning in order to keep daily business running. The company needs to ensure their IT professionals have the right skill set to perform the migration. Once the migration is completed, the end-users need to be trained in order to be productive in the new environment.

Best Practices

So now that we know what pitfalls to avoid, we can move on towards the good tips you can use. Let's list some best practices! These are the things you should ask from potential vendors and companies you are considering. We have 4 questions for you to ask, a...