CloudUp: The importance of DevOps for your move to ‘the cloud’

Han

Everyone thinks DevOps is probably something a little different than what everybody else, somebody else thinks, you know.

Jeremy

Yeah.

Han

Well, on the cloud they think that it is the center, or should be the center, of your cloud migration journey. Because, without it, I think that you’re going to get yourself in trouble right away. Welcome to Cloudup.

Jeremy

Today, we’re gonna be talking about why DevOps is critical for your move into the cloud.

Han

I think that DevOps, that term is really broad. And I think that when you say DevOps, Everyone thinks it’s something different. Like, from history, on-prem world, multi-cloud hybrid, bla, bla, bla. Everyone thinks DevOps is probably something a little different than what everybody else, somebody else thinks.

Jeremy

Yeah.

Han

Well, on the cloud, I think that it is the center, or should be the center, of your cloud migration journey. Because without it, I think that you’re going to get yourself into trouble right away.

Yeah, I think first of all, DevOps like, is tough to define,

Han

Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy

Right? We know there’s been a lot of great talks out there to try to get to the definition of what does it mean to DevOps, right? It’s the integration, development and operations. And, I’ve run into people who think that means like if you do DevOps projects, you’re an Agile consultant.

Han

Oh. Right? And that’s like, related,

Jeremy

Yeah, you–

Jeremy

you’re not off base,

Jeremy

But, it’s not exactly it, right? So it’s I think it’s a lot about the process. Agile’s about the process of developing, right? And DevOps is about the process after the code’s written.

Han

Ah, I see. Yeah, that makes sense, I mean, sometimes I feel like when we look at DevOps, especially when we get infrastructure as code, and infrastructure, and networking and policy as code, like we have to kind of think, it’s a strategic framework, right? Like with DevOps, deploying to the cloud, or migrating to the cloud, becomes a strategic operation. You have to think like in the future. We have to set these things up to get to where we want to be. Versus the tactical, which is like, let’s just grab a tool and migrate a bunch of VMs in. And we’re done.

Jeremy

Yeah.

Han

And, that’s why I think what leads to a lot of trouble.

Jeremy

Yeah so lift and shift is something that we’ve talked a lot about over the years, right? And that’s the concept in my mind of taking our VMs and our processes and placing them in a cloud provider.

Han

Got you.

– And then operating them as-is

Han

Yeah.

Jeremy

Right, so we kind of moved into someone else’s data center.

Han

Right, exactly.

Jeremy

And I didn’t even know what, like, we probably missed a lot of advantages that we’ve got out of the new platform, Right so, I think it’s been meaningful for our customers to think about modernizing things as a part of moving into cloud.

Han

Yeah, I think that that part has been decoupled somewhat in the beginning because of the desire for the cloud providers to acquire customers. So, they want the simple messages of like, just lift and shift it over, right?

Jeremy

Right.

Han

And then, what happened is a lot of people did that, and then afterwards you’re like, why are my costs spiraling out of control? You know, why are we having all these VMs up and rolling that we have no idea who controls them, who spun them, what they’re for, and they’re a little bit at a loss. And, they have to clean up that mess backwards, which is like, virtually impossible. But, can be done if you break it down into small component pieces.

Jeremy

Yeah, we think about moving VMs in and I almost always think about moving our little pets in, and we have to take care of them, And make sure that they’re healthy. And, cloud’s a lot more ephemeral.

Han

Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy

Right, so I think the methodology, in my opinion, is definitely to try to find a way to think about infinite scale. Think about, you know, the fact that we don’t have walls on the data center. There’s no limits, right? And so, we can implement some new processes as we come in.

Han

Sure. I think that like if we look at, maybe, the concepts of CSCD, infrastructure as code, automation, which lends more to the tool sets that we’re using. And expand that outward to process. Then suddenly like, the migration gets in about like, the single factor like costs,

Jeremy

Yeah.

Han

I mean, that comes up a lot like, that we’re moving for costs. Well, yes, but in what way are you talking about? Is it just saving from your on-prem to going inter-cloud? Or is it that you’re saving because you’re scaling and growing, and you want to scale and grow in a controlled and intelligent manner, you know? Well, what way are you looking at costs? And without having a strategy going in, like, I think that you can be very surprised, because you haven’t looked at all different aspects, that can go out of control.

Jeremy

Yeah, I mean the pure cost of compute is one way to look at it, and it’s important not to forget about it. Right, but what business advantages do we have?

Han

Precisely.

Jeremy

As part of the move, and how does that factor into costs.

Han

Yep.

Jeremy

Like, just say you paid a little bit more for your VM, right, but you paid per second.

Han

Yes.

Jeremy

Right, that’s an advantage.

Han

Yep. And you can scale it, and you can build ephemeral build servers. And you can do things like, that you’re saving for in another talk that you made at next, that in terms of the billing of a large part of this, you don’t understand what you’re billing for, because you’re standing up things without really understanding the cost basis for them. Or the reasons for them, right?

Jeremy

Yeah.

Han

And automation, and things that come within DevOps allow you to kind of think for a second, like, why does this need to be turned on or set-up? What is the purpose for, who owns it? And you know those types of things that you can then start to track, with the process.

Jeremy

Yeah, yeah sure. I mean, we have skews and we have different ways to organize our costs. And now we’re able to efficiently align costs with, hopefully, specific business initiatives. You can if you’re a multi-tenant software provider, maybe you could align specific customer costs.

Han

Oh I see. Like so, not only internal costs, but costs that you’re passing through as well.

Jeremy

Yes, absolutely. So you can help maybe price your product better, or maybe optimize, and find better ways to deliver that particular customer.

Han

I also think that like, as we, we may talk about this in a little bit, but like the center of excellence idea of how do we start our journey into the cloud with a bunch of people who are already concentrating on these types of topics, right? DevOps, ephemerality, infrastructures, code, managing, cloud. How do we start there, instead of ending up there after the fact, which I think is obvious, not good.

Jeremy

Yeah, yeah, right. I mean it’s important to have foundations from the beginning, right? So we deal with a good framework for identity and access, right. Set up a good framework for networking, maybe not knowing what needs to talk to what yet, but we implement a good amount of features from a networking side, so that our business units can consume what they need to from there. And it’s a good time to get started with infrastructure as code, right? It’s a lot more expensive to start infrastructure as code after.

Han

Yeah for sure.

Jeremy

Instead of before, when it’s that new. So during the foundational stage, it’s a really good time to implement some new tool sets.

Han

Yeah I also think that in terms of DevOps as a buzzword, DevOps is not strictly an IT function. It’s not something that’s like, isolated or regulated only within tech, the technical component of it. It also has to deal with the business you, as you’re saying. The business drivers, and how we integrate that into the world, of the technical into the IT world. And facilitate that business need through a process.

Jeremy

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think I like to think of DevOps as a mindset, and the mindset is just iterating faster.

Han

That, nice, yeah.

Jeremy

Releasing things faster, whether you know, hopefully it’s you know, customer functionality, but there’s customers inside of our business as well as our actual customers who pay us money.

Han

True.

Jeremy

Thanks for watching this episode of Cloudup!

Han

Leave your comments and questions below, and with some Agosto swag.

Jeremy

Thanks and see you next time!