Within the framework of the digital agenda, IT infrastructure is of central importance. More than two thirds (68 percent) of companies regard digital infrastructure as the most important building block and the key to the successful digitization of their business models and processes. The Public Cloud is one of the most important vehicles of the digital evolution. Only by means of dynamically acting and globally scalable infrastructure are companies able to adapt their IT strategies to continuously changing market situations. Hence, they can strongly support the technical aspects of their company strategy. With a Digital Infrastructure Fabric, companies are mapping the technological image of their “Digital Enterprise“, defining all necessary players and drivers within their digital evolution.

Public Cloud infrastructure services represent a solid base, to support the digitization strategies of companies regardless of their size, predominantly however, companies with very scalable IT workloads. For example, startups are allowed to grow slowly without having to invest massively in IT resources from the very beginning. In this way, companies get a hold on one of the most important features, to have a say in the digital evolution: speed. Today for IT departments, there is more at stake than just preserving the status quo. IT must position itself as a strategic partner and business enabler and be capable of satisfying the individual needs of specialized departments. They need to pursue the goal of creating a competitive edge for the company on the basis of digital technologies. In this context, public cloud infrastructure support the proactive measures of the IT departments.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “Public Cloud – The Key to a Successful Digital Transformation“.

In the end of 2014 Dr. Michael Missbach got in touch with me telling me about his plans to update his book “SAP on the Cloud“. The book gives a general overview of SAPs strategy and products around cloud computing and also covers (internal) cloud projects and ideas by SAP. One of his interests was the SAP Monsoon project, which was established and propelled by Jens Fuchs. I am covering the project as part of my OpenStack and open source cloud research at Crisp.

… and that is how it came that I have contributed the “SAP Monsoon” chapter to the book “SAP on the Cloud”.

The book can be ordered under http://www.springer.com/br/book/9783642436048.

The market for system integrators and managed services providers is undergoing a substantial change. Only those who start their cloud transformation as early as possible will be able to survive on the market in the long run. The reason for this development is the changing purchase behavior of IT decision-makers. They are looking for more flexibility when it comes to the use of IT resources. So system integrators and managed service providers are faced with a fundamental change of their core business and need to upgrade the skill set of their employees as quickly as possible to the cloud-ready status. In this context public cloud infrastructures offer ideal conditions with regard to the price-performance ratio for running customer systems and applications in a managed services model. This way a faster response to changing customer requirements and to varying market situations is possible. System integrators and managed services providers can benefit from the high availability, the scalability and a high security standard of public cloud infrastructures. As a consequence they can free themselves from their capital-intensive business (shift from CAPEX model to the OPEX model) and thus design their pricing and marketing models more flexibly.

In the strategy paper “Generation Cloud – The Market for MSPs and System Integrators in Transition”, Crisp Research analyses the new role of MSPs and System Integrators in the age of the cloud.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “Generation Cloud – The Market for MSPs and System Integrators in Transition“.

Responsibility in the public cloud is a story of several misunderstandings. Advisory sessions and conversations with different companies interested in public cloud unveil the certainty that the classical outsourcing concept is still widely spread among IT decision makers. Public cloud providers are being seen as full service providers. That complicates negotiations at eye level and blocks the quick adoption of public cloud services. „Shared Responsibility“ is the keyword that needs to be internalized. This research note clarifies the wrong assumptions and describes the concept.

Self Responsibility: The Big Misunderstanding

In the past 10 years, for the sake of convenience cloud computing was often defined as “Outsourcing 2.0”. What should have led to a better understanding on the user side, however, did public cloud providers a disservice. With the understanding in mind – an external service provider takes over responsibility for (partly all) IT operations – IT decision makers developed the expectations that public cloud providers are full service providers. The IT department just coordinates and controls the external service provider.

What is true for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider as a vendor of low-hanging fruits is completely different at platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and in particular at infrastructure-as-a-services (IaaS) level. SaaS providers are delivering ready developed and ready-to-use applications. The complexity, for example with solutions from Salesforce and SAP, comes with the configuration, customization and, if necessary, the integration with other SaaS providers. So, the SaaS provider is responsible for the deployment and the entire operations of the software, and the necessary infrastructure/ platform. The customer is consuming the application. PaaS providers are deploying environments for the development and operations of applications. Via APIs, the customer gets access to the platform and can develop and operate its own applications and provide those to his own customers. Thus, the provider is responsible for the deployment and the operations of the infrastructure and the platform. The customer is 100 percent responsible for his application but doesn’t have any influence on the platform or the infrastructure. IaaS providers only take responsibility at infrastructure level. Everything that is happening at higher levels is in the customer’s area of responsibility.

Thus, it is wrong to see public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or VMware (vCloud Air) as full service providers who take whole responsibility for the entire stack – from infrastructure up to application level. Self responsibility is required instead!

Shared Responsibility: This is how IaaS Management works in the Public Cloud

A decisive public cloud detail that contrasts this deployment model clearly from outsourcing is the self -service. Depending on their DNA, the providers are only taking responsibility for specific areas. The customer is responsible for the rest.

In the public cloud, furthermore, it is about sharing responsibilities – referred to as Shared Responsibility. The provider and its customer divide the field of duties among themselves. In doing so, the customer’s self-responsibility plays a major role. In the context of IaaS utilization, the provider is responsible for the operations and security of the physical environment. He is taking care of:

• Setup and maintenance of the entire data center infrastructure.
• Deployment of compute power, storage, network and managed services (like databases) and other microservices.
• Provisioning the virtualization layer customers are using to demand virtual resources at any time.
• Deployment of services and tools customers can use to manage their areas of responsibility.

The customer is responsible for the operations and security of the logical environment. This includes:

• Setup of the virtual infrastructure.
• Installation of operating systems.
• Configuration of networks and firewall settings.
• Operations of own applications and self-developed (micro)services.

A very important part is security. The customer is 100 percent responsible for securing his own environment. This includes:

• Security of operating systems, applications and own services.
• Encryption of data, data connections as well as ensuring the integrity of systems based on authentication mechanisms as well as identity and access controls at system and application level.

Thus, the customer is responsible for the operations and security of his own infrastructure environment and the systems, applications, services, as well as stored data on top of it. However, providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or VMware vCloud Air provide comprehensive tools and services customers can use e.g. to encrypt their data as well as ensure identity and access controls. In addition, enablement services (microservices) exist that customers can adopt to develop own applications more quickly and easily.

By doing this, the customer is all alone in its area of responsibility and thus has to take self-responsibility. However, constantly growing partner networks are helping customers to set up virtual infrastructures in a secure way and run applications and workloads on top of public clouds.

@CIO: Public Cloud means stopping with Antiquated Traditions

In addition to requiring an understanding of the shared responsibility concept, using public cloud infrastructure also makes imperative the rethinking of the infrastructure design as well as the architecture of the corresponding applications and services.

During the way to public cloud infrastructure, the self-service initially looks simple. However, the devil is in the detail and hides in the complexity that is not obvious at first. That is why CIOs should focus on the following topics from the start:

1. Understand the respective provider portfolio and the characteristics of the platform/ infrastructure. This sounds easy. However, public cloud infrastructure environments are developing at enormous speed. For this purpose, it is necessary to know the range of functions and the availability of all services on the infrastructure platform and train the employees on a rolling basis to exploit the full potential.
2. Focus on a greenfield approach including a microservice architecture. Public cloud infrastructures are following completely different architecture and design concepts as compared to those taught and implemented just some years ago. Instead of developing monolithic applications, cloud infrastructure is set on so called microservice architecture to develop independent, loose coupled and individually scalable applications that are integrated to create an entire application. This ensures better scalability and leads to a higher availability of the entire application.
3. Consider „design for failure“. „Everything fails, all the time“ (Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon.com). The design of a cloud application has to follow the rules and characteristics of cloud computing and consider high availability. In doing so, one has to make sure to avoid a single point of failure and know that something can go wrong at any time. Thus, the goal is to create an application that works anytime even if the provider’s underlying physical infrastructure starts having issues. Therefore, the providers offer the necessary tools and services.
4. Use existing best practices and operational excellence guidelines for the virtual environment. Leading cloud users like Netflix impressively show how to handle self-responsibility, respectively shared responsibility, in the public cloud. In doing so, Netflix has developed its „Simian Army“. This is a huge set of tools and services they are using to ensure the highly-available operations of the virtual Netflix infrastructure on top of the cloud of the Amazon Web Services. Zalando makes similar steps by developing his own STUPS.io framework.
5. Consider managed public cloud providers. The complexity of the public cloud shouldn’t be underestimated. This applies for setting up the necessary virtual infrastructure, the development of applications as well as for the operations and the holistic implementation of all security mechanisms. More and more system integrators like Direkt Guppe, TecRacer or Beck et al. Services specialize in the operations of public clouds. In addition, former web hosting providers and MSPs like Rackspace (whose Fanatical Support is now available for Microsoft Azure) transform to managed public cloud providers. And many more will follow!

The growing number of cloud migration projects at big medium-size companies and enterprises indicate that public cloud infrastructure platforms are becoming the new norm, while old architecture, design and security concepts are being replaced. After public clouds have been ignored over several years, this deployment model now also makes its way on the digital infrastructure agenda of IT decision makers. However, only CIOs with a changing mindset taking the shared responsibility concept for granted will successfully make use of the public cloud.