Cloud as a Story - Vunvulea Radu

One common misconception is related to IT teams and the cloud. Businesses expect that cloud adoption will eliminate or drastically reduce the cost and size of IT teams. Cloud indeed simplifies the management of the infrastructure and the activities that need to be done to manage the cloud environment. It does not mean that IT teams are not required anymore. The IT team evolves; even if the size of the team shrinks, it becomes more critical for the company and the business.   In most cases, responsibilities regarding hardware provisioning, maintenance, OS & software updates and packing shift from the IT team to the cloud vendors. This allows companies to focus more on the services and applications running on top, proving out-of-the-shelve capabilities related to encryption, backup, DR and data governance. On the other hand, IT teams need to manage new dimensions, such as cloud governance, security, compliance, optimisation, and integration. The IT teams need to ensure that r...

Cloud is not for all and will not become a standard and universal solution for any organization, business and workload. Cloud adoption, which is part of the cloud journey, covers multiple cloud vendors, cloud services and on-premises solutions during a 5-10-year period. The cloud solution for your current business might not fit your needs in 5 years. This is normal, part of the lifecycle of a system and needs to be incorporated into it. The assumption that one cloud fits all your needs is an oversimplified approach that leads to a cloud adoption failure. The impact of a one-size-fits-all approach can affect the operational costs, performance and compliance. Regulatory requirements regarding data residency might not map to one cloud vendor's physical presence. A single cloud model (vendor) with inefficient resource allocation can affect the system's performance. One vendor approach can affects the cloud infrastructure costs, because it force you to pay for service tiers that a...

The idea that migration to the cloud is simple, straightforward and rapid is a wrong assumption. It’s a common misconception of business stakeholders that generates delays, budget overruns and technical dept. A migration requires laborious planning, technical expertise and a rigorous process.  Migrations, especially cloud migrations, are not one-size-fits-all journeys. One of the most critical steps is under evaluation, under budget and under consideration. The evaluation phase, where existing infrastructure, applications, database, network and the end-to-end estate are evaluated and mapped to a cloud strategy, is crucial to ensure the success of cloud migration. Additional factors such as security, compliance, and system dependencies increase the complexity of cloud migration.  A misconception regarding lift-and-shits is that they are fast and cheap. Moving applications to the cloud without changes does not provide the capability to optimise costs and performance, leading to ...

Cloud Myths: Cloud is Cheaper (Pill 1 of 5 / Cloud Pills) The idea that moving to the cloud reduces the costs is a common misconception. The cloud infrastructure provides flexibility, scalability, and better CAPEX, but it does not guarantee lower costs without proper optimisation and management of the cloud services and infrastructure. Idle and unused resources, overprovisioning, oversize databases, and unnecessary data transfer can increase running costs. The regional pricing mode, multi-cloud complexity, and cost variety add extra complexity to the cost function. Cloud adoption without a cost governance strategy can result in unexpected expenses. Improper usage, combined with a pay-as-you-go model, can result in a nightmare for business stakeholders who cannot track and manage the monthly costs. Cloud-native services such as AI services, managed databases, and analytics platforms are powerful, provide out-of-the-shelve capabilities, and increase business agility and innovation. H...

This month, I had the opportunity to be one of the speakers at ITDays . The 12th edition of ITDays took place in Cluj-Napoca and gathered IT specialists from Cluj-Napoca and surrounding cities. Each year, the conference is growing, not only in the number of attendees but also in the level of technical content.  My session this year was about cloud (re) partitioning and how it is part of IT's lifecycle. This trend will become more common in 2024, and I expect it to be part of IT strategies. As organizations' cloud maturity increased, they became more aware of cloud advances and disadvantages and what systems work better in the cloud or in other hosting flavours. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about this subject. I would love to chat with you.  

 In the last few weeks, I have been busy from the community's point of view. I had the great opportunity to participate in multiple conferences as a speaker. DevTalks —The conference, which had over 2,200 attendees, took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on September 26th. I delivered a session about AI in the cloud and how we need to modernize our cloud solution to prepare for it - Reference Architecture of AI in the Cloud All Day DevOps  - The online conference that took place in the second week of October was around DevOps provided a great opportunity to learn more about automation, cloud and DevOps I had the chance to deliver a session regarding cloud and AI, and how we should prepare our cloud solutions for the AI workload.  The Hack Summit —This conference, which took place on October 17th, was all about security and the tools related to it. I delivered talks about Cloud (re)patriation and Hybrid Cloud & Reference Architecture of AI in the ...