Full Cloud for all
Cloud Computing, which for many years was reduced to the outsourcing of certain IT resources (mainly IaaS), has now reached such maturity that CIOs and CDOs (Chief Digital Officer) can now move towards a complete dematerialization of their information system: All Cloud or Full Cloud or Cloud Only.
In France, the obstacles to the Full Cloud concept (security, interconnection, availability of Cloud-based services and applications, interoperability, financial model, etc.) are gradually disappearing under the impetus of both young 'native Cloud' Startups and large groups from all sectors. For many French companies, the regionalization of the data centers of the giants of the public cloud sector has helped accelerate this adoption.
At the same time, there has been an explosion of solutions and offers available in the Public Cloud, particularly in the SaaS field (+31% in 2017). Indeed, GAFAMs are at the origin of the "SaaS-course" strategy of major publishers who were previously rather reluctant to abandon their lucrative and linear business model for a more flexible usage model.
Customers, big and small, come here to get the same benefits:
- CAPEX vs. OPEX: Limit investment risks through pay-as-you-go with scalability;
- R&D: Take advantage of AI, machine learning and other automation services in order to adapt and perpetuate their activity as much as possible;
- Organisational alignment on short and iterative cycle projects (DevOps movement) with an imperative to shorten the time to market;
- To provide its internal and external customers with ergonomic, intuitive and agile interfaces;
- Subscribe to à la carte network & security services (anti-virus, WAF, filtering, user tracking, authentication, SD-WAN, etc.).
Public Cloud players have imposed it as the main playground for digital innovation.
Brakes yes... but a recognized necessity
Today, French companies have become much more mature on the issues of digitalization and are making concrete progress on their digital transformation, even if there are still obstacles:
- Challenge of organizational restructuring and HR implications ;
- Resistance to change ;
- Lack of competence ;
- The challenge of legacy migration to the Cloud;
- Fear of Cyber Threats and Economic Cyber Attacks ;
- Regulatory constraints ;
- Criticality of data / business issues ;
- Vendor lock-in and relative confidence in the major players ;
- Collaborative constraints between IT and business lines ;
Particularly strong in France, this reticence is shared on a global scale, even though most managers seem to have realised that what is at stake is - at the very least - a threat to their activities. A Harvard Business Review and Microsoft study dating from 2017, considers 2020 as a breakthrough year for the winners and losers of digitalization.
This challenge of digital transformation is the primary motivation for companies to adopt the Cloud, or in some cases the Full Cloud (datacenterless).
Staying in control is a challenge for all stakeholders
The orientation of CIOs and CDOs ("Chief Digital Officer") towards the Full Cloud responds to a need for flexibility and agility in their IT strategy to serve the business. For CFOs, it also responds to a need for cost reduction and financial optimisation.
However, CIOs have been and still are confronted with the realities of this new era of the Public Cloud.
The issues addressed are :
- Deployment, migration, automation, industrialization ;
- Optimization and reliability of Public Cloud architectures ;
- Environmental and Data Security ;
- Management, administration and operation of these Cloud environments.
A new concept is therefore emerging, that of controlling budgets and costs. Indeed, if the lack of profiles with expertise in Public Cloud and DevOps is a reality, it also translates into an apprehension on the part of customers to find themselves in an organization governed by Shadow IT and multiple opaque contracts with an explosion of costs totally out of control.
The bad experiences of customers who have received large bills for consuming Public Cloud services lead them to turn to third parties (multi-Cloud operators). The latter are able to efficiently manage resources and services, through financial optimisation or FinOps, by integrating the entire IT base: legacy, private Clouds, hosted or not, as well as Public Cloud XaaS solutions and services.
How can you imagine managing your resources efficiently without a controlled global view?
Jean-Michel GALLEBY, Cloud Architect - ITS Integra
