Execs Talk About Managing Multicloud: Complexity, Data, Vendors
CIOs are finding that they and their teams are increasingly and unavoidably living in a multicloud world. The question is: how well are they managing multicloud?
This was the question that I posed recently to the #CIOChat.
CIOs suggest the challenges come in the following order:
2) knowing where data and work loads are
4) acquiring security, privacy, and performance visibility from sub providers
Data, without question, is a major issue for CIOs to solve with Multicloud. Former CIO Tim McBreen says, “data has always been my biggest issue. Especially data that is needed across cloud platforms and requires constant synch. The same is true with cloud data warehouses and analytic data. Both require effort to make sure they work and are delivered at their contracted cost per unit of data moved and stored. This goes back to knowing what you are doing and maintaining and evolving your catalog, architecture, and strategy.”
Clearly, organizations should make a conscious choice about the data that should or should not be migrated into a cloud data warehouse. CIO David Seidl said in response to McBreen, “I wonder how many are doing much deep cross-vendor platform integration? Or if they’re running mostly distinct services based on underlying capabilities or requirements and then doing some higher level or API integration.”
Analyst Dan Kirsch said for this reason “everything needs to start by understanding where your data and workloads are. Multicloud, in most cases, was started by developers and business units. You now need to manage everything like a single platform — except it spans to multiple environments. Nevertheless, figuring out whose responsibility it is for managing IT assets is often a problem.
“For example, who owns data lakes in terms of data quality, security, etc. Meanwhile, some of an organizations most valuable data can remained locked in enterprise and SaaS applications plus of course on-premises databases.”
At the same time, CIO Martin Davis suggests that a “fragmented situation creates complexity and requires additional management and integrations. Good enterprise architecture is a must to avoid this.”
The worries of former CIO Ken LeBlanc go beyond data issues. He says, “there is the complexity of managing and viewing utilization and associated invoicing. All of this reduces buying power leverage.” Former CIO Joanna Young says “the management of multiple vendors and related contracts remains a difficult process. This includes the fitting the often-changing needs of a portfolio of components from different vendors.”
Clearly, CIO leadership is essential. For this reason, CIO Pedro Martinez Puig says, “CIOs need to set a clear choice path, so the decisions are consistent with all organizational stakeholders. It is important to keep a dual or multi provider during negotiations, plus not rely 100% on external expertise to monitor, plan and execute the projects and ongoing business. We can outsource everything but accountability.”
CIOs are amazingly candid about the current state of knowing where things are located. CIOs, nevertheless, believe strong central control is required to knowing all the places the organization has applications and infrastructure.
McBreen claims for example, “CIO should not be surprised at an outage to find out things aren’t working. They might uncover a nuance or something that was changed and not evolved. I go down to each cloud provider. I do not track their sub service providers outside of contractually making sure every provider including sub providers prove they meet certain security, privacy, and functionality requirements. We perform yearly audits as well.”
Seidl, however, was a bit hesitant to declare a service catalog is needed. “You need a way to keep track of what you’re running, what it’s costing, if it’s being used, if it’s scaled right, and if it’s being tested, reviewed, monitored, and managed. This is more – in my opinion – than a service catalog.
