Microservice architectures from the cloud, function-as-a-service and complete workloads in containers: multi-cloud meets DevOps toolchain. Delivered by the managed service provider as a solution provider. What these trends mean for SMEs and what role IT still plays in this.
No need for a crystal ball: the IT of the future is hybrid. Business-critical data and applications will continue to run on-premise. Everything else will come cost-effectively and scalably from the cloud. And this is almost always a multi-cloud. This is because user requirements are becoming increasingly complex – and with them the cloud scenarios.
This is no different in large companies than in SMEs. Only the complexity is greater there. Here, users are more likely to book services from different providers in self-service – sometimes bypassing the IT department. In corporations and large companies, the cloud tends to come ‘from the top’, i.e. IT already provides services and resources from the cloud centrally via a service catalogue. So will the CIO be de facto disempowered in a medium-sized company? And which services will come from the cloud in future?
The future role of IT
Don’t worry, the CIO and his team won’t be out of a job. But they need to rethink. One thing is clear: managing multi-cloud environments will become the biggest IT challenge for SMEs. And therefore the supreme discipline for the CIO. The overarching strategic management of the multi-cloud takes precedence over the operational minutiae of day-to-day business. Overall, the roles in IT are being put to the test. More agility is required. In the past, there were specialists – for systems, networks, databases and whatever else needed to be managed in a company’s IT. In the digital age, however, user requirements – and therefore tasks – sometimes change by the hour. And there is always a suitable solution somewhere on the huge cloud market. Sought after: The holistically thinking and action-oriented IT employee with cloud expertise, acting as a sparring partner for the internal customer. And this generalist still needs to be trained and certified—or even found in the first place. That takes time. But speed is essential, as hybrid multi-cloud scenarios are already a reality today.
The Managed Service Provider – just a fire brigade for critical scenarios?
External expertise is now in demand. It’s no wonder that managed cloud models are becoming increasingly popular in medium-sized businesses. They are particularly popular in the area of public cloud—precisely where complexity is immense. Various services need to be integrated and managed consistently. Increasingly, a Managed Service Provider (MSP) takes on this challenging IT role. But there’s more to it: In the future, the MSP will evolve from an integrator and consultant to a solution provider. It will deliver both its own and integrated third-party services to customers through a unified platform—becoming the key enabler for all cloud services within the company. This procurement model offers a crucial advantage: it ties users within the company to specific services and providers through a catalogue. This means that complexity becomes manageable. Centralized multi-cloud management—and the resulting cost savings—often only become possible through this approach. In the future, there will be no way around the MSP. It will become the most important strategic and operational partner for the CIO of medium-sized businesses.
Best-of-Breed for development and testing
Notify me of any new publications
But what exactly will the MSP deliver in future? Until now, providers have offered complete applications, platforms or resources. Many environments for testing and development, for example, are already running in the cloud today. In the near future, they all will be. The advantages are obvious: resources are highly scalable and can be booked for a limited period of time – exactly the right answer to the very different workloads in software development. At the same time, security concerns do not (yet) play a role. However, things will soon become much more granular: because product development and ongoing operations in the company are moving closer together (DevOps), microservice architectures are becoming increasingly important. The first offerings for Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) from the cloud are already coming onto the market (e.g. AWS Lamda or IBM OpenWhisk). The user view of the cloud service will soon be more case-related – the product to be developed will become the focus. And this will be built decentrally with programme snippets from the cloud.
Multi cloud meets DevOps toolchain
This means that cloud providers will soon be offering microservices as a DevOps toolchain from the cloud. Which provider the microservice is ultimately obtained from is irrelevant to the user. True to the best-of-breed idea, they simply choose the right provider with the best solution approach in a multi-cloud environment – from the central service catalogue of their IT of course. At the same time, it will be possible to store complete development workloads in containers and move them back and forth between the clouds – thanks to OpenStack & Co. Storage workloads can also be moved to the most cost-effective provider. Even multi-cloud brokerage will be possible: cloud users will offer already booked but currently free capacity for use by third parties.
The market will split up
Who offers more in this colourful marketplace? Probably not the stall whose owner shouts the loudest. What will matter in the future are tailored solutions from the cloud, not just achievable cost savings through the mere outsourcing of IT processes. Therefore, the wheat will be separated from the chaff. Providers like Amazon Web Services or Google will continue to offer classic IaaS services—the cloud is a commodity here, just like fruits and vegetables.
Solution-orientated providers – above all MSPs with their own platforms – offer ‘Cloud as a Solution’ instead. They offer delicacies that are not available at every vegetable stall. This requires a deep understanding of the customer problem to be solved. MSPs with an associated system and consulting company therefore have a clear advantage. They offer the necessary deep dive to put all requirements into context, evaluate them and put together a customised cloud portfolio based on the customer’s exact needs. Medium-sized companies in particular will benefit greatly from this development in the future.
