CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
“
AS IT STANDS,
VENDOR LOCK-
IN IS STILL
CONSIDERED TO
BE A SIGNIFICANT
BARRIER TO
INNOVATION
AND COMPLETE
AGILITY.
technology, but also its influence on the
bottom line. The good news is that the
public cloud infrastructure is already known
to be secure and built to a high standard,
and some of the largest cloud vendors (AWS,
Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) have
worked tirelessly to evolve their offerings to
alleviate concerns and ensure workloads are
secure and resilient against both internal
and external threats.
While as a whole the public cloud has been
extremely secure, other external trends have
emerged which make public safeguarding
incredibly complex. With the constant
integration of new platforms, more people
across the world are constantly trying
to access data for various uses. This has
resulted in a security gap and multiple cases
of shadow IT and rogue DevOps coming to
ahead. To move forward, organisations must
focus on putting controls in place to manage
and monitor their data at all times. Because
in the end, if you can see your data you
can trust that it is secure regardless of the
environment you are operating in. On one
hand, organisations must implement defined
policies that specify what data can live
where and who can touch it. On the other
hand, IT leaders must put the appropriate
tools in place to monitor the data, alleviating
the responsibility of wondering whether the
data is secure in the cloud.
Moving forward with AIOps
Given the increasing complexities for both
the CIO and CEO, a new approach is needed
40
INTELLIGENTCIO
to equip teams to view, understand and act
seamlessly across the entire infrastructure.
To ensure this occurs, automation must be
considered – in the right way. While many
organisations have made huge strides in
automating IT analytics, it still often requires
humans at the core. Though this has worked
well in the past, today’s evolved version of
the hybrid multi-cloud environment – which
consistently sends data to hundreds of data
centre touchpoints at a time – requires
a technology that goes beyond human
capacity to intelligently monitor and
manage all IT environments at scale.
The key to managing these complex
environments is to integrate the data
fabric – a set of data services that provide
consistent capabilities across a choice of
endpoints – with AIOps, the application
of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine
Learning (ML) to automate the identification
and resolution of operational issues. These
can include security and governance risks,
poor system performance, as well as general
and unexpected errors.
Dissimilar to some AI integrations, AIOps
is fully intelligent and capable of analysing
and creating action without human
interference. According to recent Gartner
predictions, it’s estimated that 30% of
large enterprises will use AIOps and digital
experience monitoring tools exclusively
by 2030 – with good reason. Not only can
AIOps help increase productivity gains,
it can create significant cost savings and
dramatically reduce downtime, which
ultimately adds up to a meaningful impact
on a business’ bottom line.
Cloud-agnostic DevOps
Another recent approach to getting the most
out of a hybrid multi-cloud environment has
been through the use of Kubernetes. Acting
as a connection between the contrasting
DevOps solutions many organisations
internally use, Kubernetes enables teams to
build a modern, simpler solution which works
across any environment.
As it stands, vendor lock-in is still considered
to be a significant barrier to innovation and
complete agility. For most, this results in an
inability to adapt and leverage innovation
in a multi-cloud environment. Because
using Kubernetes is considered ‘cloud
agnostic’, organisations can avoid this and
move from one cloud to another without
negative consequences for IT and business
processes. By taking this approach, the
CIO and IT team can showcase the ability
to achieve true application portability,
ultimately addressing the economic factors
and complexity concerns that hinder
modern DevOps.
In the end, there is simply no other way to
be flexible while mixing on-premise and
off-premise than through a comprehensive
data fabric strategy. Taking this approach
enables organisations to pursue innovation
while seamlessly shifting workloads and
preventing cloud vendor lock-in.
Fortunately, the technology side of multi-
cloud is becoming easier; the next step and
the next crucial differentiator is about the
experience. Moving forward, organisations
must ensure that the management of
the hybrid multi-cloud world is as easy as
possible. To do this they must connect the
data dots, ensuring the cloud works for as
many workloads and customers as possible
– including the transparent delivery of
consumption models. Doing so will alleviate
some of the pressure on the CIO and will
allow them to focus on delivering value
and having an impact on the CEO’s overall
business goals. n
“
TO SEE SUCCESS
IN THE MIGRATION
TO A HYBRID
MULTI-CLOUD
ENVIRONMENT,
ORGANISATIONS
MUST TACKLE
SOME OF THE
MAJOR HURDLES
COMMON WITHIN
THE INDUSTRY.
www.intelligentcio.com