When companies are so focused on
the very real challenge of building out
the technology, they forget that the
internal customers for whom these
platforms are built do not automatically
understand the platform and what it
can do for them.
Imagine you invented a new kind of truck chassis. To build it, you developed the
most highly automated, efficient manufacturing process in the world, creating
highly reliable truck frames that can accommodate a variety of custom config-
urations: delivery trucks, plumbing trucks, flatbed transports, mobile labora-
tories, etc.
However, when you release your new truck chassis line, problems appear. Most
people have never heard of your amazing new product. When they do, they do
not understand the features, and do not comprehend what is included and
what they need to add on their own. A few customers have bought your chassis
but are confused about how to customize it. And when they finally started
using the completed trucks in the field and support is needed, they have no
idea how to ask the right questions, or what kind of service they should expect.
What is the problem here? It is that you built a wonderful product, but you have
not empowered your customers to be able to take full advantage of it.
According to the RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report, 92% of respon-
dents are using public cloud. Of these, 68% percent either already have or are
planning to create some form of centralized cloud team or “center of excel-
lence,” to provide “centralized controls, tools and best practices to help accel-
erate the use of cloud while reducing costs and risk.”
At Cloud Technology Partners, we help many enterprises who are creating
those “centralized controls and tools,” in part, by automating the provisioning
of public cloud-based complete solution environments for AWS, Azure and
Google Cloud Platform. The fundamental tools and capabilities provided by
these cloud providers are the building blocks on which a basic account is trans-
formed into a “guard-railed platform.” Those guardrails are Infrastructure as
FALL 2018 | THE DOPPLER | 61