Becoming a cloud native ... genuinely!

This slide deck discusses the novel options, public cloud gives us in 2022. I start by differentiating it from the widespread microservices-containers-Kubernetes "cloud native" definition. I provide a few examples where I compare "cloud native" and actually leveraging the potentials of the public cloud in terms of costs and time-to-market.

Then I continue by showing, how public cloud evolved from a bit of on-demand compute and storage in 2007 to a disruptive game changer in 2022 that offers novel options that did not exist before and do only exist in the public cloud. As any public cloud discussion (at least in Germany where I live) tends to trigger lots of "yes, but ..." discussions, I rebut the most popular ones.

At the end, I complete the talk with a few recommendations and a look at the darker sides of the public cloud (of course, not everything is golden).

As always, the voice track is missing. Still, I hope the slides give you some ideas to ponder ...

Transcript

1. Becoming a cloud native ... genuinely!
   Exploring the cloud beyond containers and microservices
   Uwe Friedrichsen – codecentric AG) – 2012-2022
   

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2. Uwe Friedrichsen
   Works @ codecentric
   https://twitter.com/ufried
   https://www.speakerdeck.com/ufried
   https://ufried.com/
   

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3. "I write microservices and run them in containers
   using Kubernetes. Therefore, I am a cloud native!"
   

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4. Yeah!
   

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5. At least that is what the CNCF* keeps telling us ...
   * Cloud Native Computing Foundation
   

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6. Cloud Native Computing Foundation (“CNCF”) Charter (Excerpt)
   1. Mission of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
   The Foundation’s mission is to make cloud native computing ubiquitous. The CNCF Cloud Native
   Definition v1.0 says:
   Cloud native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern,
   dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes,
   microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach.
   These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable.
   Combined with robust automation, they allow engineers to make high-impact changes frequently
   and predictably with minimal toil.
   The Cloud Native Computing Foundation seeks to drive adoption of this paradigm by fostering and
   sustaining an ecosystem of open source, vendor-neutral projects. We democratize state-of-the-art
   patterns to make these innovations accessible for everyone.
   https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/charter.md
   

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7. So, we are done here?
   

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8. And they lived happily ever after ...
   The End
   ?
   

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9. Let us dig deeper ...
   

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10. Small e-commerce site
    A bit cloud native approach
    • Team of 7-12 developers for 12+ months
    • Several container instances
    • Testing, hardening, monitoring, compliance
    (PCI-DSS)
    • 3-5 developers after launch for maintenance
    and improvements, updating infrastructure,...
    Upfront costs: > 1 Mio. €
    Time2Market: > 12 months
    Runtime costs: > 500.000 € p.a.
    Actual cloud native approach
    • Shopify
    • Team of 2 consultants for 2 weeks
    • 1 consultant after launch for 5-10 days p.a.
    Upfront costs: < 30.000 €
    Time2Market: 2 weeks
    Runtime costs: < 20.000 € p.a.
    (incl. Shopify fees)
    

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11. Full blown eCommerce platform
    A bit cloud native approach
    • Team of 50+ developers for 2+ years
    • Dozens of container and VM instances
    • Testing, hardening, monitoring, compliance
    (PCI-DSS)
    • 20+ developers after launch
    Upfront costs: > 15 Mio. €
    Time2Market: > 2 years
    Runtime costs: > 5 Mio. € p.a.
    Actual cloud native approach
    • commercetools
    • Team of 10 developers for 9 months
    • 3 developers after launch
    Upfront costs: ~ 1 Mio €
    Time2Market: 9 months
    Runtime costs: < 1 Mio € p.a.
    (commercetools : ~500.000 €/p.a.)
    

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12. ML/AI - Image Recognition
    A bit cloud native approach
    • Team of 2 data scientists for 3-6 months
    training data gathering, model search and
    training, tuning, ...
    • Team of 2-3 developers for 2-3 months building
    production version
    • 0,5 data scientists & 0,5 devs after launch for
    model adjustments, retraining, maintenance, ...
    • Costs for building data pipelines excluded
    Upfront costs: > 200.000 € (+ hardware)
    Time2Market: > 6 months
    Runtime costs: > 100.000 € p.a.
    Actual cloud native approach
    • AWS Rekognition
    Upfront costs: 0 €
    Time2Market: Immediate
    Runtime costs: < 10.000 € p.a.
    (10.000.000 Image p.a.)
    

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13. What can we learn from it?
    

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14. Public cloud gives you novel options regarding
    cycle times, time-to-market, innovation capabilities,
    flexibility, operations cost savings, scalability,
    dependability, even improved ecological footprint
    that did not exist before
    

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15. You need to leverage the public cloud
    to experience the cloud revolution
    

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16. Cloud revolution?
    

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17. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic services
    Custom software solutions Standard software solutions
    Platform
    Infrastructure
    Data Center
    Binds all IT capacities
    available. No capacity to
    address higher-level or
    new customer needs
    Before Cloud (on-premises)
    Actual needs
    Basic needs
    Customer needs to break down actual needs
    to basic needs because services offered by
    supplier do not address actual needs
    

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18. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic needs
    Basic services
    Custom software solutions Standard software solutions
    Platform
    Infrastructure
    Cloud compute
    Public cloud 2008
    Frees IT capacity for higher-level functions
    Actual needs
    

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19. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic needs
    Basic services
    Custom software solutions Standard software solutions
    Platform
    Cloud compute
    Public cloud 2011
    IaaS
    Frees IT capacity for higher-level functions
    Actual needs
    

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20. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic needs
    Basic services
    Custom software solutions Standard software solutions
    Cloud compute
    Public cloud 2014
    PaaS
    Frees IT capacity for higher-level functions
    IaaS
    Actual needs
    

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21. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic needs
    Cloud compute
    Public cloud 2017
    Serverless
    Basic services
    Service integration
    Frees IT capacity for higher-level functions
    Actual needs
    IaaS
    PaaS
    

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22. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Actual needs
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Supplier can occupy still uncharted business
    territory, e.g., by immediately addressing actual
    customer needs -> competitive advantage
    Cloud compute
    Higher level
    services
    Public cloud 2020+
    IT capacity for rapid innovation
    available, attacking completely new
    business opportunities
    IaaS
    PaaS
    Serverless
    

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23. This is what I mean with (public) cloud revolution
    

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24. This is where the novel options come from
    

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25. This is not possible with a private cloud
    

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26. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic services
    Custom software solutions Standard software solutions
    Platform
    Infrastructure
    Data Center
    Binds all IT capacities
    available. No capacity to
    address higher-level or
    new customer needs
    Before Cloud (on-premises)
    Actual needs
    Basic needs
    Customer needs to break down actual needs
    to basic needs because services offered by
    supplier do not address actual needs
    

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27. Genesis Custom built Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility) Evolution
    Customer
    Invisible Value chain Visible
    Uncharted Industrialized
    Basic needs
    Basic services
    Customer needs to break down actual needs
    to basic needs because services offered by
    supplier do not address actual needs
    Custom software solutions Standard software solutions
    Platform
    Infrastructure
    Data Center
    IT capacities still fully
    bound. No capacity to
    address higher-level or
    new customer needs
    Private cloud
    Actual needs
    

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28. But that means vendor lock-In!
    

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29. So what?
    

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30. You want lock-in!
    

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31. You should just do your homework first
    

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32. t
    Begin of usage of
    “lock-in” solution
    Expected usage duration
    Costs of running
    self-built solution
    Costs of running
    “lock-in” solution
    Exit costs
    and risks
    Economic
    decision
    margin
    TCO-based “lock-in” decision (simplified)
    

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33. But with OSS I do not have lock-in!
    

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34. Really?
    

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35. Every decision for a tool, product, platform, library,
    framework, programming language, etc. means “lock-in”
    

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36. Without any “lock-in”, you would sit with a plain computer
    without any software on it – no OS, nothing.
    You would need to develop all software from scratch.
    

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37. You (hopefully) deliberately choose lock-in
    to reduce efforts, costs and risks
    based on using the chosen solution
    

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38. And it always means effort and risk if you need
    to migrate away from the chosen solution
    

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39. This is also true if you choose an OSS solution
    

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40. But we could maintain the OSS
    solution ourselves if needed!
    

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41. Really?
    

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42. Have you ever seen that happen?
    

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43. Have you considered what that would mean in practice?
    

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44. It will not happen
    

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45. But OSS is for free!
    

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46. Is it?
    

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47. Most “OSS companies” these days are plain commercial
    companies that offer OSS variants of their products
    as “free samples” to push future sales
    of their commercial solutions
    

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48. For production use, you will need the commercial version
    of the product because the OSS version typically
    lacks critical production features
    

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49. To be clear: This is a perfectly legit practice.
    But it should not be confused with “free”
    

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50. BTW: Ever considered the ethical implications of expecting
    to use other people’s work for free to create something
    you make money with without giving back anything?
    This is what the typical “OSS first” strategy means in practice
    

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51. And even if the software is actually “for free”,
    using it still costs a lot of money
    

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52. Costs associated with OSS
    • License costs
    • Integration costs
    • Customization costs
    • Required features, commercial alternatives have built in
    • No new features “for free” with product upgrades
    • Maintenance costs (e.g., responding to CVEs quickly)
    • Operation costs (including personnel costs)
    • Training costs
    • Opportunity costs for longer T2M
    • ...
    

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53. OSS never is “for free”
    

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54. To be clear: There is nothing wrong with using OSS solutions.
    But please do the math and do not fall for strawman arguments.
    

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55. Okay, I see
    

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56. Back to cloud ...
    

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57. Quick reminder ...
    

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58. Public cloud gives you novel options regarding
    cycle times, time-to-market, innovation capabilities,
    flexibility, operations cost savings, scalability,
    dependability, even improved ecological footprint
    that did not exist before
    

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59. You need to leverage the public cloud
    to experience the cloud revolution
    

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60. How can we become cloud natives?
    

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61. Understand serverless
    • Managed services
    • Learn which (popular) managed services exist in your domain
    • Understand their capabilities and limitations
    • Function-as-a-Service (FaaS)
    • Learn how to use it as a universal integration layer
    • Understand the architectural paradigm and its implications
    • Understand its options and its limits
    

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62. Understand cloud native design
    • Which paradigm to use
    • Combining compute, storage and network options
    • Build vs. lease
    • Scaling up and down, availability, costs, ...
    • Much more than just microservices and containers!
    

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63. Understand cloud economy
    • Runtime cost efficiency is achieved differently
    • Simple “lift & shift” usually increases runtime costs
    • Different paradigms support different use cases best
    • Moving data around has a price tag
    • Think about auto-rightsizing
    • Consider all types of costs!
    

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64. Understand cloud security
    • Different from traditional on-premises security
    • Provides lots of fine-grained options
    • Steep learning curve
    • Essential for building dependable solutions
    

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65. Understand cloud sustainability
    • We want to minimize our ecological footprint!
    • Know the cloud provider’s guides to sustainability
    • Pick the right paradigm for the given use case
    • Watch for good server utilization
    • Do not forget downscaling
    • Balance performance, availability and sustainability
    

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66. Is everything golden?
    

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67. Of course not
    

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68. Issues and pitfalls
    • Many services to choose from – steep learning curve
    • Standard APIs still missing – lots of integration work
    • Services not always mature – DX can still be PITA
    • Costs can explode if you are not careful
    • Dominated by players from the USA and China
    • Geopolitical developments will shape access to public cloud
    

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69. Shouldn’t I rather wait and observe?
    

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70. You could wait until the dust has settled,
    the teething troubles have been overcome
    and everything works nicely
    

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71. But then others who started early
    will have an unassailable lead
    

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72. Competitive advantage is shaped
    in the realm of early adopters,
    not in the realm of late followers
    

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73. Hence, dive in now, learn the options of the public cloud ...
    

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74. ... learn how to leverage its potential ...
    

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75. ... know about the risks and pitfalls ...
    

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76. ... deal with lock-in risks in a grown-up way ...
    

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77. ... and experience the cloud revolution!
    

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78. Wrap-up
    

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79. Wrap-up
    • Cloud is much more than containers and microservices
    • Understand the cloud revolution
    • Understand what “lock-in” really means
    • Learn how to leverage the options the public cloud offerings
    • Understand the pitfalls and risks
    

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80. Yeah!
    

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81. Uwe Friedrichsen
    Works @ codecentric
    https://twitter.com/ufried
    https://www.speakerdeck.com/ufried
    https://ufried.com/
    

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