We’ll now learn how ecosystems of solutions partners are teaming to provide specific vertical industries with applications and services that target private cloud deployments.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Here to
help us explore the latest in successful cloud-based applications development
and deployment is our panel, Martin van den Berg, Vice
President and Cloud Evangelist at Sogeti USA,
based in Cleveland, and Ken Won, Director of Cloud
Solutions Marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
(HPE). The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: Martin, what are some of the trends that are driving the adoption of hybrid cloud applications specifically around the Azure Stack platform?
Van den Berg: What our clients are dealing with
on a daily basis is an ever-expanding data center, they see ever-expanding
private clouds in their data centers. They are trying to get into the hybrid cloud
space to reap all the benefits from both an agility and compute perspective.
They are
trying to get out of the data center space, to see how the ever-growing demand can
leverage the cloud. What we see is that Azure Stack will bridge the gap between
the cloud that they have on-premises, and the public cloud that they want to
leverage -- and basically integrate the two in a true hybrid cloud scenario.
 |
van den Berg |
Gardner: What sorts of applications are your
clients calling for in these clouds? Are these cloud-native apps, greenfield apps?
What are they hoping to do first and foremost when they have that hybrid cloud
capability?
Van den Berg: We see a couple of different streams there. One is the native-cloud development. More and more of our clients are going into cloud-native development. We recently brought out a white paper wherein we see that 30 percent of applications being built today are cloud-native already. We expect that trend to grow to more than 60 percent over the next three years for new applications.
The issue
that some of our clients have has to do with some of the data being consumed in
these applications. Either due to compliance issues, or that their information
security divisions are not too happy, they don’t want to put this data in the public
cloud. Azure Stack bridges that gap as well.
They
can leverage the whole Azure public cloud PaaS while still having their
data on-premises in their own data center. That's a unique capability.
Microsoft Azure Stack
can bridge the gap between the on-premises data center and what they do
in the cloud. They can leverage the whole Azure public cloud PaaS while
still having their data on-premises in their own data center. That's a
unique capability.
On the other hand, what we also see is that some of our clients are looking at Azure Stack as a bridge to gap the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. Even in that space, where clients are not willing to expand their own data center footprint, they can use Azure Stack as a means to seamlessly go to the Azure public IaaS cloud.
Gardner: Ken, does this jibe with what you are
seeing at HPE, that people are starting to creatively leverage hybrid models? For
example, are they putting apps in one type of cloud and data in another, and then
also using their data center and expanding capacity via public cloud means?
 |
Won |
Won: We see a lot of it. The customers
are interested in using both private clouds and public clouds. In fact, many of
the customers we talk to use multiple private clouds and multiple public clouds.
They want to figure out how they can use these together -- rather than as
separate, siloed environments. The great thing about Azure Stack is the compatibility
between what’s available through Microsoft Azure public cloud and what can be run
in their own data centers.
The customer
concerns are data privacy, data sovereignty, and security. In some cases, there
are concerns about application performance. In all these cases, it's a great
situation to be able to run part or all of the application on-premises, or on
an Azure Stack environment, and have some sort of direct connectivity to a
public cloud like Microsoft Azure.
Gardner: Martin, are there specific vertical
industries gearing up for this more than others? What are the low-lying fruit in
terms of types of apps?
Hybrid healthcare
files
Van den Berg: I would say that hybrid cloud is of interest across the board, but I can name a couple of examples of industries where we truly see a business case for Azure Stack.
One of them
is a client of ours in the healthcare industry. They wanted to standardize on
the Microsoft Azure platform. One of the things that they were trying to do is
deal with very large files, such as magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) files.
What they found is that in their environment such large files just do not work
from a latency and bandwidth perspective in a cloud.
With Microsoft
Azure Stack, they can keep these larger files on-premises, very close to where
they do their job, and they can still leverage the entire platform and still do
analytics from a cloud perspective, because that doesn’t require the bandwidth
to interact with things right away. So this is a perfect example where Azure
Stack bridges the gap between on-premises and cloud requirements while leveraging
the entire platform.
Gardner: What are some of the challenges
that these organizations are having as they move to this model? I assume that
it's a little easier said than done. What's holding people back when it comes
to taking full advantage of hybrid models such as Azure Stack?
Van den Berg: The level of cloud adoption is not
really yet where it should be. A lot of our clients have cloud strategies that they
are implementing, but they don't have a lot of expertise yet on using the power
that the platform brings.
Some of the
basic challenges that we need to solve with clients are that they are still dealing
with just going to Microsoft Azure cloud and the public cloud services. Azure
Stack simplifies that because they now have the cloud on-premises. With that, it’s
going to be easier for them to spin-up workload environments and try this all in a secure environment within their own walls, their
own data centers.
Should a specific workload go in a private cloud, or should another workload go in a public cloud?
Won: We see a similar thing with our
client base as customers look to adopt hybrid IT environments, a mix of private
and public clouds. Some of the challenges they have include how to determine
which workload should go where. Should a specific workload go in a private
cloud, or should another workload go in a public cloud?
We also see
some challenges around processes, organizational process and business process.
How do you facilitate and manage an environment that has both private and
public clouds? How do you put the business processes in place to ensure that
they are being used in the proper way? With Azure Stack -- because of that full
compatibility with Azure -- it simplifies the ability to move applications
across different environments.
Gardner: Now that we know there are challenges, and that we are not seeing the expected adoption rate, how are organizations like Sogeti working in collaboration with HPE to give a boost to hybrid cloud adoption?
Strategic, secure, scalable cloud migration
Van den Berg: As the Cloud Evangelist with Sogeti, for the past couple of years I have been telling my clients that they don’t need a data center. The truth is, they probably need some form of on-premises still. But the future is in the clouds, from a scalability and agility perspective -- and the hyperscale with which Microsoft is building out their Azure cloud capabilities, there are no enterprise clients that can keep up with that.
We try to help our clients define strategy, help them with governance -- how do they approach cloud and what workloads can they put where based on their internal regulations and compliance requirements, and then do migration projects.
The future is in the clouds, from a scalability and agility perspective.
We have a
service offering called the Sogeti
Cloud Assessment, where we go in and evaluate their application portfolio
on their cloud readiness. At the end of this engagement, we start moving things
right away. We have been really successful with many of our clients in starting
to move workloads to the cloud.
Having
Azure Stack will make that even easier. Now when a cloud assessment turns up
some issues on moving the Microsoft Azure public cloud -- because of compliance
or privacy issues or just comfort (sometimes the information security
departments just don't feel comfortable moving certain types of data to a
public cloud setting) -- we can move those applications to the cloud, leverage
the full power and scalability of the cloud while keeping it within the walls
of our clients’ data centers. That’s how we are trying to accelerate the cloud
adoption, and we truly feel that Azure Stack bridges that gap.
Gardner: Ken, same question, how are you and Sogeti working together to help foster more hybrid cloud adoption?
Won: The cloud market has been maturing
and growing. In the past, it’s been somewhat complicated to implement private
clouds. Sometimes these private clouds have been incompatible with each other,
and with the public clouds.
In the Azure Stack area, now we have almost an appliance-like experience where we have systems that we build in our factories that we pre-configure, pretest, and get them into the customers’ environment so that they can quickly get their private cloud up and running. We can help them with the implementation, set it up so that Sogeti can help with the cloud-native applications work.
In the Azure Stack area, now we have almost an appliance-like experience where we have systems that we build in our factories that we pre-configure, pretest, and get them into the customers’ environment so that they can quickly get their private cloud up and running. We can help them with the implementation, set it up so that Sogeti can help with the cloud-native applications work.
With
Sogeti and HPE working together, we make it much simpler for companies
to adopt the hybrid cloud models and to quickly see the benefit of
moving into a hybrid environment.
Sogeti and HPE work together to make it much simpler for companies to adopt the hybrid cloud models.
Van den Berg: In talking to many of our clients, when we see the adoption of private cloud in their organizations -- if they are really honest -- it doesn't go very far past just virtualization. They truly haven't leveraged what cloud could bring, not even in a private cloud setting.
So talking about hybrid cloud, it is very hard for them to leverage the power of hybrid clouds when their own private cloud is just virtualization. Azure Stack can help them to have a true private cloud within the walls of their own data centers and so then also leverage everything that Microsoft Azure public cloud has to offer.
Won: I agree. When they talk about a
private cloud, they are really talking about virtual machines, or virtualization. But because the Microsoft
Azure Stack solution provides built-in services that are fully compatible with what's
available through Microsoft Azure public cloud, it truly provides the full cloud experience. These are the types of services that are beyond just
virtualization running within the customers’ data center.
Keep IT simple
Keep IT simple
I think Azure
Stack adoption will be a huge boost to organizations looking to implement
private clouds in their data centers.
Gardner: Of course your typical end-user worker
is interested primarily their apps, they don’t really care where they are
running. But when it comes to getting new application development, rapid application development (RAD), these are some of the pressing issues that most businesses
tell us concern them.
So how does RAD, along with some DevOps benefits, play into this, Martin? How are the development people going to help usher in cloud and hybrid cloud models because it helps them satisfy the needs of the end-users in terms of rapid application updates and development?
So how does RAD, along with some DevOps benefits, play into this, Martin? How are the development people going to help usher in cloud and hybrid cloud models because it helps them satisfy the needs of the end-users in terms of rapid application updates and development?
Van den Berg: This is also where we are talking
about the difference between virtualization, private cloud, hybrid clouds, and
definitely cloud services. So for the application development staff, they still
run in the traditional model, they still run into issues in provisioning of
their development environments and sometimes test environments.
A lot of
cloud-native application development projects are much easier because you can
spin-up environments on the go. What Azure Stack is going to help with is
having that environment within the client’s data center; it’s going to help the
developers to spin up their own resources.
There is going to be on-demand orchestration and provisioning, which is truly beneficial to application development -- and it's really beneficial to the whole DevOps suite.
There is going to be on-demand orchestration and provisioning, which is truly beneficial to application development -- and it's really beneficial to the whole DevOps suite.
There
is going to be on-demand orchestration and provisioning, which is truly
beneficial to application development -- and it's really beneficial to
the whole DevOps suite.
We need to
integrate business development and IT operations to deliver value to our
clients. If we are waiting multiple weeks for development and the best
environment to spin up -- that’s an issue our clients are still dealing with
today. That’s where Azure Stack is going to bridge the gap, too.
Won: There are a couple of things that
we see happening that will make developers much more productive and able to
bring new applications or updates quicker than ever before. One is the ability
to get access to these services very, very quickly. Instead of going to the IT
department and asking them to spin up services, they will be able to access
these services on their own.
The other
big thing that Azure Stack offers is compatibility between private and public cloud environments. For the first time, the developer doesn't have to worry
about what the underlying environment is going to be. They don’t have to worry
about deciding, is this application going to run in a private cloud or a public
cloud, and based on where it’s going, do they have to use a certain set of
tools for that particular environment.
Now that we
have compatibility between the private cloud and the public cloud, the
developer can just focus on writing code, focus on the functionality of the
application they are developing, knowing that that application now can easily
be deployed into a private cloud or a public cloud depending on the business
situation, the security requirements, and compliance requirements.
So it’s
really about helping the developers become more effective and helping them
focus more on code development and applications rather than having them worry
about the infrastructure, or waiting for infrastructure to come from the IT
department.
Gardner: Martin, for those organizations interested
in this and want to get on a fast track, how does an organization like Sogeti
working in collaboration with HPE help them accelerate adoption?
Van den Berg: This is where we heavily partner with HPE, to bring the best solutions to our clients. We have all kinds of
proof of concepts, we have accelerators, and one of the things that we talked
about already is making developers get up to speed faster. We can truly
leverage those accelerators and help our clients adopt cloud, and adopt all the
services that are available on the hybrid platform.
We have all
heard the stories about standardizing on micro-services, on a server fabric, or
serverless computing, but developers have not had access to this up until now and
IT departments have been slow to push this to the developers.
The
accelerators that we have, the approaches that we have, and the proofs of
concept that we can do with our client -- together with HPE -- are going to accelerate cloud adoption with
our clientele.
Gardner: Any specific examples, some specific
vertical industry use-cases where this really demonstrates the power of the
true hybrid model?
When the ship comes in
Won: I can share a couple of examples of
the types of companies that we are working with in the hybrid area, and what
places that we see typical customers using Azure Stack.
People want
to implement disconnected applications or edge applications. These are
situations where you may have a data center or an environment running an
application that you may either want to run in a disconnected fashion or run to
do some local processing, and then move that data to the central data center.
One example
of this is the cruise ship industry. All large cruise ships have essentially
data centers running the ship, supporting the thousands of customers that are
on the ship. What the cruise line vendors want to do is put an application on
their many ships and to run the same application in all of their ships. They
want to be able to disconnect from connectivity of the central data center
while the ship is out at sea and to do a lot of processing and analytics in the
data center, in the ship. Then when the ship comes in and connects to port and
to the central data center, it only sends the results of the analysis back to
the central data center.
This is a
great example of having an application that can be developed once and deployed
in many different environments, you can do that with Azure Stack. It’s ideal, running
that same application in multiple different environments, in either
disconnected or connected situations.
Van den Berg: In the financial services industry,
we know they are heavily regulated. We need to make sure that they are always
in compliance.
So one of the things that we did in the financial services
industry with one of our accelerators, we actually have a tool called Sogeti OneShare. It’s
a portal solution on top of Microsoft Azure that can help you with orchestration,
which can help you with the whole DevOps concept. We were able to have the edge
node be Azure Stack -- building applications, have some of the data reside
within the data center on the Azure Stack appliance, but still leverage the
power of the clouds and all the analytics performance that was available there.
That's what DevOps is supposed to deliver -- faster value to the business, leveraging the power of clouds.
Van den Berg: In talking to many of our clients,
when we see the adoption of private cloud in their organizations -- if they are
really honest -- it doesn't go very far past just virtualization. They truly
haven't leveraged what cloud could bring, not even in a private cloud setting.
Gardner: Perhaps we could now help
organizations understand how to prepare from a people, process, and technology
perspective to be able to best leverage hybrid cloud models like Microsoft
Azure Stack.
Martin,
what do you suggest organizations do now in order to be in the best position to
make this successful when they adopt?
Be prepared
Van den Berg: Make sure that the cloud strategy
and governance are in place. That's one of the first things this should always
start with.
Then, start
training developers, and make sure that the IT department is the broker of
cloud services. In the traditional sense, it is always normal that the IT
department is the broker for everything that is happening on-premises within
the data center. In the cloud space, this doesn’t always happen. In the cloud
space, because it is so easy to spin-up things, sometimes the line of business is
deploying.
We try to enable
IT departments and operators within our clients to be the broker of cloud
services and to help with the adoption of Microsoft Azure cloud and Azure Stack.
That will help bridge the gap between the clouds and the on-premises data centers.
Gardner: Ken, how should organizations get ready
to be in the best position to take advantage of this successfully?
Mapping the way
Won: As IT organizations look at this
transformation to hybrid IT, one of the most important things is to have a
strong connection to the line of business and to the business goals, and to be
able to map those goals to strategic IT priorities.
Once you have
done this mapping, the IT department can look at these goals and determine
which projects should be implemented and how they should be implemented. In
some cases, they should be implemented in private clouds, in some cases public
clouds, and in some cases across both private and public cloud.
The task then
changes to understanding the workloads, the characterization of the workloads,
and looking at things such as performance, security, compliance, risk, and determining
the best place for that workload.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
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