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May 24, 2016

Comments

TheEbizWizard

From 2012 -- "Why You Really, Truly Don’t Want a Private Cloud" http://organic.ulitzer.com/node/2288203

Aernoud van de Graaff

Hi Chuck,

I fundamentally disagree.

Yes, I am probably bias (like you are) as we are providing private (but also public) cloud services.

I have seen private cloud implementations fail and succeed. And generally that was not because of the technology. It was about the change or transformation that is required to make a cloud model work.
You have to break down the silo's, change the delivery model to your business, adapt your processes to high level of automation and change the culture of the people delivering the private cloud services.

Yes, technology is not perfect, but as you said, it is a lot better than what IT organizations traditionally can deliver. And btw, because of this I have seen Oracle implementations fail just as much as any other technology in the market.

I agree with your analysis that most public cloud vendors are not compatible on the hypervisor level. Meaning you have to decide how and where to run your workloads. It may mean some kind of migration or reinstallation of your applications.

But with automation this can be managed. I have seen implementation of a VMware based private cloud that through the portal can deploy instances just as easy on AWS as their private vSphere based cloud. Then deploy that same application somewhere else if needed.

That was on an IAAS basis, but that same cloud also ran Cloud Foundry. And applications developed on that platform are even easier to move around or can run distributed over multiple environments.

Sure, most organization are not there yet, we are all on a journey and for some organizations it may make sense to move everything to the public cloud, though I do not see enterprises do this short or even medium term. But they will be moving some workloads to the public cloud.

If you want to be compatible select a cloud vendor that matches your private environment. If it is just for your Cloud Native Apps, run it on Amazon, if it is .net on Azure, etc. based on the requirements of the application.

And if you are an Oracle based organization, check out Oracles solution. But (I am guessing here, but assuming that you run your cloud on OracleVM). Non Oracle workloads probably need some form of migration to run there as well (or does the Oracle cloud also provide a vSphere, KVM or Hyper-V environment).

My take is we are moving to multi cloud environments. The key is how you are going to manage those private and public environments. We started at abstracting server hardware, we are now abstracting storage and network, creating virtual DCs, the next step is the abstraction of clouds. Decouple your application from the environment it runs on. Based on (business) requirements, translated into policies, workloads will be deployed on the environment that provides the best service at the best price. And that will be a mix of traditional (e.g. Oracle) applications all the way to Micro-services running in containers.

I see the first developments in the market. But again. IT IS NOT ABOUT TECHNOLOGY. It is about people, process, organization and culture. And any implementation of cloud (private or public) from any vendor not addressing this is doomed to fail


Michael Endrizzi

Great article, not a total believer but I love how you consider the business and economics aspects.

Your ideas work well with

1) Cookie cutter applications: Netflix
2) Low support requirements: Angrybird games on Facebook
3) Standard or simple security requirements: xkcd comics
4) Applications that have high/low elastic demands: Game of Thrones streaming
5) Predictable cost model


Unfortunately businesses tend to:
1) Want IT to build a 3 legged purpled hair 1 eyed dog
2) Want to call and yell at people when the purple dog pees on their carpet
3) Prefer not to have the NSA or Chinese access to their designs or financial fraud records
4) Well...IT just sucks are building things cheaply no matter if its in the cloud or on-prem. But
once built many applications have a predictable cost model.


Thanks again,
dreez

Michael Endrizzi

Chuck,

Remember the days when people went screaming from mainframes to their new found flexible low cost freedom from IT ---> IBM PCs?

Seems like the mainframe is baaaaaaack; MainCloud.

dreez

Kyle Ohme

Chuck,

Great post. Spot on.

This is relevant with small and large enterprise customers alike. The industry is sitting on the tip of some massive change.

KO

The comments to this entry are closed.

Chuck Hollis


  • Chuck Hollis
    SVP, Oracle Converged Infrastructure Systems
    @chuckhollis

    Chuck now works for Oracle, and is now deeply embroiled in IT infrastructure.

    Previously, he was with VMware for 2 years, and EMC for 18 years before that, most of them great.

    He enjoys speaking to customer and industry audiences about a variety of technology topics, and -- of course -- enjoys blogging.

    Chuck lives in Vero Beach, FL with his wife and four dogs when he's not traveling. In his spare time, Chuck is working on his second career as an aging rock musician.

    Warning: do not ever buy him a drink when there is a piano nearby.

    Note: these are my personal views, and aren't reviewed or approved by my employer.
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