Achieving multi-cloud use maturity – new eBook can help

This is the first in a series of blogs focused on multi-cloud use maturity. The series highlights the topics contained in a new eBook, “The Eight Critical IT Practice Areas That Drive Multi-Cloud Use Maturity”.

From public cloud to multi-cloud

While IaaS was the initial value driver for the public cloud, in recent years, public cloud providers have added hundreds of additional “as a Service” offerings. The availability of these non-IaaS cloud services has helped tens of thousands of organizations dramatically speed up the time it takes to deliver new applications. The use of these pre-made building blocks also allows app dev teams to focus on functionality that is unique to their business circumstances rather than building functionality that doesn’t differentiate or drive competitive advantage.

The growth in the availability of non-IaaS cloud services has fueled a massive second round of growth in the use of the public cloud. Contemporary with the growth in public cloud has been a revolution in the way organizations develop software. Agile and DevOps are now mainstream. As is the move towards developing software in a way that conforms to modern application principles such as the use of 12 factor apps methodology; micro-services and containers; and Kubernetes as the foundation of a modern infrastructure.

As organizations transform their application portfolio by building new apps or modernizing existing apps, it becomes evident that a single cloud rarely can meet all of the needs of all of the apps that are important to an organization. Each cloud provider offers unique services and advantages, with nuances in their innovation capabilities. Numerous analyst reports point out that a majority of organizations are already using two or more public clouds to meet their aggregate needs. Most also continue to run one or more data centers as well.

No one cloud meets all needs

But today, the reality beneath the enterprise level, is that most teams responsible for building or running apps have traditionally operated in a single cloud environment. However, as teams become more strategic in their use of the public cloud, they are increasingly seeking to match the unique requirements of each app to the cloud that best meets those requirements. This is directly translating into a need to build, operate and manage apps across more than one cloud.

As teams go from working on one cloud, to operating on two or more, a model where each team member works on only one cloud is unsustainable. Teams are beginning to seek ways to leverage the skills and capabilities of both app dev and IT Ops professionals across multiple clouds. But what are the capabilities that will be required to be successful in a world where teams need to operate across more than one cloud? To help organizations figure this out VMware created a framework that can help organizations assess their capabilities, or maturity, in the areas that we believe will be most critical to achieving successful operations in a multi-cloud world.

Assessing multi-cloud use maturity

There are many different approaches that can be taken to assess maturity as it relates to multi-cloud use. The approach we have taken is to consider eight major areas an organization will generally need to become proficient at in order to excel at multi-cloud development and operations. Below are the eight areas that we will focus on as we explore multi-cloud use maturity. We breakdown each area of these eight areas into a discrete set of activities or practices that when taken together represent the bulk of all activities for these eight areas.

Developing maturity in a specific area is the same as developing capabilities and capacity in that same area. We believe that developing capability in these eight areas is critical to organizations achieving multi-cloud use maturity. In balance of this blog series, I’ll explore each of these areas; looking at why each area is important and what the underlying activities or practices are for each area.