On Thursday, May 20, the VMware Cloud Management team once gain hosted a #vRealizeChat on evolving your cloud operating model. We asked 10 questions to our experts around the globe: Thomas Bryant, Tobias Lilley, Martijn Baecke, Mandy Storbakken, and Anders Hudson. Missed out on the fun? Read on to see a full recap of the chat
Hello, there! 👋 Welcome to our latest #vRealizeChat on the evolving cloud operating model!☁
Before we kick off question #⃣1⃣ here are the rules.
☝️Use #vRealizeChat in all your responses
✌️GIFs are HIGHLY encouraged
Please introduce yourself and where you’re tweeting from🌎 [Introductory Tweet]
Thomas Bryant: Hey hey! I’m Thomas, and I’m in ‘Marketing’ (technical and product) here at VMware! It’s a beautiful day here in Austin! Let’s GO! #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: Hi! I’m Tobias, Senior Technologist at VMware, signing in from the UK and excited to chat about all things vRealize and Cloud Operating Model! #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: Hi, Martijn Baecke here. Cloud Management Technologist coming from #Amsterdam. Happy to kick off this great #vRealizeChat
Mandy Storbakken: I’m Mandy and I am live from Minneapolis! I’m a Cloud Technologist at
@VMware and excited to participate in #vRealizeChat
Q1) Why is Infrastructure as Code (#IaC) becoming so popular? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: I believe it is because repetitive tasks, like Infrastructure, crave automation. #IaC makes things repeatable & simple. #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: With more of a “shift left” motion happening in the industry, with operational responsibilities shifting left to the developer to care about, we’re seeing more desire to access compute, network and storage via code, in a way that’s familiar. It’s a great way to provision infra!
Martijn Baecke: It’s an evolution that is currently taking place within operations teams adoption developer practices to help keep up with infrastructure changes. IaC is the way forward for most to really make it work. Scripting to the next level! #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: IaC allows you to apply best practices like version control to infrastructure provisioning and management. #vRealizeChat https://bit.ly/3wumdtA
Anders Hudson: Reduced management costs and better consistency are a great place to start, what’s not to like?
Q2) What are some benefits of adopting pipeline #automation for infrastructure? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: Lots of reasons for developers, but for the business it really makes a difference! Faster time to market for new features and that can lead to more revenue. #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: Leveraging infra blueprints in your pipelines with something like #vRealizeCodestream gives you a much more rounded DevOps process and keeps testing environments in sync #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: Moving towards the adoption of pipeline automation gives you the ability to increase the “time to delivery” of new cloud infrastructure & applications for cloud consumers. Also it makes it possible to reduce human error in the deployment process. #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: Delivery pipelines enable the automation and orchestration of a series of related tasks, including the testing and gating of changes. Which means more time for you! #vRealizeChat https://bit.ly/2QKp6Y5
Anders Hudson: As a guy who used to compile on a TRS-80 model III, there is never enough speed and efficiency. #vRealizeChat
Q3) What challenges hinder or slow down the migration to the #cloud? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: Political challenges are the biggest culprit in my experience. That said, not knowing exactly what your app IS in your infrastructure and having the right tooling for on-prem AND cloud will stop you cold. #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: Successful Cloud Migrations require an App Strategy (5Rs), Cloud Strategy (Private, Hybrid, Multi) and a Cloud Operating Model (People, Process & Technology) to bind them together. Most challenges come when the latter is skipped! #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: Typically migrations happen from on-prem to public cloud. That is a different format, so changing the underlying construct of the VM. Hard thing to do! Keep your stuff on the same platform. Use #VMware Cloud. Easiest way to public cloud. #vExpert #vRealizeChat
Mandy Storbakken: Dependency mapping is probably the biggest one #vRealizeChat
Anders Hudson: Most people don’t understand the benefits, global cloud migration is not a matter of if but when in modern infrastructure. #vRealizeChat
Q4) Will companies need to migrate to the #cloud more than once? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: Very likely! Different clouds have different features, so pick wisely for your apps. You will likely end up migrating between at some point too! #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: Probably more often than expected! New and innovative services become available on different clouds all the time and the reason we use clouds is for the services! Best to keep a level of #consistentinfrastructure using something like #VMwareCloud to make it easy! #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: Migrating between clouds will become the “new normal” as we are adopting a multi-cloud environment. So yes teams need to migrate between private and public clouds more than once. So become familiar with what works. Cloud Management to the rescue! #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: To the cloud, back on-prem, from cloud to cloud… #vRealizeChat
Now let’s chat #SaaS cloud management…
Q5) What are the benefits to moving management out of a private #DataCenter? #vRealizeChat
[link]
Thomas Bryant: You can focus on your business and not have to worry about the plumbing. Plus, no need to worry about upgrades and patches, it’s EASY! #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: We all love SaaS! Constantly updated with the latest features, infinitely scalable, nothing to install! Think of all that time back to use looking for new GIFs. #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: SaaS is becoming the defacto standard. So overtime all management will be going to SaaS. Compare it to mail right!? Exchange is now O365. SaaS is the way forward. #VMware Cloud Management making that easy with #vRealize Cloud Universal. #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: Spend time on building functionality that provides value, not on managing infra and management stacks #vRealizeChat
Anders Hudson: In addition to the potential cost benefits, reliability of service can be a key factor. #vRealizeChat
Q6) With a #SaaS cloud management solution in place, are teams ready to automate security tasks across environments? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: Most teams need to start looking at automation for security now. The cost of lax security, patching, compliance, etc… is being on the news
Tobias Lilley: With a holistic cloud management solution like vRealize, you can automate tasks from many angles, including things such as security groups for NSX #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: Security is always the last thing that anybody cares about. It should be number 1! With cloud management in place this can now be done. #VMware Cloud Management helps the #DevSecOps movement within companies. Automate all the things! Including security. #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: Yes! And not just security! Shift-left all the things #vRealizeChat https://bit.ly/3veFj75
Q7) What is the cloud operating model? Is this a new way to operate? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: It’s the future. How you run your business in the cloud. @mandystor did an amazing blog on this! https://bit.ly/3fdHvpN … #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: A Cloud Operating Model describes the people, process and technology changes required to evolve an organization and effectively manage your cloud services. #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: CoM really makes I&O organizations to make the best out of their clouds. We are moving from Private Cloud to Multi-Cloud. With the operating model to follow. https://bit.ly/3wxKy1V
Mandy Storbakken: Organize your people, process and technologies to get the most from cloud technologies #vRealizeChat https://bit.ly/3wqvEuc
Q8) Which stakeholders should be included in the Cloud Center of Excellence? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: The key stake holders – The LoB, IT, Sales, & Management. A quick read for folks -> https://bit.ly/3429BxT
Tobias Lilley: A #CCOE should be built around three areas, cloud financial management, cloud operations (operational governance), and cloud security and compliance – Skills in these areas are a must! #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: Everybody that is a stakeholder, either provider or consumer, should be represented. So cloud infrastructure, management, finance, security, business, devs, etc. #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: Me! #vRealizeChat
Anders Hudson: While there are a dozen roles who could be included, I’d pick the top 3-5 people who would be most invested day to day.
Q9) And #Kubernetes, that’s just another middleware layer, right? #vRealizeChat [link]
Thomas Bryant: More to manage? Yes. Middleware? Not exactly. I believe the thing to remember is K8s, like all things, has tradeoffs for any cloud strategy #vRealizeChat
Tobias Lilley: To manage, yes, but #Kubernetes is so much more than that, it has become a standard. Well adopted standards always help drive innovation and move industries forward! #vRealizeChat
Martijn Baecke: For Cloud Operations #Kubernetes is just another thing to manage! For more information read: https://bit.ly/3ubrcxP #vRealize Cloud Management & #Kubernetes better together! #vRealizeChat #vExpert
Mandy Storbakken: Well from a management perspective, it’s just another thing to manage, right @baecke? #vRealizeChat
Anders Hudson: And the transmission is just another car part? #vRealizeChat
And now for our final (and most fun) #vRealizeChat question!
Q10) In one GIF, show us how it feels to successfully migrate to the #cloud? We’ll start. 👇 [link]
Thomas Bryant: https://twitter.com/kix1979/status/1395422110550528002
Tobias Lilley: https://twitter.com/TobiasLilley/status/1395422113968893953
Martijn Baecke: https://twitter.com/baecke/status/1395422392088944647
Mandy Storbakken: https://twitter.com/mandystor/status/1395422266612097025
Anders Hudson: https://twitter.com/sokkmonkey/status/1395421808149499906
Looking for more information on the trends and technologies impacting the world of cloud? Visit the Cloud Insights page for unique perspectives, key learnings, and pragmatic advice for customers looking to accelerate their transformation journeys.
Resources on the vRealize Portfolio:
VMware vRealize Cloud Management
VMware vRealize Operations / VMware vRealize Operations Cloud
VMware vRealize Automation / VMware vRealize Automation Cloud
VMware vRealize Network Insight / VMware vRealize Network Insight Cloud
VMware vRealize Log Insight / VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud
