Declarative IT and Design for Operations

Was reading a very insightful and interesting blog from @TorstenVolt on Linked.in titled "Digital Transformation Requires Autonomic Computing 3.0" and started to see some commonality in the needed operations processes with a digital future.

This, by the way, is right after @AWS announces their AWS Outposts, a telling example of how coevolution in IT validates concepts and models (Yes, everyone, Hybrid is real, even Microsoft things so) and how terribly important it is to get to the data.

Torsten brings up some very important points about post transformational examples on what direction needs to take place.  It's very much like the conversation that @cpswan brings up almost every time we talk, how does the future solve the problems we see through Design for Operations.

The solution for Design for Operations revolves distinctly around Declarative IT plus a bit of truth and trust in the platform(s) associated with that same delivery.

I've done my best in capturing/mapping this in a Wardley Map as a way to illustrate the idea.

Figure 1.  Wardley Map showing Declarative needs and Design for Operations of IT Infrastructure

In general, IT Infrastructure Design for Operations includes a Platform for management of Declarative states of underlying infrastructure.

With the abstraction of server virtualization and cloud computing, the declarations became very much least common denominator and not very permissible with respect the evolution of application development (the Dev part of DevOps).  It eased operations of the abstracted layer considerably, but it didn't really enhance the Ops side of the infrastructure model.

At this point, we could argue that the Cloud Titans have already achieved a more horizontally evolved Declarative Platform, but now that everyone seems to be reaching back into the Enterprise Datacenter, permissible use and least common denominator may very well come into play again.

So, looking at the problem that now needs to be solved, truly Declarative Storage and Declarative Compute need to be pressed into evolution toward commodity to achieve the rewards of application integrated software definition of the hybrid datacenter.

This should go a long way toward solving the Design for Operations problems as well as matching up with @TorstonVolt's re-conceptualization of the Digital future state.

The what all, of Enterprise Cloud adoption, and all

Was asked my thoughts on Enterprise Public Cloud adoption rate.

Sensors leading to Public Cloud adoption:

From an enterprise perspective, the volume of servers sold in the previous year is soft. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3530117

The partnership that can underpin legacy enterprise app deployments in hybrid cloud has been announced.  https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/10/vmware-aws-announce-strategic-partnership.html

The drivers for cost containment are going to become increasingly important as customers look for lower cost of service.  This will probably start looking like “Use (AWS or Azure) for disaster recovery” and likely to evolve into “Application Transformation” discussions as optimizations within the cloud.  The best way to see this is with the directionality of utility mapping like the value chains between enterprise and public cloud: http://www.abusedbits.com/2016/11/why-public-cloud-wins-workload-love.html

Microsoft has announced an Azure Stack appliance to extend the reach of capabilities into the private cloud.  http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-release-azure-stack-as-an-appliance-in-mid-2017/

The cost / unit consumption of private Data Center estate is anywhere between ~40 and 100% more than public cloud.  This is further being eroded by co-location vendors continuing to drive down the cost/unit for data center vs new build.  It is becoming very costly to build or retrofit older data centers rather than simply consuming a service at cost that can be easily liquidated per month.  The large scale DC vendors are also creating ecosystem connections for networking directly with the public cloud vendors and where those don’t exist, companies like AT&T, etc are enabling this type of service connection via their MPLS capabilities.

Then, there’s the eventual large scale adoption of containers that present some additional optimizations, particularly as they relate to DevOps that further increase density over hypervisor based virtualization and increase dramatically the speed of change.  Further extending this capability, the network vendors, the historic last line to move in 3rd platform are starting to adopt these concepts.
http://www.abusedbits.com/2017/03/creation-and-destruction-without-remorse.html
http://www.investors.com/news/technology/can-cisco-take-aristas-best-customers-with-software-bait/
http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/channel-programs/300084323/arista-networks-exec-on-new-container-software-offensive-and-its-biggest-fundamental-advantage-over-cisco.htm?_lrsc=9ce3424f-25d3-4521-95e4-eeae8e96b525

This culminates in public cloud providers positioning themselves for legacy applications, cost containment, cost based on their operating models, positions in DR if they can’t get production workloads, integration into private cloud where they can’t get principle workloads and certainly new workloads in cost/volume based on scale.

This leads me to believe that the position on Public Cloud, from an enterprise perspective, is just starting…..

CSPs, SaaS and Network Ecosystems

Networking between Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) deployments is possible, but if you're looking to avoid some of the pitfalls of either multi-region or even multi-vendor deployments

• it may be necessary to build a substantial part of the network yourself
• you may have to trombone the traffic through your CSP to Data Center connection

      Neither of these are great options for an infrastructure that is nearly all automated and programmatic.

So, considering the alternatives, there may be some interesting possibilities as Network Ecosystem vendors enhance their services with additional automation and integration.

Consider AT&T's NetBond for instance.  In a situation where you are already using NetBond to create interconnection points for your enterprise integration and consumption of CSP services, imagine the possibility of using the NetBond headends to instrument a connection between extra-regional VPCs in a CSP, like Amazon Web Services.

The major advantage, NetBond is a programmable interface to the Direct Route AND they can pass traffic on the AT&T AVPN without having to transverse the Enterprise WAN.

Here's a high level of what that would look like:

Figure 1.  AWS VPC to VPC

At first glance, this looks remarkably similar to VPC routing, but notice that this configuration is completely EXTRA-REGIONAL, it could be used to connect a VPC in US West to a VPC in Singapore.

This could provide some really interesting availability and DR models for application designers.

A second possibility is to enhance a Hybrid Cloud service with execution in more than one vendor CSP.

Consider the following figure:

Figure 2.  Amazon VPC connecting to Azure Cloud

In this model, creating a truly vendor independent cloud deployment becomes possible.  Not only will this instrument application delivery across multiple CSPs, but it makes some of the container application deployment possibilities a lot less "sticky."  And yes, it's entirely programmatic.

There's always a question around moving data to the right place.  Considering that quite a number of enterprises use a variety of SaaS services today, it may be nice to move specific volumes of data from one place to another to act on them with some Big Data analytics (and maybe even some #AI in the future).

Consider the next figure:

Figure 3.  CSP to SaaS

As an example: with this method it would be possible in the future to send SFDC data (or even a stream) to an interactive visualization of the data in Microsoft Azure via Power BI.  Again, all done programmatically AND secure.

Ultimately, once network connecting points are made available, interesting things can start to happen with Network Ecosystems.

Update:

.@abusedbits Love it-- A realtime market opportunity feed for the @CSC + @MicrosoftR IML: http://bit.ly/2ibqZpk  #CSCTechTalk

https://twitter.com/JerryAOverton/status/835493717389754368

A compelling use of real time data feed, programmatically applied to a network integration and delivery of interactive visualization with MicrosoftR.