An Insiders Guide to Cloud Computing by David Linthicum

Author:David Linthicum [David Linthicum]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Published: 2023-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Best-of-Breed?

The typical battle cry of those who need to leverage clouds other than the approved enterprise standard is the fact that they need to leverage best-of-breed technology. This means a technology is identified as the most optimal solution for a specific problem or set of problems. For example, a special-purpose database built specifically for manufacturing that’s needed to support a manufacturing application. Or a proprietary medical application and database that’s needed for internal R&D. Or it might be a system built to provide current information about legal regulations and business requirements within certain territories and/or countries. These products are typically found within the walled garden of one cloud provider, but not others.

The pushback is, if we allow exceptions, then we’ll end up with a “complex mess” of many different cloud services that must be maintained with the right staff skills to support it. It also needs to be secured and governed to meet the standard of the company, and perhaps laws and regulations.

If the previous arguments and costs are presented prior to leveraging a “nonstandard” cloud, and the ROI proves the exception benefits greatly outweigh the costs, then the exception should be made. Unfortunately, most users who need the exceptions don’t realize the domino effect of their choices, and they instead tend to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Hello, complexity.

Because complexity is the primary downside of leveraging more than one cloud, this chapter suggests ways to mediate complexity and make multiclouds work in cost-optimized ways. This is perhaps the most important lesson that I can convey in this book.

To understand the reasons we leverage best-of-breed technology, it’s best to look at two common problems and solutions, as depicted in Figure 6-3 and Figure 6-4. In Figure 6-3, it’s assumed that those who build innovative solutions within an enterprise are limited to cloud services from one specific provider. As the need for innovation rises, the ability to leverage best-of-breed technology is limited to the cloud services included with the “preferred cloud provider.” In turn, this limits the “Business Innovation Supported” and diminishes the level of “Business Value Created” as a direct result of limiting the use of best-of-breed technology—in this case, cloud services that are not offered by an enterprise’s preferred cloud provider.

Of course, the preferred cloud provider may also offer the best-of-breed services needed by the innovator, but this will not always be the case.

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