A pattern has begun to emerge in cloud computing as enterprises change the way they utilize the cloud. Many have gone from using siloed public clouds individually to a strategic platform that handles all clouds at once. Then there are other enterprises that are beginning to use a holistic IT architecture, which uses public clouds.
As for “cross-cloud architects” themselves, their main focus lies in 3 major avenues: cross-cloud governance, holistic security and intercloud operations.
Let’s take a look at each concept.
Cross-cloud governance
In a traditional sense, governance is a security system. It’s what keeps a business as trouble-free as possible. This process deals with CPU saturation, storage system overwriting and accidental overspending for public clouds.
Furthermore, cross-cloud governance is an enterprise’s ability to add restrictions to cloud application, data, resource and service usage.
Holistic security
When enterprises design a security system that includes their cloud system in with their IT, this is referred to as holistic security. While this could refer to an enterprise building a security system on an existing infrastructure, it more often means that the business is completing an overhaul of their system and pivoting to a holistic identity.
While it’s natural to feel that an enterprise’s cloud and IT should be separate responsibilities, if there is no integrated peer system—one that includes ops and governance—the security system can never be a true holistic security system.
Furthermore, the best practice is to have your enterprise’s security as a part of the design and deployment of your IT system. Things go smoother (with less chance of failure) if it’s under the control of a single architect or a group of architects.
Intercloud operations
When you’re utilizing multiple public clouds, the ability to have them all operate seamlessly is optimal. This is achieved through the concept of intercloud operations or the presence of an operational abstraction layer, which encompasses all of the clouds in your system. When optimized, intercloud operations run across public and private clouds as well as traditional systems, if your enterprise is still utilizing them.
For cross-cloud architects, intercloud operations is the hardest of the 3 concepts to solve. As cross-cloud architecture is a relatively newer concept, tools are still emerging that can monitor these systems. This includes Alops and other IT monitoring solutions that offer the ability to utilize a centralized monitoring solution as well as automating commands and controls.