Multicloud: You Can't Manage What You Can't See

To wrap up AWS re:Invent, SoftwareONE representatives had the pleasure of discussing all things cloud, AWS, and innovation with both Stu Miniman and John Walls of the CUBE.

The interview kicked off at the Sands Expo Hall in Las Vegas as nearly 45,000 attendees walked the expo floor behind the CUBE interview space. The pace of the AWS ecosystem is definitely not slowing down as the excitement and fervor of the show only continues to expand exponentially – with dozens of new providers debuting, and of course, the innovation that AWS itself brings to the show every year.

Multi-cloud (customers using various cloud providers to meet their business needs) has been one of the buzz words coming out of re:Invent. This is not new to SoftwareONE of course, as many – or actually most – of our clients today are multi-cloud.

Across our tens of thousands of customers no one is using just one cloud provider. There are many reasons for this including, needing to extend whatever the current on-premises solutions are, the need for redundancy, increased flexibility on contracting, and increased benefits to having a dispersed environment when it comes to data.

The challenge however comes when you try to reconcile multi-cloud environments with on-premises and determine what resources you have, how to map those resources, and manage all of that from a business and financial standpoint. A point solution simply won’t work and that is often where SoftwareONE comes in. We have the unique viewpoint of understanding on-premises and legacy decisions as well as how to merge all of those existing IT decisions with new ones that are being managed in the cloud.

Today, most companies have less than 50% of their resources in the cloud, and the larger the company, the smaller that number gets. If you only have visibility into 20-30% of your environment you don't have a holistic view of what we call entitlements, inventory and consumption – who owns what and how much.

Adding to the complexity is the new influx of shadow IT. Before multi-cloud we hadn't realized how many small departments and other operations were simply taking out a credit card and buying the SaaS application they needed to better run their business processes. IT, procurement and compliance are left in the dark while marketing, HR and various other departments simply buy what they need to get the job done.

For example, our work with LA Metro, the transportation provider in the Los Angeles area. Before using our PyraCloud platform the company was on track to spend up to 2-3x what they had budgeted for cloud, but was able to remedy the situation by having visibility into their entire software estate.

Further stated by the SoftwareONE team, “You want to make sure you’re rightsized for what you’re doing and not just taking a shot in the dark. With SoftwareONE you can have visibility into your entire estate.”

Watch Mike Gersten’s interview with Stu Miniman talking about how the multi cloud world changes your software spend.

In short, you have to understand how to blend the old with the new – one needs flexibility and visibility, while maintaining cost control and security to enable the creativity and innovation to stay on top. AWS certainly understands innovation and staying on top – until next year’s re:Invent keep innovating!