Non-Technical Cloud Barriers: Does the Cloud Take My Job Away?

A common question that I receive from people looking into Cloud technology is: “Does the Cloud get rid of my job?”  Mostly I receive this question from System Administrators, Server Engineers, and Network people.  In most cases the answer to this question is a resounding no; however, it will change the day-to-day focus of these resources by simplifying common tasks (through automation) and removing physical operational tasks (racking and stacking infrastructure in datacenters).  This transition, however, does not come without a cost.  In order to work proficiently in Cloud technology (specifically IaaS), resources will need to be educated and trained.  Fortunately, the training path and adoption is rather quick.  In most cases, technical resources immediately see the value to moving to Infrastructure as a Solution providers like Amazon Web Services.  Moreover, by removing physical operational tasks and simplifying common tasks it opens up opportunities for these resources to focus on enhancements of the user experience through:

1.       Optimization of network, applications, storage, and compute;

2.       A more flexible secure working environment;

3.       Streamlining of the Change Management Process;

4.       Disaster Recovery and COOP

Optimization Examples

·        Networking:  Architecting solutions that bring datacenter, network, data, and applications closer to the end user, thus reducing latency in world-wide deployments.  Few examples:  Utilizing AWS World Wide Regions and Availability Zones, AWS Direct Connect between Organizational datacenters and AWS regions, and AWS Route 53.

·        Applications:  Making legacy applications cloud aware by migrating and re-engineering applications to cloud platforms and decoupling traditional dependencies of application on data and compute.  Few examples:  Utilizing AWS Simple Queue Service, Simple Notification Services, and Simple Workflow Service.

·        Storage:  Simplification of a storage archive by utilizing cloud storage solutions.   Few examples: AWS’s Elastic Block Storage, Simple Storage Service (S3), and Glacier.

·        Compute:  Use the power of cloud computing to automatically provision compute when you need it and scale down compute when you don’t need it.   Few Examples:  Cloud Formation, Elastic Compute Cloud, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancer.

Flexible Secure Environment Examples

·        Resources and Organizations can now take advantage of cloud security enhancements and focus on the following:

o   Zero Trust Models

o   Two-Factor Authentication

o   Identity Access Management

o   Certificate Key Pair in order to manage infrastructure

Change Management Process Examples

Organizations and resources can improve the change management process:

·        Quickly and cost effectively provision Development and User Acceptance environment as part of the overall change management process.

·        Utilize third party tools like CloudCheckrd that monitor utilization, change control, and compliance of your AWS environment (CloudCheckr)

Disaster Recovery and COOP Examples

The Cloud allows a simplified path to Disaster Recovery for organizations that logistically or financially could not implement DR solution:

·        Utilize multiple stage disaster recovery on AWS to fail over between Availability Zones and AWS Global Regions.

·        Enhanced disaster recovery options available on AWS include Active-Active Disaster Recovery across regions.

·        Utilize AWS built in fault tolerance for compute, network, and storage.

The accessibility and cost effectiveness of Cloud platforms allows businesses to expand their infrastructure, thus providing opportunities for staff to expand their knowledge base and focus on improvement of the over user experience.

Check out other blogs in the Non-Technical Cloud Barrier Series.

James Hirmas is the CEO for JHC Technology.  He can be reached at jhirmas@jhctechnology.com, @JHC_JamesHirmas, or connect with him on LinkedIn.