EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

PETER LEES , HEAD OF SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE

FOR ASIA PACIFIC , SUSE

It ’ s birthed a cloud continuum comprising a broad spectrum of computing deployment models . Yesteryear ’ s on-premises infrastructures have made way for a blend of public and private clouds of many different flavours , headlined by AWS and Azure .

Research shows 93 % of Australian enterprises use at least two cloud infrastructure providers ; 30 % of those lean on four or more . This is further supplemented with edge computing as technology increasingly supports the business need to decentralise .

Consistency is key

One size never fits all in the technology infrastructure game . However , the convenience of picking and choosing the cloud that fits best comes with the challenge of handling a highly distributed environment .

Heterogeneity is complex . How you manage , operate , automate , and update operating systems , Kubernetes clusters & runtimes , management platforms , security and the software supply chain , to name a few , varies significantly across different clouds . With every provider wanting you to do it their way , consistency in methodology is key .

That ’ s not a bad thing per se . Organisations have hedged their bets across various cloud modalities for enormous benefits . For most , it ’ s to improve the predictability of cloud costs and performance , maintain better control over what applications and data live where , provide high availability and redundancy ( particularly to minimise the impact of an outage to one provider ) and drive cost efficiency .

Outside the operational realm , it has also allowed them to invest in cloud providers that best serve their vast and specific business objectives across various departments .

However , there ’ s a fine line between controlling these clouds and allowing them to cause a hurricane of hurt . Preventing the latter from unfolding in a heterogeneous ecosystem demands consistency to reel in complexity , driving productivity among the developers responsible for maintaining those clouds and adopting a zero-trust mentality towards security .

Research shows 93 % of Australian enterprises use at least two cloud infrastructure providers ; 30 % of those lean on four or more .

From the perspective of operating systems , Kubernetes distributions and cloud-native deployment , it ’ s a matter of finding consistent tools that can encompass multiple platforms in a scalable way – taking advantage of the native capabilities of those platforms while providing a consistent administrative interface and a single point to integrate ancillary components , such as security and identity management , usage monitoring , application catalogue and so on .

With the right set of ‘ master ’ tools , ICT teamscan easily adapt to different underlying cloud platforms as and when the need arises without an extensive review of management processes . This in turn provides

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