To the Cloud and Back

While there have been many years of publicity about the benefits of moving your IT systems to cloud providers, there’s now more than a few businesses moving systems back into their own control. Web 2.0 ¹ darling 37signals is but one of those expecting savings of multiple millions.

The motto of the 2010s and early 2020s—all-cloud, everything, all the time—seems to finally have peaked — David Heinemeier Hansson

Why move to the Cloud?

Having your software run on someone else’s systems and having them deal with updates and patching and power and hardware is very appealing for most companies. You probably aren’t in business to do these IT tasks, but you do want the benefits of working smarter and faster. Almost everyone agrees that the likes of AWS, Microsoft and Google can do a better job at managing systems than they can.

All the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) provide hundreds of services within their platforms that can be leveraged to do amazing things. If you still want a few servers for an hour or a year they can give you that within minutes and you simply pay for what you use. That pay for what you use capability, is key for a comparison to buying hardware yourself - don’t go out and buy your own hardware for 100TB of storage or ten servers when you know you won’t use it all, all of the time.

With the right system design and architecture, savings can certainly be made and efficiences gained. But if the outcome is simply a move of the same servers and same legacy design into a cloud service, those savings and efficiencies will likely not be realised.

You also need the right people to support your cloud systems. An old-school view may mean you end up paying for servers, not advantages. Those people with experience of many cloud services will let the gains be realised. Want a whole new environment for your web site or your ordering systems? They might be able to do that in minutes, not weeks.

Why move out of the Cloud?

That lack of appetite to build modern, cloud native solutions is one of the reasons. Ironically, having people with deep development and engineering knowledge of your systems is another.

If a large porportion of the systems you would operate in the cloud are commercial off-the-shelf products (COTS), it’s very likely that they are not designed with a modern cloud architecture. The vendors of those systems will be supplying them with the aim that you can get them operational with a moderate level of expertise. This helps them reduce the likelihood of support calls and negative feedback on how hard their product is to get setup. A COTS system will mean basic virtual machines (VMs), maybe some reasonable availability design but that’s about it. You will pay more for running the same old VM and database systems in the cloud compared to a three to five year lifecycle in your own location or a shared data centre.

The interesting case for 37signals is that they have made their platform so efficient and understand it so well, that they have the expertise to do it better themselves. Running NZ$1M plus of IT systems isn’t for most companies, and understanding the behaviour of your customers to minimise fluctuations in usage is another level of nuance. Get it right with the correct expertise on your team and there will be savings to be made.

Summary

If you have limited expertise for a cloud deployment, or are constrained by vendor support and configurations, the cloud might not be the most cost efficient place for you. The likes of AWS will have an honest conversation with you on where cloud usage makes sense and their 6 Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework include efficiency and cost optimisation as core deliverables of good solutions.

If you’re able to influence the design or at least the deployment of the systems you use, the cloud might open up new opportunities for efficiencies. But you will still need the right people with reasonable skills to make it happen. Luckily there are a few of these around, but true designers and implementers are rare.

If you don’t know which camp you are in, or if you’re still struggling with the appetite for modernisation or cloud, we’re happy to have a chat.