9 forces shaping cloud management in 2019 · cloud computing and where it’s going aren’t alone....

9 FORCES SHAPING CLOUD MANAGEMENT IN 2019

CONTENTSINTRODUCTION

FORCE #1: CAPEX INVESTMENTS SECURE THE HYPER 3 WINNERS

FORCE #2: PRIVATE CLOUD FINDS ITS SPECIALTY

FORCE #3: CLOUD TIPPING POINT FORCES IT TO RUN DIFFERENTLY

FORCE #4: MULTI IS THE NEW CLOUD REALITY

FORCE #5: CLOUD MANAGEMENT EMERGES AS THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGE

FORCE #6: NATIVE VS. NICHE

FORCE #7: SECURE FROM START

FORCE #8: CLOUD’S PACE OF INNOVATION DRIVES FOMO (FEAR OF MISSING OUT)

FORCE #9: GAME OVER. LET THE GAMES BEGIN.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 2

THE RATE AND PACE OF CLOUD ADOPTION IS ACCELERATING ACROSS REGIONS AND INDUSTRIES.

WE SEE SPEED. AND COMPLEXITY. AND GREATER RISK. Making the right decision is a make-or-break proposition for most organizations,

but with expanding choice comes greater risk of failure. Those confused about

cloud computing and where it’s going aren’t alone.

That’s why we’ve gathered our leading cloud experts to compile this eBook. Our

goal was to highlight how recent trends in cloud computing impact the job of the

CIO in guiding a company’s successful journey. The eBook is based on not only

our extensive work helping companies migrate and run their businesses in the

cloud, but also on Accenture’s own transformation into a cloud-first business.


FORCE #1

CAPEX INVESTMENTS SECURE THE HYPER 3 WINNERSTogether, Amazon, Microsoft and Google–the

Hyper 3–have invested more than $30 billion in

capital expense just this past year to build and

scale their global cloud footprint. This substantial

investment is not just for building infrastructure

and facilities. The Hyper 3 are also investing heavily

in innovative new services and capabilities that

pale in comparison to legacy approaches—leaving

companies scrambling to keep up. Alignment of

enterprise IT investment with any or all of the

Hyper 3 means an organization will remain

competitive in the coming years, managing down

technical debt and decoupling from the past.

FORCE #2

PRIVATE CLOUD FINDS ITS SPECIALTY There’s much uncertainty in the market about what

defines a true private cloud—and when a company

might need one. Successful private clouds are now

defined around solving a specific use case, such as

conforming to data sovereignty needs or supporting

edge use cases. If the goal is agility, cost reduction

or speed, choices skew public. If, for whatever

reason, an organization feels on-premises better

fits its needs, options exist but require additional

considerations—and all decisions have time, risk, cost

and talent ramifications.

FORCE #3

CLOUD TIPPING POINT FORCES IT TO RUN DIFFERENTLY Many enterprises are now moving toward a tipping

point, where a substantial amount of their workload

is in the public cloud. Unfortunately, most IT

organizations mistakenly treat the new estate as

just another data center and don’t see the need to

shift their operating model to the realities of cloud

management. In actuality, operating in the cloud

drives a need for a new cloud-based operating

model, and, along with it, people with new skills and

new roles.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 4INTRODUCTION: CLOUD ADOPTION IS ACCELERATING

FORCE #4

MULTI IS THE NEW CLOUD REALITY The steady adoption of cloud services has created

a complex computing environment for many

companies. Some are in the position to plan for a

multi-cloud environment, while a significant number

of others simply find themselves using multiple

vendors without proper planning, governance or

controls. From a cloud management perspective,

this new reality makes it difficult for organizations

to publish policy, manage costs, maintain security,

ensure compliance or even create a single view

showing all cloud resources.

FORCE #5

CLOUD MANAGEMENT EMERGES AS THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGEIn the messy real world of hybrid and multi-cloud

environments, cloud management has become

very complicated. Each cloud provider may offer a

dashboard to manage its environment, but achieving

a unified view across a hybrid IT and public cloud

estate is no small feat. No two cloud providers

expose the same billing or management APIs,

and no single tool can handle all of an enterprise’s

management needs.

FORCE #6

NATIVE VS. NICHE Organizations are faced with the tricky decisions

of how, when and where to use niche tools versus

native tools that may sit on top of native providers.

Teams must understand where the capabilities of

native consoles start and stop, and derive a strategy

and plan for how their organization will function

across multiple clouds. Organizations also need to

understand their comfort zone and risk profile—

recognizing that many niche providers likely won’t

be around for the long haul.


FORCE #7

SECURE FROM START Most CIOs have come to realize public clouds are

more secure than their own facilities. The critical

difference, though, is that threat vectors in the

cloud have changed. The actions of individuals

can now have a dramatic and immediate impact on

security and place a significant burden on the CIO to

maintain a compliant environment. Building security

into its cloud infrastructure from the start is critical

to a company’s ability to take advantage of the new

services cloud providers roll out each year while

minimizing potential threats and disruptions.

FORCE #8

CLOUD’S PACE OF INNOVATION DRIVES FEAR OF MISSING OUT (FOMO) The rate and pace of innovation in the public

cloud are unprecedented, and skilled people in

the organization don’t want to miss out and will be

eager to try every new feature. But the enterprise

can’t enjoy the level of innovation coming from

each of the Hyper 3 if it needs to vet every new

service. Organizations need an agile policy to make

new services available immediately, while creating

discovery mechanisms and guard rails to

understand where, when and how people are

using which services.

FORCE #9

GAME OVER. LET THE GAMES BEGIN. We’re still early in the maturation cycle of cloud.

Niche vendors are many but are fodder for

acquisition. When that happens, the game changes.

A tool that was once multi-cloud aligned may

become isolated or pivot in some new direction. And

as the Hyper 3 consolidate, competitive intensity

grows. The game is not constant. Organizations

that align with the Hyper 3 will benefit from greater

innovation at continually lower costs. But when

betting on niche vendors to help them manage all

or part of their multi-cloud presence, companies

need to be aware that the long-term viability of their

investment is not guaranteed.


THE CLOUD CLEARLY IS FAST BECOMING AN INDISPENSABLE PART OF TODAY’S BUSINESS—BUT IT’S ALSO GETTING MORE COMPLEX AND DIFFICULT TO MANAGE AS COMPANIES’ CLOUD PRESENCE GROWS.

Companies that understand how to use the cloud and get the most from it will

continue to have a big advantage over those that don’t, and that gap will only

widen over time. The fact is, multi-cloud is here to stay, and companies need a

comprehensive approach across operating models, tooling and skills to manage risk

and drive success.

We hope this eBook offers some clarity to organizations and their leaders about

current market trends that are driving change and innovation in the enterprise—both

today and beyond—and, even more important, provides some useful insights to

consider when planning for the future.


FORCE #1:

CAPEX INVESTMENTS SECURE THE HYPER 3 WINNERSBy Michael Liebow, Global Managing Director, Accenture Cloud

Over the past five years, there’s been an undeniable surge in cloud usage, with

companies migrating a growing number of their workloads to the cloud. One

study has found that 93 percent of companies have moved at least some of

their processes to the cloud, and 56 percent have moved or expect to move all

of them.1 We expect this momentum to only accelerate. But, there are still many

companies that are reluctant to embrace the cloud at scale and, as a result, are

in danger of being left behind.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 8FORCE #1: CAPEX INVESTMENTS SECURE THE HYPER 3 WINNERS

THE PACE OF CLOUD-RELATED CHANGE AND INNOVATION IS REMARKABLE AND ONLY ACCELERATING. According to one study, operator and vendor revenues for 2018 across seven key cloud services and infrastructure

market segments exceeded $250 billion, representing 32 percent growth over the previous year.2 New cloud

vendors continually arrive on the scene, and new cloud services and solutions are introduced by the thousands

every year. Yet companies that continue to put off a large-scale move to the cloud now have a big problem. The

longer they wait, the further they fall behind competitors that are embracing the cloud and its massive potential.

WHY ARE THEY HESITATING? Myriad factors are at play. There’s the technical debt these companies have been saddled with for years that’s

difficult to write off. There’s the lack of people with strong cloud skills. And then there’s the age-old obstacle of

reluctance to change and fear of risk: Companies are comfortable with what and whom they know.

Think about it. The very skills, processes, tools and vendors that an organization knows, and perhaps loves (or loves to

hate), are the very same legacy elements preventing these companies from moving on to something new: the cloud.

These are all valid issues. But they shouldn’t be an excuse for not moving to the cloud. In fact, despite the

pockets of legacy supporters within these companies, moving an IT estate to the cloud is no longer a choice.

It’s a do-or-die imperative simply to remain competitive, let alone to keep pace with business needs.

Remember in Alice in Wonderland, when the White Rabbit looked at his watch and proclaimed, “I’m late, I’m late,” followed by, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get?” In an odd sort of way, these quotes describe the state of reluctant companies’ move to the cloud.


THREE CHOICES TO REDUCE UNCERTAINTY AND RISK

The cloud provider market is dominated by three vendors: Amazon, Microsoft and

Google—or, as the market calls them, the Hyper 3. Each of these behemoths is

investing about $1 billion a month in capital expenditure (CapEx) to build and scale

its global footprint.3 Alibaba is a distant fourth, although one could argue that its low

costs effectively narrow the gap. The others that follow are smaller or more niche

cloud providers that will never be big players simply because they aren’t making the

same level of investment the Hyper 3 are.

The extent of the Hyper 3’s investment enables the group to develop and roll out

new capabilities and services at a pace no other provider—or, for that matter, no

corporate IT organization—could match (Amazon alone launched 1,700 new services

in the past year). This means the Hyper 3 are setting, and continually raising, the

bar for what the cloud can do—and that’s a win for any company that wants as little

uncertainty and risk, and as much potential upside, as possible.

So, which one should a company pick? In reality, which of the Hyper 3 a company

chooses for its cloud transformation isn’t the question—just as long as the company

actually does it; taking the step is what matters most. Each company offers access to

unprecedented innovation and scale, and the stability and certainty that comes with

them. That said, a few factors may swing the decision in favor of one over the others.

For instance, if a company is concerned about vendor risk or pace of innovation,

Amazon—with a commanding 70 percent share and history of innovation—is the

clear choice. However, a company in an industry like retailing may perceive a vote for

AWS as aiding and abetting a competitor, which might narrow the choice. Perhaps

a company already has strong ties to Microsoft in the form of prior investments

in products like Office 365 and SQL Server. Or, maybe a company is looking to

create new, data-rich workloads at a lower cost but with attractive performance. In

this case, Google’s technology leadership and simpler cost model might be most

attractive. Google’s technology extends to its robust network, which might sway a

company looking for near-zero latency in its applications.

Then the question becomes, which cloud provider should a company choose?

It’s not an easy decision.


when it comes to stability, security and innovation, all three options hit the mark. Best practices suggest that an organization qualify at least two vendors to further moderate risk and comply with internal policies.

THE POINT IS,


FOCUS ON OUTCOMES AND EXPERIMENTATION To truly benefit from its choice—i.e., capitalize on all of the innovation coming from

the Hyper 3—a company needs to make sure its cloud strategy is aligned with a

specific business outcome. The objective may be to cut technology costs by a third,

accelerate innovation or penetrate new markets—whatever the goal, it and its related

metrics should be explicitly tied to the use of the cloud.

A company also needs to give users the freedom to experiment. After all, what’s

the use of all of the new services and capabilities the Hyper 3 provide if a company

doesn’t take the time to figure out how to use them and where they could

generate significant business benefits? (We discuss this in more detail in Force #8.)

Consuming all of this new functionality means moving away from the traditional

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and six-month approval cycles—

taking months to vet a new capability before allowing users access won’t cut it in the

cloud. Instead, a company needs policies that clearly govern the use of new features

and functions in a way that gives users the latitude to tinker while also enabling them

to monitor what they’re doing.

For instance, a company could allow users to test new functions as they’re available

but restrict how and when the functions move into production. Or, a company could

narrow down the new services to only those relevant to that particular company,

thereby avoiding spending manpower and resources on things that don’t matter to

the business.

Freedom to experiment is critical to finding innovative ways to use the Hyper 3’s services to add business value—and to staying ahead of competitors. There’s little value in using these providers if you aren’t using the new services.


Despite all of the promise the cloud offers, some companies still stubbornly stick

with the status quo. That could be a costly mistake in more ways than one. If these

companies insist on staying with legacy technology providers, they’ll only continue

to add to their technical debt—all while the Hyper 3 steadily drive the cost of

compute, storage and network toward zero.

At the end of the day, the choice comes down to disrupting the competition and an

industry, or being disrupted by a clever upstart. It’s entirely a company’s call. Now is

the time for all companies to choose, and we hope, pick the former. Every company

needs to avoid continuing down the legacy rabbit hole by knowing where to go and

helping the rest of the organization to get on board with whichever of the Hyper 3 it

thinks best suits the them. Opportunity awaits, but only for those that move forward

with speed and focus.

IT’S NOW TIME FOR EVERYONE TO MOVE


FORCE #2:

PRIVATE CLOUD FINDS ITS SPECIALTY

Michael Rutherford, Cloud Product Management Sr. Manager, Accenture Cloud

By now, companies have a pretty good handle on what public cloud is. And

on-premise data centers certainly need no introduction. But between those two

ends of the computing spectrum lies a grey area where confusion reigns: the

private cloud.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 14FORCE #2: PRIVATE CLOUD FINDS ITS SPECIALTY

At a high level, a private cloud is defined as computing services offered over a

network—either a private, internal one or the internet—that often incorporate

some type of on-premises component, and that are dedicated to only select

users (typically, a single client or company). But there’s a lot of room for

ambiguity in this definition, and that’s where companies get hung up.

The fact is, it’s quite easy to misunderstand the term “private cloud.” Private

cloud is not just virtualized hosting, nor is it a collection of static virtual

machines. To qualify as a private cloud, the virtual hosting infrastructure needs

to be dynamic. It provides a standard service catalog through which clients

order and consume capacity on an as-needed basis, leverages a governance

structure to control roles and responsibilities, manages a constrained capacity

pool for dynamic workloads and bills consumers according to their usage.

WHAT IS A PRIVATE CLOUD?


WHEN DOES PRIVATE CLOUD MAKE SENSE?Despite the growing popularity of the public cloud, private clouds still have a place

in many organizations. In fact, although public cloud spending is still growing more

rapidly, the $100 billion spent in 2018 on cloud hardware and software was about

evenly split between public and private clouds.4

The public cloud excels at running transient workloads (e.g., scheduled production

runs and ad hoc development and testing), seasonal workloads (e.g., course

registrations at schools or e-commerce surges for retailers during the holidays), and

decoupled workloads leveraging as-a-service functions from cloud providers. The

key is to understand where it’s most effective while acknowledging its limitations.

For instance, if a company’s goals are agility, cost and speed, public is the way to

go. On the other hand, a private cloud is the better option when a high level of

customization is needed to meet an application owner’s requirements. It’s also often

the right choice where there are compliance or data sovereignty concerns. The

public cloud’s “anytime, anywhere” access can conflict with individual countries’

laws and regulations governing how and where data is managed and used. So, for

a large global company operating in dozens of countries, each having its own data

protection rules, compliance may be easier with a private cloud for each location.

Private clouds also can make sense in cases of heightened data security concerns—

for instance, among such companies as financial services, healthcare or government

organizations, which handle extremely sensitive personal and other highly regulated

data. However, such applications are becoming less prevalent, as the growing

strength and sophistication of the public cloud’s security has made these types of

organizations increasingly open to considering the public cloud.

Perhaps the biggest argument in favor of a private cloud is its ability to help meet

significant latency and connectivity requirements. In fact, private cloud is starting

to play a bigger role in edge computing applications, where data processing and

analysis are increasingly being pushed out to where data is collected. For instance:

A cruise ship can connect to the internet when in its home port to download

software updates and passenger manifests from the public cloud, then run

disconnected for its seven-day cruise. With a private cloud aboard the ship, the

crew can run analytics on this data and other data captured while at sea to get more

insights into guests’ preferences and tailor services accordingly during the journey.

A mineral company’s mine in a remote area can’t run public cloud applications

reliably because of high latency, low bandwidth and poor connectivity. With a

private cloud on site, the company could apply analytics and artificial intelligence

to the data being generated by connected devices in the mine to help supervisors

continually improve the performance of assets and anticipate and mitigate potential

safety risks.


TWO THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN CONSIDERING A PRIVATE CLOUDAs the hosting landscape continues to evolve, a hybrid approach to cloud will still

make sense—meaning a private cloud likely will be part of most companies’ overall

computing landscape. That’s why, when considering a private cloud, companies

should keep two key points in mind.

First, it’s critical for all involved to correctly identify if the workloads in question truly

need private cloud functionality or if they are better suited for the public cloud

or even virtualized hosting. Implementing and running private clouds generates

overhead costs that will just become sunk expenditures if the company doesn’t

end up using the private cloud functionality. While companies continue to toss all

manner of on-premise computing under the private cloud moniker, companies need

to understand that private clouds aren’t free to build, and they require an ownership

structure to create and maintain standards and services. Companies also need to

ensure they will actually require the on-premise agility of a private cloud. If they

don’t, they probably have a virtualized hosting platform. If they do want agility but

don’t want to manage the services and standards, then a public cloud, a third-party

managed private cloud or a community cloud may be a better match.

Second, a company must be aware that a private cloud isn’t a quicker, easier and

lower-cost route to the public cloud. Moving to a private cloud requires application

modernization to use the cloud assets effectively. If a company then takes the

next step to the public cloud, it will need to complete a second optimization of the

application to operate in the public cloud economic paradigm, which is different

from that of a private cloud.

The fact is, the use cases for private and public clouds are very different, so

companies should consider their long-term hosting objectives before pursuing a

two-stage migration strategy. Private clouds are a viable hosting option if they’re

tailored to a specific application suite or owner and address a business requirement

such as data sovereignty or remote hosting. In this case, a company should focus

on optimizing that platform to deliver the application as efficiently as possible to

justify the investment. If a company is really thinking about a private cloud that runs

everything in its data center, it should target public cloud right out of the gate to

take advantage of the cost, scale and performance benefits.

A private cloud undoubtedly can deliver significant business benefits. But it can only do so if a company understands up front what private cloud can and can’t do and the role it’s best equipped to play as part of the company’s larger cloud and computing strategy.


FORCE #3:

CLOUD TIPPING POINT FORCES IT TO RUN DIFFERENTLYBy Tristan Morel L’Horset, Managing Director, North America Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure Sales Lead

A big part of the significant increase in cloud usage in the past five years

has been the advent of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions and other

components, which have encouraged companies to substantially ramp up their

cloud consumption. PaaS, in particular, has been a real driving force, as it allows

companies to develop, run and manage applications without having to build and

maintain the infrastructure to do so.

In fact, because of these innovations, most companies are now rapidly

approaching a true tipping point in their cloud presence that’s forcing them to

look more closely at their requirements around roles, policy, security, data and

network, as well as more broadly at how they use the cloud and manage the

associated costs.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 18FORCE #3: CLOUD TIPPING POINT FORCES IT TO RUN DIFFERENTLY

THE NEED TO “RUN DIFFERENTLY”The reality is, with so much of their business now in the cloud, many companies

are beginning to recognize that they need to run their IT operations differently

than when they were primarily an on-premises, legacy data center business. The

cloud is far too dynamic in nature, and the pace of innovations being introduced

much too quick, for a traditional approach to IT to effectively handle. Not

running differently can have a big impact on both the top and bottom lines.

TOP- AND BOTTOM-LINE CHALLENGESFor example, buying capacity and new services from cloud providers is an

ongoing process, which is much different from the periodic purchase of assets

that characterize the on-premises legacy world. Instead of a one-time, closely

controlled activity done every few years, cloud buying happens continually—

and easily. If they’re not careful, companies can see spending spiral out of

control. With the amount that many companies spend on the cloud increasing

steadily—more than $1.3 trillion in IT spending will be affected in some way by

the cloud by 2022, according to Gartner4—failure to properly manage, optimize

and consume cloud services will have a negative effect on the bottom line—to

the tune of millions of dollars for large organizations.

The top line also takes a significant hit if a company doesn’t run differently. A company

that treats the cloud as just another data center—building and deploying applications in

the same methodical and time-consuming way—will never be able to capitalize on the

Hyper 3’s innovations to transform its business and give its customers what they want.

And it’ll end up falling further and further behind competitors that can do it right. In fact,

the economic impact of opportunities lost due to failure to harness the cloud’s innovation

far exceeds the bottom-line impact driven by inferior cost management.

To support—and truly capitalize on—their growing cloud estate, companies need a new IT operating model, with new skills and roles, as well as new processes, that enable the company to run differently.


A BIG NEED FOR NEW SKILLSSkills are arguably where the biggest changes are needed and are the stiffest

challenge to overcome. For example, in the old legacy days, companies had

specialists in storage, network, backup and operating systems. As the cloud

emerged, organizations made a few cloud-savvy engineers responsible for

managing cloud services. This arrangement worked fine while companies’ cloud

presence was limited.

But now, with so much of their business in the cloud and the number of platform

services exploding, a small DevOps team supporting the cloud is no longer

sufficient. Companies need a different, and larger, set of specialists in each of the

three cloud PaaS components: container platforms, application platforms, and

function platforms. And they need to organize these new specialists in ways that fuel

collaboration, innovation, speed, and agility—for example, in a center of excellence.

New skills will mean nothing if they’re simply tossed in with a legacy IT organization

that doesn’t truly understand how to take advantage of the cloud.

PROCESSES MUST CHANGEChanges in ITIL processes are also needed. While an official “bible” of cloud

processes has yet to be written, there’s no doubt the importance of each ITIL

process has fundamentally shifted—with the biggest impacts seen in incident

management, problem management, and change management.

Incident management has become dramatically less critical with the cloud. If there’s

an incident with a cloud component, we no longer have to fix it. We just change

over to a new virtual machine (VM), workflow or container because components are

so commoditized and easy to ramp up. In other words, in the world of automation,

incident management becomes almost a non-event. But the importance of problem

management has grown. Even though it’s easy to move on from an issue, a company

still wants to understand why the problem occurred to prevent it from happening

again. That’s crucial to making the company’s cloud presence stable.

Change management arguably isn’t any more or less important, but it’s assumed a

different dimension. Because developers want to be more agile and able to embed a

new feature in real time, the environment must be architected correctly from the start

so developers’ actions don’t have unintended (and unwelcome) consequences. Thus,

change management has morphed from, “I must control the change and its impact”

to “I must architect my application and my ecosystem to enable developers to easily

introduce new capabilities,” which is key to capitalizing on the Hyper 3’s innovations.


A cloud-first business—which many companies are on the verge of becoming—

bears little resemblance to one driven by on-premises data centers, so

companies shouldn’t run their cloud estate the same way they’ve always

handled their legacy architecture. As companies reach the tipping point in the

amount of their business that’s in the cloud, they need to think past the short-

term, immediate cost savings the cloud can provide to consider what it really

means to run in the cloud. Crucially, that includes understanding what they

need to do differently, both now and over the long term, to fully benefit from

and keep pace with it.

BE A CLOUD-FIRST BUSINESS


FORCE #4:

MULTI IS THE NEW CLOUD REALITYBy Andrew Wilson, CIO, Accenture

HOW MANY CLOUD PROVIDERS IS THE RIGHT NUMBER FOR YOUR ENTERPRISE? As companies move more of their business to the cloud, many ask this question

and conclude it’s more than one. Indeed, according to one study, seven in 10

companies expect to be operating a multi-cloud environment by 2019.5

This is not a fixed answer for all, as processing requirements vary hugely across

industries and enterprises. Factors like cost, performance, degree of global

operations, concentration risk, hybrid and scale can all influence this decision.

The advantages of a second provider may be the reality for your company.

At Accenture, we chose to work with a small number of cloud providers for our

own workloads to help prove out multi-cloud operations, to balance risk across

the ecosystem and to help compare and contrast cloud service providers to

inform our work with our clients.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 22FORCE #4: MULTI IS THE NEW CLOUD REALITY

It’s hard enough to manage multiple accounts and environments in one cloud

provider—just look at the lines of billing you get every month. Doing it across

two or three cloud providers adds to the challenge.

Consider, for example, a large global company with a significant portion of its

business in the cloud with a single provider. In just one part of the enterprise,

it could have a dozen or more accounts covering different stages of the

development life cycle. And for each of those accounts, the company must

ensure its environments aren’t vulnerable to unauthorized access or use,

manage compliance and keep a handle on costs. That can be daunting. Add a

second or third provider to the mix, and the challenge increases exponentially.

HOW DOES A COMPANY CAPITALIZE ON THE BENEFITS OF MULTI-CLOUD WHILE MINIMIZING THE COMPLEXITY IT INTRODUCES? In Accenture’s experience—both with the 94%+ of our own business in the cloud

and with our clients—the key is to ensure that the company’s ability to manage

cloud usage, control costs, set policy and ensure compliance is universal, not

provider-specific.

Managing usage and cost is extremely important, especially in a multi-cloud

environment. Providers’ flexible-charge models make it difficult to predict

what costs a company will incur and open up vast potential to blow past

established budgets. Furthermore, with millions of line items on a single

invoice, determining who bought what, and why, is far from easy. Security

and compliance, of course, are also critical and become even more important

(and much more difficult) when more than one cloud vendor is involved. And

having the right policy in place that covers multiple providers is vital to tracking

the resources the company has deployed to ensure they’re compliant and

configured correctly.

The decision to select beyond or expand from a single provider brings complexity.


A cloud management platform enables

organizations to manage their entire cloud estates

from a consolidated viewpoint (sometimes this is

accomplished with a centralized control plane or a

multifaceted approach to managing cloud services).

Integrating with technology from the leading cloud

providers, it provides total visibility into all cloud

resources to enable companies to maintain security,

control cost and ensure governance across multiple

accounts and providers.

One of the most desired features of a cloud

management platform is cross-cloud tagging.

Tagging capabilities enable a company to tag assets

throughout its entire environment, regardless of

which or how many cloud providers it uses. Tagging,

when paired with analytics, gives a company visibility

into who’s using which cloud assets and shows how

those assets are being used and why. Such visibility

is critical for effectively managing total cloud spend,

as well as deploying standard policies and controls

across these assets.

Another cloud management platform capability that’s

especially important in a multi-cloud environment

is its ability to discover resources. Cloud makes it

easy for essentially anyone with a credit card to go

online and spin up a new resource. That’s a blessing

and a potential curse. Without being able to discover

resources, it’s easy for the cloud equivalent of

“shadow IT” to proliferate. In our case, by provisioning

through the Accenture Cloud Platform from the

start and tagging, we mitigate the proliferation of

shadow IT and can understand our assets from a

scale perspective at all times. A cloud management

platform enables a company to scan its entire cloud

estate to find out what’s being added and assume

control over it—which helps control costs, as well as

ensure compliance and security.

GET THE RIGHT TOOLSHOW DOES A COMPANY ACCOMPLISH ITS GOALS ACROSS PROVIDERS, WHEN EACH PROVIDER’S TOOLS ONLY APPLY TO ITS OWN ENVIRONMENT (AND GENERALLY AREN’T AS ROBUST AS THEY NEED TO BE)? THIS IS PRECISELY THE CHALLENGE A CLOUD MANAGEMENT PLATFORM IS DESIGNED TO ADDRESS:

1 2 3


WHEN IT COMES TO TOOLS, IT PRACTITIONERS HAVE SEVERAL OPTIONS. They can address it themselves or can purchase a tool, toolset or

service like the Accenture Cloud Platform. Building one’s own tools will

require ongoing maintenance, support, tracking and innovating, as

well as a dedicated team. Buying vendor tools will most likely involve

effort to piece them together. A service like Accenture Cloud Platform

leapfrogs these options by providing solutions already pieced

together for the enterprise. It brings together lessons learned and

different approaches into one place, and can elevate an organization’s

capabilities and enhance its ability to succeed in the cloud.


GET THE RIGHT PEOPLEAs a company expands to multiple providers, some skills will apply across platforms.

But as it starts to consume the specific cloud-native capabilities of each provider, the

company will have to invest in discrete skills in each of the platforms and consider

where to make those investments.

Most companies won’t have the luxury of having discrete teams dedicated to each

provider. Nor is it feasible: Most systems and workloads won’t operate in isolation but,

rather, will be at least partially integrated across providers in some way. Companies

need to consider where to make skill investments to become fluent across providers

and where to be provider-specific—whether it’s security experts, cost analysts, business

people, or the subject matter expert creating and operating the infrastructure. Ultimately,

some skills will be cross-platform and some platform-specific.

The move to multi-cloud will likely involve change management and retooling of

skills. A company, for example, may need to translate its current provider’s approach

to security to create an equivalent set of compliance and security processes across

multiple providers. If this is the case, people will have to learn an entirely new

language and set of products and be comfortable doing so. And that will require

a concerted training and development effort and, potentially, hiring new people

with the requisite skills. At Accenture, we recognized we would need to retool our

people’s skills, and supported an organic, hands-on transformation of skills along

with training programs. For many companies, moving to cloud will be the impetus to

evolving IT skills and moving the organization into the new.

Another option is to fill the talent gap with the help of a cloud managed services

provider (MSP), which can bring expertise in all the Hyper 3 providers. An MSP

can integrate and orchestrate the use of various cloud services, as well as help

companies manage their consumption of cloud services across multiple clouds—

often through the use of its own cloud management platforms. It also can sort

through and assess the thousands of new services the Hyper 3 roll out every year to

find those that provide the most benefit.

PEOPLE ARE ALSO CRITICAL TO OPERATING A MULTI-CLOUD ENVIRONMENT EFFECTIVELY.


WITH THE INNOVATIONS FROM THE HYPER 3 CONTINUALLY ROLLING OUT, MOST COMPANIES WILL EVENTUALLY FIND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO OPERATE IN A SINGLE PROVIDER ENVIRONMENT. WITH THE RIGHT TOOLS AND PEOPLE—AND THE RIGHT GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE—COMPANIES CAN MITIGATE THESE CHALLENGES AND REAP THE BENEFITS OF A MULTI-CLOUD APPROACH.

Accenture was fortunate to have had the foresight to establish a governance structure

with a dedicated group that addresses changes and injects them into our organization

in an agile way without disruption. No doubt change is constant, and companies

should remain open to change down the road. Business requirements may exhaust

the capabilities of a provider, or other providers may roll out new services that are

better aligned with the business. A decision made today may not pan out in six

months. The key is to be flexible and ready to move when the time is right.

BE AGILE AND COMFORTABLE WITH CHANGE


By Sean Peterson, Cloud Management CoE Lead, Accenture Cloud

As companies move more and more workloads to the cloud, they’re facing

a reality check: in most cases, companies’ embrace of the cloud has now

outpaced their ability to manage their increasingly large cloud estates. They

don’t have the industrialized governance, security and other capabilities they

need to handle the scale of their cloud presence, especially if they’re using more

than one cloud provider (and most are). This means they’re likely not only failing

to maximize what they can get from the cloud but also setting themselves up for

potential cost overruns, inefficiencies and even security lapses that could make

their business vulnerable to unwelcome surprises.

Accenture understands this situation very well. By helping hundreds of

companies migrate to and use the cloud, and by running so much of our

business in the cloud, we have gained a unique perspective on what it takes to

effectively manage a large-scale cloud estate.

FORCE #5:

CLOUD MANAGEMENT EMERGES AS THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGE

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 28FORCE #5: CLOUD MANAGEMENT EMERGES AS THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGE

WE LEARNED FROM OUR EXPERIENCE THAT FIVE THINGS ARE PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT.

GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT CONTROLSEffective cloud management and governance are basic requirements for any

company. But for large enterprises with equally large cloud estates, there’s nothing

basic about it. The sheer scale and complexity of such companies’ cloud estates

can make it extremely difficult to define who’s allowed to do what in the cloud and

ensure that users comply. As their cloud presence grows, companies need to put in

place enterprise-level, cross-cloud policies that enable the different types of users—

from the business to the IT organization—to have the freedom and agility to take

advantage of the cloud’s innovations while maintaining necessary controls.

COST ANALYTICSOne of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that if you don’t have visibility into how

you’re using the cloud, spending can get out of hand quickly. This is definitely a

big issue we hear about from the companies we speak with today. They have so

many accounts and subscriptions across the Hyper 3 that it’s difficult for them

to understand if what they’re spending is the right amount. They don’t fully know

who’s spending what, so it’s not uncommon for them to find out they’re running

significantly over budget—but not have the oversight to know why. That’s why it’s

critical for companies to have analytics in place that can give them the kind of

intelligence they need to manage use—and, consequently, costs—more effectively.

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BILLINGAs companies with large cloud estates have certainly experienced, cloud billing is very

complicated. Tracking and attributing charges, making sure they’re accurate, resolving

discrepancies and figuring out how to apply discounts can be difficult even with a

relatively small cloud estate. With really large estates spanning multiple providers and

involving many different areas of the business, it can become overwhelming: A single

bill from just one provider can have a million line items, each of which needs to be

reconciled before the bill can be paid. Building the knowledge and acumen to handle

billing at this scale isn’t easy. It took Accenture two years to do it, and we continue to

hire more people with the right skill sets as our use of the cloud grows.

SECURITYNo one has to be reminded that security is a central part of cloud management.

Seemingly every week we see in the media what can happen when security falls short.

But it’s not enough to have strong security. In our experience, security also has to be

active, not passive. In other words, as we discuss in more detail in Force #7, it needs

to be baked into a company’s cloud infrastructure from the start so the organization

doesn’t leave itself vulnerable to even simple mistakes—such as configuring a

deployment incorrectly—that can result in unwanted exposure. A key part of active

security is being able to scan and monitor the entire cloud estate—every few minutes,

hourly or daily—to identify and address anomalies to maintain compliance.

A ROBUST CLOUD MANAGEMENT PLATFORMA major challenge a company encounters as its cloud estate grows is simply keeping

up with and integrating new technologies as they emerge. Accenture learned

early on that having a single platform that could serve as the glue among not only

the three major cloud providers but also other related tools would be critical to

operating in the cloud effectively.

By integrating with technology from the leading cloud providers, a cloud

management platform enables a company to manage its entire cloud estate from

a centralized control plane. It provides total visibility into all cloud resources, so a

company can maintain security, control cost and ensure governance across multiple

accounts and providers. While theoretically it’s possible for a company to build its

own cloud management platform, doing so is an extremely long, complex and costly

process. Platforms available as a service are good alternatives to building one from

scratch because they can be up and running quickly, with little effort and no upfront

investment.

3

4

5


A company that takes care of these five concerns can go a long way toward

enhancing its ability to manage and optimize the use of its cloud estate. But

beyond these, one other, overarching learning we’ve identified can, perhaps, be

the most impactful of all: enlisting the help of a qualified external provider that

can do a lot of these things for you. The fact is, managing the cloud involves

a lot of work that, in the end, does nothing to differentiate a company in the

marketplace. So why should CIOs devote precious skills and resources to

dealing with these activities?

Frankly, they shouldn’t. There’s no reason to, say, deploy talented engineers

to cloud management when those people could, instead, be developing new

software that dramatically improves how the company interacts with customers.

External partners can do the work associated with cloud management, often

more efficiently and less expensively. This can allow CIOs to focus their talent,

tooling and technology on using the cloud’s innovations to transform how the

company does business.

With cloud adoption—and the accompanying complexity—only growing, CIOs

have to think carefully about their cloud management requirements and how

best to address them. With the right talent, tools, services, platform and partner,

a company can continue to expand its use of the cloud to power the business

while minimizing complexity and risk—much as Accenture has done in its own

operations.

ENLISTING THE HELP OF A QUALIFIED EXTERNAL PROVIDER


FORCE #6:

NATIVE VS. NICHEBy Catherine Gulsvig Wood, Cloud Product Management Sr. Manager, Accenture Cloud

Native cloud providers—primarily the Hyper 3—continue their explosive growth,

collectively launching thousands of new features and services every year.

Meanwhile, niche providers of cloud management solutions are constantly on the

lookout for gaps to fill in native providers’ services to make it easier for companies

to control and optimize their cloud estates. So, the question for companies

becomes: What role should each type of provider play in their cloud strategy?

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 32FORCE #6: NATIVE VS. NICHE

INNOVATION BRINGS NEW CHALLENGES AND DECISIONSThe fact is, as cloud use becomes even more pervasive, companies need more

powerful tools to help them manage key elements of their cloud estate, such as

governance, cost management, capacity planning, security and compliance,

configuration management and others. And therein lies the challenge: Which

tools should they use? Should they stick with those the native providers offer

or go with ones offered by niche providers that specialize in specific areas? Or,

should they consider a third option: an abstraction layer that allows them to

use new tools and services without getting locked into a specific vendor? It’s a

critical decision that must be made in light of what these providers offer now.

And it’s not easy differentiating between true capabilities available today versus

those on a roadmap.

Take the native providers. No one denies their innovation engines or the sheer amount of money they plow into their businesses. And when they spot a problem area, they address it quickly.

Security is a great example. In the early days of the public cloud, companies

were rightly concerned about the security of their data, and their feeling that

their own servers were much more secure was dampening cloud acceptance.

Providers recognized this was a huge obstacle to their growth and attacked the

security issue head on.


INTEROPERABILITY IS KEY FOR MULTI-CLOUD ESTATESOn the other hand, there are two big drawbacks to their innovation. One, they

typically aren’t as robust or comprehensive as they need to be. And two, all of the

tools are exclusive to each cloud provider. That may be fine for a company that’s

dedicated to a single provider, but the arrangement is less than ideal for companies

that use two or even all three of the Hyper 3—which is increasingly the case. Each of

the Hyper 3 is bent on dominating the public cloud market, not interoperability. That

makes it difficult for a company to create a seamless, multi-cloud environment.

Niche vendors offer very specific solutions that cover one or just a handful of the management issues mentioned.

And they can be very effective because of their laser focus. These providers are looking

deeply at the Hyper 3’s services and continually identifying gaps that need to be filled.

They’re spotting potential problems and are upgrading their offerings accordingly.

But niche vendors, too, have downsides. Their solutions aren’t offered as an

integrated service, so companies likely will have to integrate the solutions

themselves and possibly integrate across all of the native providers if they’re running

multiple clouds. And there’s always the chance that the Hyper 3 will come out with

their own version of these solutions, rendering the third-party ones obsolete.


FORTUNATELY, THERE’S A THIRD OPTION: Cloud management platforms that operate as an abstraction layer and have all

of the benefits of a robust, comprehensive solution without the drawback of

being tied to a specific cloud provider. Such platforms, which use configuration

and rules languages that are Hyper 3 agnostic, enable a company to manage its

entire cloud estate, regardless of how many cloud providers it’s using.

CONSIDER A THIRD OPTION


TAKE BILLING, FOR EXAMPLE. Determining how much a company pays for its cloud infrastructure is difficult, even

with just one provider. It’s exponentially more difficult if the company is using all

three, each of which has its own ways of describing its resources and charging for

services. An abstraction-layer billing engine, based on an open-source language,

can apply the company’s specific billing rules across all three providers, giving a

consistent, definitive view of the cloud estate’s total costs.

The same thing applies to security. Because it’s an abstraction layer, a cloud

management platform can establish specific rules for how a company’s data privacy

policy gets interpreted and applied when the mechanisms and even the terms

referring to those policies are different across providers. This enables a company to

consistently apply its security policy in all environments without having to wait for a

vendor’s next release that promises support for an additional Hyper 3 provider.

Another big advantage to cloud management platforms is that they run as a

service—they already include the “plumbing” to accommodate operations across

multiple cloud environments. Thus, they require no time-consuming, expensive

integration or customization to set up and use.

The emergence of abstraction-layer cloud management platforms, and “cloud-

agnostic” solutions such as Terraform, has come at an opportune time for

companies that are increasingly having to manage a presence in more than one

public cloud. That trend is likely to accelerate, as the Hyper 3 continue to roll out

new features and services that are irresistible to companies’ developers. Rather

than try to rein in developers, CIOs need to give them the freedom to explore and

experiment—while maintaining control. Native cloud management consoles can

help in some cases, but they have limitations. The same is true of niche offerings,

which can seem like easy fixes until the costs of customization and their inability to

work in a true multi-cloud environment become clear.

The reality is that, for the foreseeable future, companies shouldn’t expect interoperability to be high on the Hyper 3’s agenda.

Until it is, an abstraction-layer approach to cloud management makes sense for companies looking to optimize their cloud estates while continually taking advantage of the best the Hyper 3 have to offer.


FORCE #7:

SECURE FROM START

By Jonathan Roz, Global Delivery & Operations Lead, Accenture Cloud

Security is a major concern for the keepers of a company’s data. According

to Accenture research, 79 percent of companies admit their organization is

adopting new and emerging technologies faster than they can address related

cybersecurity issues, and 80 percent said protecting their companies from

weaknesses in third parties is increasingly difficult.6 And that concern remains

as companies move an increasing amount of their business to the cloud.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 37FORCE #7: SECURE FROM START

The thinking that they don’t need to worry as

much about security because cloud providers

have it covered. This is misguided and potentially

dangerous. Yes, cloud providers are laser-

focused on security and have gone to great

lengths to secure their cloud. But tenants of

the cloud are still responsible for securing the

environment they create in the cloud. The

distinction is critical.

Think about it this way: With a traditional on-

premises data center, a company must not only

secure the workings of the servers themselves

but also the physical access to those servers—

for example, performing background checks on

data center workers, stationing security guards

at the data center doors and putting mantraps

at the entrances. In a cloud environment, the

cloud providers are responsible for security of

the cloud, but companies are responsible for

security in the cloud.

BUT WE SEE AN INTERESTING MINDSET AMONG MANY CLOUD-FOCUSED COMPANIES:


PIVOTING YOUR FOCUS TO BE SECURE FROM STARTThe fact is, as companies embrace multiple cloud environments and cloud providers

create and release new services at an increasingly rapid pace, security is just as

important as it’s always been—except the focus has changed. Now, in addition to

securing their applications (which most companies have always done), companies

need to make sure the infrastructure of their cloud environment can take advantage

of the thousands of new services cloud providers roll out each year. And the best

way to do that is to make that infrastructure “secure from start.”

How does a company do that? First, it needs to take a look at its security policies

and procedures, because they most likely don’t even address cloud infrastructure.

The company also needs to make sure the cloud environment is configured in a

way that’s compliant with the security framework relevant to industry and country

regulations—and that this configuration is automated, not manual (which makes

regulators very happy). From there, a company can drill down into identifying the

controls that it will need to monitor those policies and procedures to make sure the

enterprise is compliant on an ongoing basis.

The company also has to develop a new foundational security reference architecture.

This is critical because securing cloud environments is substantially different from

securing on-premises ones. The potential issues a company faces won’t be the same.

Many of the tools it currently uses won’t work in the cloud. The existing processes for

addressing security issues are far too long for the dynamic cloud environment. And

even the people charged with handling security in the cloud will require different

skills (which means, in most cases, an entirely separate organization dedicated to the

cloud is needed). Likewise, they’ll find it’s time to move to a DevSecOps model, where

infrastructure gets treated like application code and is scanned prior to being deployed

to check for misconfigurations or non-compliance.


IDENTITY ACCESS MANAGEMENT: Spell out the roles that are authorized to operate in the environment and what they’re allowed to do.

LOGGING: Capture and record every API action and network call made in the environment.

ENCRYPTION: Activate each of the cloud provider’s key management services to encrypt all data and transactions.

THIS NEW SECURITY REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE HAS THREE KEY PILLARS THAT LAY OUT, AT A MINIMUM, THE THINGS A COMPANY NEEDS TO SECURELY PLACE WORKLOADS IN THE CLOUD:


STILL NOT DONE—SCANNING AND MONITORING THE CLOUD ENVIRONMENTBy defining new policies and procedures, configuring to the appropriate framework,

identifying the relevant controls and creating a cloud-specific reference architecture,

a company will be able to securely, and more quickly, take advantage of the cloud

providers’ ongoing stream of new services to build robust new capabilities and

improve business decisions.

But the task is still not done. The company also needs to build or acquire the

ability to scan and monitor all of its cloud environments to identify anomalies and

subsequently remediate them to maintain compliance. The frequency of scans will

depend on the controls involved and the associated risk. For some, such as public

S3 buckets, every 10 minutes is required. For others, such as password policy, a daily

scan is generally appropriate. Typically, scans are mainly concerned with ferreting

out misconfigurations, which are by far the most common issues detected (and, by

and large, are also unintentional). In some cases, a company will enable preventive

controls, such as changing security groups.

SECURITY VERSUS SECURE ENVIRONMENTWe hear all of the time that the cloud is inherently more secure than a typical

company’s own on-premises data centers. That’s true if we’re talking about providers’

protection against access to their servers. But it doesn’t mean the environment a

company creates for its presence is automatically just as secure. As companies

move more of their workloads to the cloud, and to many different clouds across

providers, they need to go beyond the native solutions each cloud provider

offers and take a single, common approach that’s applicable to, effective in and

independent of all environments. That’s the key to being secure from the start in a

multi-cloud environment.


FORCE #8:

CLOUD’S PACE OF INNOVATION DRIVES FOMO (FEAR OF MISSING OUT)By Rodrigo Flores, Platform Innovation Lead, Accenture Cloud

We continually hear that companies are hungry for innovation, for new ideas

and for solutions that can propel their businesses past their competitors. That’s

certainly true with the cloud. Companies are spoiled for choice when it comes to

new services and features they can use to help them transform their businesses.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 42FORCE #8: CLOUD’S PACE OF INNOVATION DRIVES FOMO (FEAR OF MISSING OUT)

Well…yes and no. Lots of choice is good for companies. But the speed with which

the Hyper 3 roll out new offerings can create FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—among

consumers of cloud services. It’s like the super-popular couple with hundreds

of friends. They have so many parties, dinners, and other social engagements

to choose from, but they are concerned that by choosing to attend just some

of them, they might be missing other truly great events where something

spectacular might happen.

With the cloud, companies worry that if they don’t keep up with these

innovations, they’ll be outmaneuvered by competitors that do. And that concern

is warranted. According to an Accenture study, 75 percent of cloud-first

organizations and 50 percent of mass migrators said that within six months

their cloud projects have increased speed to market to boost their competitive

positions, compared to just 22 percent of steady migrators and 39 percent

of cautious migrators.7 So, because the cloud makes it easy to do so, various

areas of the company move quickly to embrace new services to solve their own

business problems and help them meet their business objectives.

THAT’S GOOD NEWS, RIGHT?


WATCH OUT FOR COST AND SECURITY PROBLEMSIn theory, this is a good thing. After all, that’s why the cloud exists. But in practice,

there’s typically a downside. When capitalizing on a cloud innovation, a function or

business unit often does so without the knowledge or involvement of the company’s

IT organization. The result is “business IT” popping up across the enterprise, driven

by the need to become more agile and responsive to customers and markets. And

that, in turn, raises major concerns regarding cost and security.

The cloud makes it easy to dynamically and quickly provision services. So,

a function’s or a business unit’s developer can create the infrastructure

programmatically and provision it within minutes—and then it’s all up and running.

There’s no procurement process guiding the purchase of cloud services like the

one the IT organization has traditionally followed when buying servers for the data

center. But, the quick and painless set-up in the cloud, as well as a lack of oversight

by procurement, makes it equally easy to ring up huge bills without realizing it. And,

by the way, making sense of those bills, each of which can contain millions of line

items, is a huge effort in itself.

Similarly, security can become a big issue when cloud-based business IT proliferates.

When a developer’s setting up the infrastructure directly, is he or she setting up the

right firewall rules? Has encryption been turned on? Are the networks configured

the right way? How does the developer check? Everything’s dynamic, so even if the

developer has everything set up correctly on Monday night, on Tuesday morning

some automatic programs could be running in the background somewhere and

change the settings, compromising security. How does the developer get alerted if

that happens? Once again, lack of structured oversight—in this case, in the form of

established security processes—can result in unintended consequences.

STRIKE THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN CONTROL AND INNOVATIONClearly, a company can’t afford to allow cloud costs to grow unchecked or make

itself vulnerable to security compromises. But it also can’t simply clamp down on the

business’s ability to use new cloud services to stay competitive and meet its growth

objectives. Doing so will only fan the FOMO fire (just as would limiting the number

of parties the couple mentioned earlier could attend). How, then, can a company

maintain the appropriate level of control over the use of the cloud without stifling

innovation? There’s no single “right” answer.

Some basic things can help any organization. For instance, a cloud center of

excellence (CoE) serving the entire enterprise (not siloed in one part of the business)

can act as a clearinghouse for new services, vetting them as they’re released to

determine which have the greatest potential to help the business. Staffed with

specialists in each of the Hyper 3 providers, the CoE can take the onus off of the

business to continually stay on top of what’s coming out. A cloud management

platform can help companies govern and securely manage multiple vendors

and their services—including keeping track of costs and optimizing usage across

all clouds—and seamlessly integrate a variety of platforms. Also helpful is API

integration with native providers, which makes it easier to discover and integrate

pre-existing estates and use constantly emerging new features.


IT’S A CULTURE AND STRATEGY CHALLENGEBut to truly strike the right balance between control and innovation—i.e., avoiding

unbridled spending and security issues as well as FOMO—companies need to think

about their cloud transformations as strategic and cultural issues. And the balance

will be different for each company. What would work for a mining company wouldn’t

work for a global retail bank, for a consumer goods manufacturer or for a retailer.

For instance, an agile, creative company operating in a fast-moving industry with

customers whose demands constantly change is more likely to tip the scale in favor

of innovation—allowing its people to experiment more freely but holding them

responsible for the results (both good and bad). On the other hand, a large company

that deals with highly sensitive or regulated data that must consistently meet explicit

performance milestones for its customers (or face painful penalties) is apt to be

guided by myriad of policies that unambiguously call out what people can do, the

parameters within which they can act and what’s expected of them.

The goal for both companies is to capitalize as much as possible on what the cloud

offers but to do so in a way that fits their strategy and is compatible with their

culture. Strategy and culture will define how each company should use the cloud—

to become nimbler, substantially reduce operating costs, gain economies of scale,

improve the customer experience, disrupt the competition or accomplish some

other core business objectives.


IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE TOO MUCH INNOVATION? Conceptually, no—having a steady stream of compelling new ideas to take

advantage of is a boon for companies. But when it comes to the cloud, it could be a

huge challenge if a company isn’t prepared for it. With Amazon alone offering more

than 480,000 SKUs—with different service levels, limits and pricing—a company

needs to put in place the right policies and controls so it can take advantage of

the massive shift in the cost and quality of IT services the Hyper 3 make possible—

without being blindsided by cost and security issues. Companies that find the sweet

spot will ensure they have the proper guardrails in place so the business can fully

embrace the cloud and do so FOMO-free.

PUT FOMO IN ITS PLACE


FORCE #9:

GAME OVER. LET THE GAMES BEGINBy Michael Liebow, Global Managing Director, Accenture Cloud

Most organizations see the cloud as the enabling game changer it is. But as

organizations move in earnest to capitalize on the cloud, whether through the

“lift and shift” of applications or new native development, companies are only

beginning to understand the challenges that come with it: a new managing

style, new operating models, new skills, new security technology, new

governance and policies and new approaches to cost management.

The question quickly shifts to “how?” Myriad providers, native and niche, say

their products can manage these issues—one, some or all of them—yet the pool

of these providers and what they offer remains very much in flux. Companies

need to think hard about their approach—these decisions matter and can have

long-term consequence.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ACCENTURE, AND ITS LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF ACCENTURE. PAGE 47FORCE #9: GAME OVER. LET THE GAMES BEGIN

The game is nearly over for hyper-capable providers. Once an organization moves

beyond determining which of the Hyper 3 providers to use as the enabling platform,

a new game begins. Since cloud remains a nascent market, the buying and selling

of niche players is in full swing. Those niche providers are many, but they’re also

tempting acquisition targets. When acquisitions happen, the game changes. A

solution that once seemed multi-cloud aligned may become isolated or vendor-

specific as a result of the acquisition. Or a vendor can go out of business as

providers offer a similar, but single provider capability for free or at a nominal cost. In

all cases, lock-in to any one approach can be a game-ending move.

Consider the following examples of how much can change in a short time:

• Racemi – bought by DXC Technology8

• Apprenda – out of business9

• Evident.IO – bought by Palo Alto10

• CloudHealth – bought by Vmware11

• Cloudyn – bought by Microsoft12

• Orbitera – bought by Google13

• Cloudamize – bought by private equity14

• Rightscale – bought by Flexera15

• HP tools – bought by MicroFocus16

• Cloudcruiser – bought by Hewlett Packard Enterprise17

• RedHat – bought by IBM18

Companies that bet on these and other vendors—integrating their tools with other

solutions to help manage all or part of their multi-cloud presence—may have to

question the long-term viability of their investment or be left scrambling for suitable

replacements. In making a change, they’ll face both economic and technology

risks. Integration of tools comes with big upfront costs, and significant downstream

costs to customize. There’s also the possibility a tool won’t do everything a company

needs it to do, making the organization vulnerable to governance, security and

overall performance issues. And, each time a tool needs to be replaced, the business

is impacted by a costly disruption. A lot of time and effort must be spent to identify

and vet prospective new vendors, negotiate new commercials and integrate a new

tool. It all adds up to a situation that’s difficult and expensive to manage over the

long term. We speak from experience.


TO BUILD OR BUY?The fact is, companies that choose to build their own cloud management

capabilities face a serious dilemma. A company that bets big on a capability,

assuming it will be predictable or stable for some period of time, is likely wrong. The

focus for most organizations should be on the level of innovation and new services

coming from the cloud providers. Companies increasingly use more than one cloud

provider and need to effectively capitalize on those steady streams of innovations

these providers roll out to avoid falling behind the competition. The need for robust

cloud management capabilities becomes not just readily apparent, but critical.

Where do you focus your resources?

The answer in our experience is–don’t do it. Resist the temptation to build your own.

Integrating dozens of tools into a seamless platform or control plane is expensive,

time consuming and, ultimately, really difficult.

Obviously with enough time and resources you could do it. A true end-to-end cloud

management platform is a compilation of dozens of different components stitched

together with IP and glue. It took Accenture $150 million, 25 patent applications,

a crew of 500, and nearly six years. You could probably do it in less time for less

money, say four years and $100 million–assuming you find the talent. We were

early and had a critical need to scale our operation–meaning we didn’t really have a

choice. We learned by doing. Why would you take all of that time and make all of that

effort if you had a reasonable alternative?

A PLATFORM CAN BE YOUR BEST FRIEND Many companies are finding a managed service is a better alternative to wrangling

multiple vendors and solutions. With a managed service, companies benefit from

the platform provider’s experience and work to identify, vet and integrate all of the

best tools into a single solution covering the full spectrum of cloud management.

The platform provider is responsible for ensuring the tools work together as a

cohesive whole and is on the hook to replace tools at its own cost when necessary.

The platform provider also is typically able to negotiate better rates from the specific

tool vendors because it’s delivering the capabilities across a large, aggregated

customer base. So, the economics are more attractive than they would be for a

single company. And, because the capabilities are delivered as a service, a company

can gain access to comprehensive cloud management capabilities in a matter of

weeks, not years, without upfront purchase or long-term integration costs.

With a pre-integrated, on demand, pay-as-you-go platform, a company can improve

cloud operations, maintain security, control cost and ensure governance of its

growing multi-cloud estate—without having to worry about vendor instability or the

massive amount of work and expense it takes to build an end-to-end solution.


The game is changing. As we look ahead, it’s clear that many companies are now

ramping up their public cloud efforts after having selected one or more of

the Hyper 3. That game is over. Organizations are now beginning to understand

there’s a new game at play that comes with the challenges of managing their

new cloud estates. Companies need to avoid making rash decisions on such

tools because they feel overwhelmed by all that effective cloud management

requires. This game is not for the faint hearted. But there is a path to win, avoid

lock-in and deliver the business and technical benefits that cloud offers—and

that’s taking full advantage of what others, such as Accenture, have learned.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?


Michael Liebow Global Managing Director, Accenture Cloud

Michael Liebow is the Global Managing Director

for Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP), a secure,

scalable, enterprise-ready cloud integration

system that provides management and control over hybrid cloud services. Liebow leads a large portion of Accenture’s cloud investment, myriad of ecosystem partners and a 500-person global team to build and operate Accenture’s cloud platform business. Prior to joining Accenture, Liebow served in a diverse range of leadership roles including: Fellow at the U.S. Department of

State; founder of a ‘big data’ venture launched in

the startup battlefield at TechCrunch DISRUPT;

executive in residence at a top three leading VC,

New Enterprise Associates; Board Member; startup

CEO; and IBM executive.

Michael Rutherford Cloud Product Management Sr. Manager, Accenture Cloud

Michael Rutherford is a Cloud Product Management Sr. Manager on the Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP) team focused on driving the product portfolio for private cloud, cloud management and security services across Accenture’s client ecosystems. Rutherford has been in the infrastructure space for 17 years with expertise in infrastructure strategy, service development, hybrid cloud design, product management and global outsourcing operations for multi-tenant and dedicated client environments. Prior to ACP, Rutherford designed, built and managed private cloud environments in Asia, North America and Europe and developed global service offerings for Accenture’s outsourcing organization.

Tristan Morel L’Horset Managing Director, North America Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure Sales Lead

Tristan Morel L’horset, Accenture’s North America Cloud and Infrastructure Managed Services Lead, has more than 20 years’ experience helping clients maximize the business value of their Cloud and Infrastructure investments. Morel L’Horset leverages his industry expertise, and technology capabilities and innovation, to help optimize his clients’ digital journey. Morel L’Horset spent three years in France as an expatriate to successfully build and grow Accenture’s Infrastructure Outsourcing practice and deliver large IT Transformation and Outsourcing engagements to Accenture’s French clients. With 15 years in technology services, he has extensive experience with global and large clients, as well as the federal sector, working with top-level government agencies.

AUTHOR BIOS


Andrew Wilson CIO, Accenture

Andrew Wilson is responsible for IT in the New for global IT operations and driving the digital agenda of the $39.6 billion company. This includes infrastructure, services and applications that enable Accenture people to work anytime, anywhere to serve clients in more than 120 countries. Wilson ensures that Accenture is at the forefront of innovation as a digital business—from mission-critical applications to the network, from e-mail and laptops to enterprise social media and collaboration tools. He also leads CIO Ecosystem Products and Services, and in this capacity, is responsible for Accenture’s buy-side relationships with strategic suppliers as well as supplier management services delivered to clients. Wilson served as Accenture’s Global LGBT Network Sponsor for five years.

Sean Peterson Cloud Management CoE Lead, Accenture Cloud

Sean Peterson currently serves as the Cloud Management CoE Lead for Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP). His primary areas of responsibility include leading a team of architects to assist various practices platform onto cloud architectures (including IaaS, PaaS and applications), improving the Solutions ‘aaS’ model and onboarding theses services into the ACP Catalog for lifecycle automation. Sean has extensive experience with Cloud Native PaaS, IoT, Analytics, eComm/Web and SAP architectures on cloud, and is an Accenture Certified Master Technology Architect.

Catherine Gulsvig Wood Cloud Product Management Sr. Manager, Accenture Cloud

Catherine Gulsvig Wood is the Senior Product Manager for Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP). Gulsvig Wood is a pioneer in the field of IT, joining Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) after graduating from Lawrence University with a bachelor’s degree in piano performance. She has subsequently held leadership positions with Cray Research and served as an IT consultant for such organizations as Channel Four Television (London), ING, and Thrivent Financial. Prior to joining Accenture, Gulsvig Wood built both public and private clouds for several enterprises, in both the U.S. and Europe, including Cisco’s own internal cloud. She holds patents on “provider-agnostic” technologies for managing application stacks and PaaS resources in multiple clouds. A self-taught programmer, Gulsvig Wood seeks to integrate viewpoints and approaches from a multitude of disciplines to create breakthrough IT products and services.

AUTHOR BIOS


Jonathan Roz Global Client Delivery, Security & Operations Lead, Accenture Cloud

Jonathan Roz is a Managing Director responsible for the delivery of Accenture Cloud Platform for Accenture clients. Roz joined Accenture in 2000 as an experienced hire from EDS. Prior to his current position with ACP, Jonathan held a series of roles at Accenture, primarily focused on managing client relationships for large outsourcing projects. In addition to his position as global delivery lead, Roz is also accountable for the implementation of a global cloud security program within Accenture. His areas of expertise focus on client delivery, contract and financial management, cloud, security and service governance.

Rodrigo Flores Platform Innovation Lead, Accenture Cloud

Rodrigo Flores is Managing Director of Product Innovation, Architecture and Management for Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP). Prior to joining Accenture, Flores was CTO & Enterprise Architect at Cisco’s Intelligent Automation Business Unit working on Cisco’s cloud management product. Flores was the Founder and CTO of newScale, the pioneer in Service Catalog automation, acquired by Cisco. Flores is a frequent writer and speaker on cloud technology trends, co-authored the first book on service catalogs, “Defining IT Success Through Service Catalog,” and led the creation and delivery of the first Service Catalog course. He also drove the creation of the ITIL course and exam for Service Catalogs, now part of Expert ITIL schema, and conducted the initial master class. He holds several patents in workflow technology.

AUTHOR BIOS A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO THE FOLLOWING CONTRIBUTORS

Allison Conrad Associate Director & Global

Lead, Solutions Management,

Accenture Cloud Cori Brodelius Accenture Cloud Platform

Market and Competitive

Analysis Lead

Douglas Chandler Accenture Research Manager


ENDNOTES1 Commvault and CITO Research, August 14, 2017, “Cloud FOMO Is Real: Study Confirms C-Level and Other IT Leaders Have Fear of Missing out on Cloud Advancements,” https://www.commvault.com/news/2017/august/study-confirms-c-level-and-other-it-leaders-have-fear-of-missing-out-on-cloud-advancements

2 Synergy Research Group, January 7, 2019, “2018 Review Shows $250 billion Cloud Market Ecosystem Growing at 32% Annually,” https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/2018-review-shows-250-billion-cloud-market-ecosystem-growing-32-annually

3 Cleveland Research, 2017 Cloud Vendor Results Recap, February 2, 2018.

4 Gartner, Inc., September 18, 2018, “Gartner says 28 Percent of Spending in Key IT Segments Will Shift to the Cloud by 2022,” https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-09-18-gartner-says-28-percent-of-spending-in-key-IT-segments-will-shift-to-the-cloud-by-2022

5 451 Research, “Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud Transformation,” November 27, 2017, https://451research.com/images/Marketing/press_releases/Pre_Re-Invent_2018_press_release_final_11_22.pdf

6 Accenture, January 17, 2019, “Cybercrime Could Cost Companies US$5.2 Trillion Over Next Five Years, According to New Research from Accenture,” https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/cybercrime-could-cost-companies-us-5-2-trillion-over-next-five-years-according-to-new-research-from-accenture.htm

7 IDG Research and sponsored by the Accenture AWS Business Group, “Accelerating the cloud migration dividend - IDG Research,” https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-public-cloud-migration-acceleration

8 “DXC Technology (DXC) to Post Q4 Earnings: A Beat in Store?,” May 21, 2018 https://www.nasdaq.com/article/dxc-technology-dxc-to-post-q4-earnings-a-beat-in-store-cm966257

9 “Apprenda attempting to sell its assets after business shuts down,” August 21, 2019 https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/news/2018/08/21/report-apprenda-attempting-to-sell-its-assets.html

10 “Palo Alto Networks Closes Acquisition of Evident.io,” March 26, 2018 https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/company/press/2018/palo-alto-networks-closes-acquisition-of-evident-io

11 “VMware Closes CloudHealth Acquisition,” October 5, 2018 https://www.lightreading.com/services/cloud-services/vmware-closes-cloudhealth-acquisition/d/d-id/746612

12 “Yes, Microsoft Is Buying This Cloud Monitoring Startup After All,” June 29, 2017 http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/microsoft-buys-cloudyn/

13 “Google buys Orbitera, a platform for cloud marketplaces, for $100M+,” August 8, 2016 Shttps://techcrunch.com/2016/08/08/google-buys-orbitera-a-platform-for-building-marketplaces-cloud-software/

14 “Cloudamize just merged with Blackstone-owned Cloudreach in a push for growth,” August 3, 2017 https://technical.ly/philly/2017/08/03/cloudamize-merger-cloudreach-philadelphia/

15 “Flexera Acquires RightScale - The Multi-Cloud Management Platform Company,” September 26, 2018 https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2018/09/26/flexera-acquires-rightscale-the-multi-cloud-management-platform-company/#5db7f13e5433

16 “HP Enterprise strikes $8.8 billion deal with Micro Focus for software assets,” September 7, 2017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hpenterprise-software-microfocus-idUSKCN11D2EU

17 “Hewlett Packard Enterprise makes second acquisition in a week,” January 24, 2017 https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/01/24/hewlett-packard-enterprise-makes-second.html

18 “IBM to acquire Red Hat in deal valued at $34 billion,” October 18, 2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/28/ibm-to-acquire-red-hat-in-deal-valued-at-34-billion.html


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