Leveraging these core principles will provide
a guiding light as your organization designs,
builds and operates your cloud estate.
We have all heard about the principles used by Amazon, Google and Microsoft in devel-
oping their cloud platforms and the outcomes they produce. The API became a first-
class citizen; pay-for-use became the norm; and platform services were created to offer
more significant capabilities with reduced management overhead. But what does all
that mean for those of us architecting the applications and workloads to run on these
platforms? This article explores a few of the core principles to keep in mind as you
design, build and operate your cloud estates.
1. Utilize Minimum Viable Tooling
Many cloud architects run into the like-for-like, or tool-centric, approach when trying to
plot their journey to the cloud. The IT or security department declares that in order to
migrate, they need Splunk/ServiceNow/ before any
workloads (including dev/test) can be migrated. This decision greatly increases the
upfront complexity required to get running in the cloud, and is often overkill for the
workloads being deployed. Instead of taking this approach, consider adopting a more
capability-focused mindset, evaluating the specific capabilities required to support the
workloads being deployed.
This plan of attack allows you to reduce the initial complexity, and opens up your think-
ing to consider cloud native solutions. For example, in your initial dev/test deployment,
do you really need a full deployment of Splunk, or only a small subset of its features?
Could you deploy the CSP’s native logging/alerting capabilities, or use a SaaS solution in
the short term to cover that requirement?
2. Do Not Build What You Can Buy
Borrowing a lesson from the world of lean manufacturing, you should ask: How can we
eliminate waste from processes that do not add value to our “product”? Translated to
the world of cloud technology, this emphasis on utility means that unless the function is
a core component of your business’s value proposition, it makes little sense to divert
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