Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions: Build cloud strategies that align technology and economics while effectively managing risk

For our purposes, the first age of computing was the 1970s when the focus was on big infrastructure. Green-screen terminals, in vogue back then, eventually evolved into personal computers. Networks went from a centralized, hierarchical design to a decentralized design. Decentralization moved the processing closer to the user meaning applications moved from thin client (processing on the server) to thick client (processing on the user/client side). Green screens were tightly coupled interfaces to the data-laden backend. Decentralization enabled developers to track process steps and state information on the server side while allowing client-side computers to do much more of the processing. The period was the birth of client-server architectures, which are central to today's modern technology-driven business.

With much of the processing moving closer to the actual user, the connectivity of the user became the main limitation. Lack of connectivity led to the second age of computing. The 80s heralded the rise of the internet. Better connectivity between distributed computing systems quickly led to the development and near ubiquity of easy-to-use, visually attractive computing devices. Businesses moved quickly in exploiting this new Internet Protocol (IP)-based connectivity as local area networks expanded to globally inter-connected wide area networks. Users, however, became frustrated with poor application performance, network latency, and application timeouts. Developers were again forced to place more compute load closer to the user. Tightly coupled centralized applications did not have the functions, flexibility, or the responsiveness of a well-designed well-built decentralized application. Additionally, the late 80s gave way to a major shakeup in the telecommunications industry. The then monopolized local exchanges were mandated to separate into independent competing companies. The competition forced faster innovation, lower costs, and higher levels of reliability and service.

The following diagram depicts the various cloud computing phases:

As connectivity and services improved and competition continued to drive reliability up and costs down, the third age of computing began. The amount of data generated exploded. Wireless began to take off, leading to things such as widespread cell phone adoption and mobility solutions. Google revolutionized the internet searches by automating it with MapReduce, no-SQL, and the AppEngine (an early Platform-as-a-Service). During the 90s, the fast growth of wireless networks and the rapid adoption of mobile devices led to the rebirth of the thin client in the form of a browser. Better connectivity and browser-based mobile application interfaces enabled much of the computing to remain on the server side with content and responses sent to the client's browser. Servers began utilizing a newer form of virtualization (IBM started a form of virtualization on mainframes in 1964) improving resource utilization and changing the way applications are developed and deployed.

Today, applications are loosely coupled architectures that can take advantage of modern elastic and scalable infrastructures. As mentioned earlier, virtualization has been around for a while taking different forms. The real innovation came in the form of modernized billing systems and economic models. The true innovation is that we can now purchase a fraction of a core or a fraction of a GB of RAM, consume it for a fraction of a minute and turn it off and not pay for it until we need it again. The real power of modern computing is to be able to buy what you need, when you need it, and give it back when finished. The model has led to entirely new business ideas, business strategies, operational models, economic models, and entirely new categories of business.

Technology innovations typically run in 10-year hills where we climb through a level of adoption and face significant challenges that level off adoption until innovation resolves the current challenges, then we start to climb the next hill of adoption. The second hill is usually the largest increase in adoption with major game-changing innovation usually occurring in the third hill that restarts the clock. Situational awareness is critical for business leaders. Which hill are you climbing? Are you early adopting with significant challenges ahead? Is your company late to the game and about to be washed out by innovation? Leaders must always offset risk with economics.

Leaders face many challenges as they try to modernize their business and business models. For example, an executive driven initiative to reduce costs through the adoption of cloud services renders current traditional infrastructure-centric security models worthless. To remain relevant, enterprise security professionals must now adopt a modern data-centric security model. Technical teams traditionally funded as an overhead cost must transform to become trusted revenue-enabling information technology partners to business leaders. To stay relevant, traditional technologists must now update, not only their technical skills but also their non-technical skills. This updated approach includes business risk, economics, finance, and strategy. Innovations such as cloud computing that are driven by economic innovation are lasting and force everyone to adapt. Every known business model is affected by cloud computing: strategy, operations, security, economics, risk, deployment, and more.

Cloud computing, also known as IT-as-a-Service, was quickly adopted due to its ability to deliver value in three significant market sectors.

The first, and most significant by revenue standards, is the software marketplace where it was able to reduce software consumption costs, especially in the area of application and software licensing, and reduced software application support costs. More importantly, this is accomplished while simultaneously improving business backend system capabilities.

The second marketplace was really in the application development arena. Application development platforms, also known as integrated development environments, were delivered with the embedded support of multiple languages and frameworks. The Platform-as-a-Service model exists in multiple technology environments, with greater flexibility. Environment flexibility opened up choice, reduced vendor lock-in fears, and also created an ability to auto-scale applications based on the number of actual users.

The third-most significant IT-as-a-Service marketplace was infrastructure. Infrastructure enabled global scale at an affordable price point. Here is where modern converged networks are used to deliver variable IT capacity pools. It also ushered in the concepts of information technology self-service, and on-demand capacity.

All these models delivered dramatic improvements in cost control, flexibility, speed to market, reliability, and resilience.

The following diagram depicts the various components of IT-as-a-Service:

This definition is the most widely quoted and used version globally. Many countries and industries have adopted it, and this is the highly recommended starting point for your organization's working definition for the cloud. This definition is so important that we should take a few minutes to review it in detail.

Cloud computing is a model. It is not a specific technology. You cannot go and buy a cloud computer. The term is used to describe an economic and operational model for the provisioning and consumption of IT infrastructure and associated services. The term can also be extended to cover both business and public-sector mission models. What do these models enable? Why cloud?

They enable ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Universal, convenient, on-demand network access means from anywhere and at any time. The network may include the global public internet, but it may also refer to a global private network. The concepts of ubiquitous, convenient, and on-demand take the viewpoint of the cloud service provider's intended users. Shared pool means that the individual user or organization does not pay for all the resources in the pool. The end user pays only for what they use when they use it. This concept is the heart of the cloud computing economic model. If you need to pay for the resource even when you are not using it, you are not leveraging the cloud computing economic model. Configurable means that the service capability can be changed essentially in real time to meet a specific user's requirements.

That final phrase, "...can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction," implies a high degree of automation. Cloud service providers operate a highly automated, services-oriented platform that requires relatively few people. Automation is enabled through brutal establishment and enforcement of rigorous IT standards. Automation also enables self service, so if a prospective service provider cannot offer their capabilities without human interaction, you should be worried.

When the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the cloud computing definition, they also defined the essential characteristics of this new model. These have come to be more important than the definition in that the characteristics have helped to define and protect the marketplace against all the marketing hype that has accompanied the cloud.

The first characteristic of cloud computing is that it is an on-demand, typically self service model. On-demand, meaning that it can be purchased when needed, for as long as needed, and given back when finished. Self service refers to the consumer's ability to buy, deploy and shut down services without any assistance from the service provider. This speeds up the process controls cost and moves control to the consumer. (Refer back to earlier paragraphs where we discussed the de-centralization and continual innovation of pushing compute and control closer to the edge of the consumer's control and consumer-controlled devices. The same applies here.)

From a security perspective, this has introduced governance challenges about the acquisition, provisioning, use, and operation of cloud-based services. Interestingly, these new services may violate existing organizational policies. By its nature, cloud computing may not require procurement, provisioning, or approval from finance due to its low initial cost, self-service nature, and immediate deployment options. Cloud infrastructure and services can be provisioned by almost anyone with a credit card, also known as shadow IT. For enterprise customers, this low-entry cost, quickly deployed on-demand model may become one of the most important characteristics as it instantly wreaks havoc on governance, security, long-term cost, strategy, internal politics, and collaboration.

The second characteristic, broad network access, is required. Ever heard the phrase the network is the cloud? Anything referred to as-a-service requires a network connection. How would it be accessed, managed, operated, or utilized without some network connection, typically to the internet using standard protocols that promote use by disparate client platforms? Because the cloud is an always-on and always-accessible offering, users have immediate access to all available resources, and assets. Think convenient access to what you want, when you need it, from any location. In theory, all that is required is internet access and relevant credentials. The mobile device and smart device revolution have introduced an interesting dynamic into the cloud conversation within many organizations. These devices are often able to access relevant resources that users require; however, compatibility issues, ineffective security controls and non-standardization of platforms and software systems have made the first adoption climb more difficult for some enterprises.

The third characteristic, resource pooling, is the characteristic that, in essence, lies at the heart of all that is good about cloud computing. Combining many smaller compute resources into farms or pools that can serve many consumers simultaneously enables dynamic resource allocation and re-allocation, cost predictability, IT resource control, and higher rates of infrastructure utilization. Utilization and consumption patterns directly affect cost. Resource pooling enables different physical and virtual resources to be allocated and re-allocated according to consumer demand. As mentioned earlier, the true cloud innovation was economic, allowing us to stop billing and give back the resource when finished. More often than not, traditional, non-cloud traditional deployments see low-utilization rates for their resources, typically between 10 and 20%. Cloud deployments from pools used across multiple clients or customer groups can see as high as 80 to 90% utilization (100% is not ideal in most cases). Resources can automatically scale and adjust to dynamic needs, workload or resource requirements. Cloud service providers or cloud solution providers (CSPs) typically have scores of resources available, from hundreds to thousands of servers, network devices, and applications, enabling them to quickly and economically accommodate, prioritize and implement the varied size, and complexities each client presents.

The fourth essential characteristic of cloud computing centers on elasticity, the ability to dynamically match the need. Product and service capabilities are developed, acquired, priced, and provisioned elastically, enabling rapid response to continuously changing user demand. To the consumer, capabilities often appear unlimited and easily deployed in any quantity at any time. Because cloud services utilize a consumption-based pay-per-use model, you only pay for what you use. As mentioned earlier, cloud innovation and adoption are being driven mainly by economics that affects strategy. For cyclical loads, applications with intermittent use, seasonal or event-type business cloud eliminates the need to pay for 100% of a physical server (CAPEX) when only 5% is used 2% of the time (OPEX). Think of selling thousands of tickets to an Olympic event. Leading up to the ticket release date, little to no computing resources are needed; however, when the tickets go on sale, they may need to accommodate 100,000 users in the space of 30 minutes-40 minutes. This is where rapid elasticity and cloud computing can be beneficial. Enterprises no longer require traditional IT deployments with substantial capital expenditure up front (CAPEX) to support the temporary project load.

The final key characteristic mentioned here is that the cloud is a constantly measured service. Cloud computing natively offers a unique and important component that traditional IT deployments have struggled to provide—measurement and control of resource consumption and utilization. As mentioned often, billing was the big innovation. Cloud resource consumption needed to be measured and billed for accurately. Once that was possible, the true power of the cloud, which included the ability to shut it off, was realized. The capability enabled automated reporting, monitoring, and alerting which provided much-needed transparency between the provider and the client. Like a metered electricity service or cell phone data usage, consumers have transparent and immediate access to usage data enabling immediate behavior change if needed. Itemized billing provides transparent trendable data providing insight that may lead to needed change. Proactive organizations can now utilize this well measured, transparent, granular, trendable data to charge departments or business units for their actual consumption. IT, product development, and finance can now move toward operating collaboratively as a revenue-driving team that can quantify, qualify, and justify exact usage and costs per department, by business function, per leader, and so on—something that was incredibly difficult to achieve in traditional IT environments.

The following diagram is a graphical representation of the five essential characteristics of cloud computing:

As a side note: people have been utilizing the cloud for years without realizing it. It is not a new thing, but it has just started to port over into more popular arenas. Let's look at internet access as an example.

There are many paths to the cloud. Each path is grouped based on how the services are offered, deployed, and consumed. The cloud is not a technology. A cloud layer does not exist. Each path to the cloud is a response to a requirement or set of needs based on the consumer's current situation, desired future state, available skills, and resources, as well as tolerance for risk. Cloud products and services often establish reusable and reoccurring architectural patterns (building blocks) used for designing, building, and managing applications and infrastructure.

There are primarily three cloud service models: Internet-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Deployed as needed, all three models require network connections to change resource pools that are measured in great detail, dynamically. However, each consumption model differs in its approach to a technical solution, economics, complexity risk, and level of acceleration. Deployment models also differ in that they could be public/shared, private/dedicated, community, and hybrid. Each model is unique in how it addresses organizational risk tolerance, economic models, and management preferences.

Often the motivator for a move to the cloud is some event that triggers probing questions. Events could be anything from a magazine article, a blog post to a security breach, infrastructure downtime, a complaint about responsiveness, difficulty managing to the desired level of service, or staff/leadership change. Questions can be typically reduced down to three Es: Expectations, Economics, and Execution. As an example, someone expects more delivered work with smaller budgets and less time, or project execution unexpectedly fails due to budget and staff constraints.

As questions get asked, and solutions considered, strategy details, economics, and technology must align. Solutions that are technically perfect may be too expensive. Low-cost solutions may not match up to chosen strategies going forward. In all cases, economics need to balance or offset chosen risk level. For example, very inexpensive self-managed public cloud servers may not match up to the desired level of isolation and security required for transactional database servers.

Next we discuss ways to think through the three primary models available today. How do we recognize situations in which a cloud model should be a consideration? What are the characteristics of each model? What are the benefits? The following diagram is an overview of the three main service models:

The different cloud service models are described here in the following sections.

Other cloud service models

You have probably heard of many other X-as-a-Service offerings such as Storage-as-a-Service, Desktop-as-a-Service, Network-as-a-Service, Backend-as-a-Service, Function-as-a-Service. These other models are merely subsets or aggregations of SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS. Categorizing them into the three standard models simplifies any cloud conversation you may have.

Cloud deployment models

We have discussed the three standard cloud service models. The service model defines the what. What is unique about each model? What are they trying to solve? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Each of the discussed service models adheres to the five characteristics mentioned, possibly adhering in different ways. Within each of the service models, there may also be multiple ways to enable and deploy the service. The service model is the what, the deployment model is the how.

Many cloud services are straightforward to comprehend. For example, network as mentioned earlier. Most do not realize that the network was one of the very first types of IaaS, therefore, one of the original types of cloud. True, there are many types of services, and with that, an even greater number of ways to refer to them. In this section, we introduce the deployment models and some of the jargon. The discussion also addresses how the different deployment types are referenced, marketing names, labels, and currently used buzz words.

This section also demystifies some of the marketing hype which makes it easier to quiet the noise when participating in the often jargon-filled conversations. How is this bare metal different to a dedicated cloud? What is a public cloud? What is a private cloud and how is private different to dedicated? Is it different? Is private on-premises still considered as the cloud? Is a private cloud from a service provider also the cloud? If it is called a cloud, it must be a cloud?

Public

Public is the typical IaaS-compute deployment model most people think of when referring to the cloud. A public cloud service provider offers IT resources as-a-service and, as part of the service, is responsible for building, monitoring, and maintaining physical data centers and IT resources that are for dynamic public consumption. This IT service environment is shared among many customers which normally reduces costs for each customer. By leveraging economies of scale, the CSP enables higher average utilization of resources through the extensive use of virtualization, workload binding, offsetting clients workload patterns, and performance tiers.

The general public uses a public cloud infrastructure. The infrastructure may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or some combination. The infrastructure is always on service provider premises as they have taken ownership of operations and maintenance. Amazon is a good example. The business started off by selling books. It then started to sell excess server and storage capacity to the general public. The infrastructure remained on-premise at Amazon locations.

A public cloud can fall into two sub-types within IaaS, self managed or fully managed. Both of these sub-types are discussed in greater detail later in this chapter. A public cloud is highly scalable, immediately deployed, portal driven, and can be parked or turned off when not in use.

Public cloud benefits include:

• Ease of use and inexpensive setup, low cost of entry to the cloud
• Streamlined and easy-to-provision resources via a self-serve portal
• Scaled to meet customer needs 
• No wasted resources because customers pay only for what they consume
• Basic security services included

Public cloud considerations are:

• How are noisy neighbors handled?
• Does security line up with my requirements?
• Is there any network access or storage limitations?
• Cost of access or data transfer in/out?
• Portability? Grow into other instance types and service types?
• What other services connect to it?
• What is the price/performance metric?

Providers often mentioned in this space include Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, among others.

Private and dedicated

There are a lot of marketing, jargon and buzz words that come along with the cloud. Companies are fighting hard to create separation from the pack. Sounding unique and different was one way to try and differentiate. What is the difference between a dedicated and a private cloud? What is a virtual private cloud? Is a virtual private cloud different to a private cloud? Do these different versions adhere to the five characteristics of the cloud? Many factors drive interest in single-tenant infrastructure. Dedicated and private both, by definition, are single-tenant environments with the infrastructure only accessible by a single company or client. The difference ultimately comes down to economic model and access.

Private cloud

A private cloud is typically an on-client premise solution with the infrastructure leased or purchased by the company/entity using it. These environments can also be deployed within a service provider data center utilizing collocation services. This would still be considered an on-premises solution as the collocation space is just another leased location for the infrastructure owner. A private cloud is typically managed by the organization it serves; however, outsourcing the general management of this to trusted third parties may also be an option. A private cloud is typically available only to the entity or organization, its employees, contractors, and selected third parties. The private cloud is also sometimes referred to as the internal or organizational cloud.

The factors driving the use of infrastructure may include legal limitations, trust, and security regulations. Private cloud benefits include more control over data, the underlying systems, and applications, ownership, retention of governance controls; and assurance over data location. Private clouds are typically more popular among large, complex organizations that have legacy systems and heavily customized environments. Additionally, where significant technology investment has been made, it may be more financially viable to utilize and incorporate these investments within a private cloud environment than to discard or retire such devices.

Is a private cloud really a cloud? It has cloud in the name. Having cloud in the name was not one of the five characteristics of the cloud. It is interesting to debate, you decide. Compare a private cloud to the five characteristics and come up with an answer.

Dedicated cloud

A dedicated cloud is very similar to a private cloud. It is also a single-tenant solution. Ownership and access differ. In a dedicated cloud, ownership of the infrastructure shifts to the service provider. The infrastructure is housed within the provider's data center. A dedicated environment is for use by the single tenant. Network, compute, and storage are dedicated to the single tenant.

The economic model for dedicated solutions is usually a combination of non-recurring cost (NRC) which is a one time fee up front, and monthly recurring cost (MRC), which is a monthly payment paid over a term (number of months or years). Dedicated solutions enable a shift from all capital upfront models (CAPEX) to smaller payments over a longer period (OpEx). Management and operations can continue to be in-house, outsourced, or a combination of both.

Is a dedicated cloud really a cloud service? It also has cloud in the name. This is also an interesting one to debate, you decide. Compare a private cloud to the five characteristics and come up with an answer for your conversations. When sorting out the answer, look at the economics. The cloud is an economic innovation. Ultimately, can you turn it off and give it back? Does billing stop? Do you stop paying for it when you shutdown?

Virtual private cloud

As with many things in our industry, the lines often get blurred (marketing may have something to do with it). Dedicated is an isolated environment deployed within the provider's data center. A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a variation of a dedicated cloud. A virtual private cloud combines concepts from a public and a dedicated cloud. VPC takes the concept of shared infrastructure and the economies of scale for servers and storage then combines it with an isolated network.

The very high cost of a dedicated cloud and the network challenges of noisy neighbors in a public cloud led service providers to the virtual private approach. VPC is the blending of strengths while trying to control some of the weaknesses. The name drives the blurred line in this service. A private cloud is typically deployed on client-owned infrastructure as an on-client-premise solution. A VPC is deployed on the service provider-owned infrastructure. This service would be more appropriately named a virtual dedicated cloud. Some providers have changed the name to eliminate some of the confusion within their product and solution sets.

Community

In a community cloud, an IT infrastructure is provisioned for use by a specified community of end users. The community participants are from organizations that have shared concerns and governance requirements. Typically, these requirements link to mission, security, policy, or regulatory compliance. It can be owned, managed, or operated by a community member, a third party, or a combination. Community clouds may exist on or off premises.

A community cloud provides most of the same benefits as a public cloud deployment while providing heightened levels of privacy, security, and regulatory compliance.

Hybrid

A hybrid cloud is any solution that combines a cloud model with any other cloud or non-cloud deployment model. Most organizations tend to gravitate to the hybrid models as no single model or deployment type matches up to the multiple applications and services needed to support a business. Many applications cannot migrate readily to new services. Application dependencies may introduce additional risk for migrated applications. There is rarely a situation where everything is forklift moved all at one time from current state to future state. Hybrid is the typical path to the cloud for currently deployed applications and infrastructure.

In a hybrid IT environment, private clouds, public clouds, community clouds, traditional data centers, and services from service providers can be integrated and interconnected. Applications and services can then be deployed to and consumed from the most appropriate combination of services and environments.

Key benefits of the hybrid model are retention of ownership and oversight for critical tasks, reuse of earlier technology investments, tighter control over critical business components and systems and more cost-effective options for non-critical business functions. Cloud bursting and disaster recovery options can also be enhanced by using hybrid cloud deployments.

The basic understanding of the cloud deployment models are shown here:

Cloud washing is a term used to refer to the often deceptive attempt to rebrand an existing product or service by associating the buzzword cloud with it. Within a financial construct, there is a parallel that describes the practice of inflating financial results for a company's cloud business by redefining existing services and products as cloud services. A typical example of this is referring to access to any application or service over the internet through a browser as cloud computing, just because you are receiving the service over the internet.

Another example is the traditional application service provider (ASP) model where a third party offers individuals, and companies access over the internet to applications and services that would normally have been located in their own personal or enterprise computers. This is often marketed as a SaaS, but there are many significant differences between the two models. ASP is a software delivery method with a revenue model that is disconnected from the software itself. At its core, these are single-instance, single-tenant legacy software deployments. The revenue model is like renting a server with an application installed on it. This approach failed in the marketplace because it lacks scalability for the vendor, too much customization is required, and there is a single customer for the instantiation. There is also no organic aggregation of data, and no network effect data available for collection and aggregation.

SaaS, on the other hand, is an all-inclusive business architecture that is a value delivery method. Its built-in multi-tenancy design allows for shared resources and shared infrastructure. SaaS is scalable and offers true economies of scale to the service provider. This approach reduces overall costs, operational complexities, and customization. Multi-tenancy can also be leveraged to improve customer service and retention, reduce sales cycles, accelerate revenue, gain competitive advantage, and even directly monetize additional services.

Managed service arrangements are also sometimes referred to as cloud hosting. The difference here is that the day-to-day functions are outsourced to a particular vendor to realize an increase in efficiency around processes associated with data center operations. When doing this, the client also pays for all the capital investment (either up front or embedded in the recurring fee) and commits to regular payments over a minimum term. These payments are not driven by use but are a calculation related to total operational and customization costs over the minimum term, financial interest rates and a minimum profit for the service provider. In all cloud service models, the cloud service provider bears all capital cost and offers the same standard service to all marketplace customer. Payment is related directly to actual customer use, and there is no minimum term commitment.

The cloud computing taxonomy was initially developed by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a tool for standardizing conversations around cloud architectures. Since then, this basic model has been enhanced by the community and broadly adopted to discuss basic concepts. The major taxonomy components are described here:

The service consumer is the entity (enterprise or end user) that actually uses the cloud service. Users will normally have multiple programming interfaces. These interfaces present themselves like any normal application and the user does not need to understand any cloud computing platform details. User interfaces can also provide administrative functions like virtual machine or storage management.

The cloud service provider (CSP) creates, manages, and delivers information technology services to the service consumer. Provider tasks vary based on the service model:

Critical to the service provider's operations is the management layer. This layer meters and monitors the use of all services. It also provisions and deprovisions services based on user demand and service provider capacity. Management also includes billing, capacity planning, SLA management, and reporting. Security is applied across all aspects of the service provider's operations.

The service developer creates, publishes, and monitors cloud services. Typically, these consist of line-of-business applications delivered directly to end users. During service creation, analytics is used for remote debugging and service testing. When the service is published, analytics is also used to monitor service performance.

Standards and taxonomies will affect cloud use case scenarios in four different ways:

Within each type of cloud service (IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS), open standards help organizations avoid vendor lock-in by giving users the freedom to move to other cloud service providers without major application or operational modifications. Standards within an enterprise are normally driven by interoperability, auditability, security, and management requirements.

As you move forward in cloud conversations, please keep in mind the five characteristics of the cloud. These characteristics will help you stay focused on aligning technology, economics, and strategy. The cloud's big innovation was economic, not technical. Strategy changing economics are driving rapid transformation and digitization. There are many different services, different economic and deployment models along with many different strategies to use them. The cloud is another tool in the toolbox. It is not the answer for everything, but it is quickly becoming the foundation for everything.

The next chapter starts the conversation on governance and change management. You may think that a cloud solutions architect's success depends on the technology chosen. That thinking couldn't be further from the truth. While cloud computing is foundational to digital transformation, successful cloud computing solutions must be built on top of an effective change management and IT governance foundation.