The Cloud Reality. Why Continuous Delivery should be your first goal.

Utilising cloud is the current catch cry to achieve “speed and agility”, but for most of us using cloud requires changes throughout the organisation from finance to engineering. To make it worse, adopting cloud can be difficult to justify; Why change anything when you already have working applications that address 80% of the business needs?

Any business that started before 2010 will have a legacy platform problem. We all know these apps and platforms; Monolithic core systems running on enterprise databases like Oracle, or a Mainframe. Worse still are the repurposed desktop machines sitting under desks labelled “don’t turn off EVER!!”.

The call to the cloud is enticing as it promises all sorts of riches but it can also seem too hard. Re-orientating the business processes and re-skilling technology teams requires heavy lifting. These changes are especially difficult when the majority of business energy and funding goes into maintaining core systems.

Cloud might be our end-game, but there are many other opportunities to improve software delivery processes first. DevOps practices automate the business and software delivery, ensure more consistent IT outcomes and free up teams to focus on more business value.

Nowadays I can modernise application, execution and operations environments in situ. Containerisation as an example enables fast, efficient and predictable delivery of stable platforms. Smart platform choices will unlock value in the short to medium term whilst putting the business on a path towards cloud enablement.

Working with a major Australian Bank, I saw this approach deliver several benefits:

• Environment Creation from months to under a week

• Deployments going from weeks to hours

• Remote developer enablement

The COVID crisis has forced many organisations to adopt remote work. The adoption of these technologies set the bank up to be more flexible and react to remote work as they already had the foundational skills required to quickly stand up Cloud platforms.

There are three areas of focus that enable today the move towards Cloud adoption;

1. Containerised Applications. Both applications for Windows and Linux can now be run in containers. The enables full application eco-systems to be containerised and common standards and processes used. Even build pipelines themselves can be containerised, further reducing your infrastructure footprint.

2. Developer Enablement. A consistent set of developer tools and build chains on the developer workstation can deliver consistent software & environments as it enables developers to operate in self-contained environments. This is particularly relevant now that many of us are working remotely. A connection to the corporate network should not be a blocker to progress!

3. Operations and Security. These two functions are often the poor cousins left until last. The Ops teams will have access to the source controlled, containerised developer environments. They can use these to debug and fix incidents using the same development environment as used to build the app years ago. Security teams should not just shift left but integrate from the start. They ensure all containers conform to the requisite standards. They also integrate appropriate static code analysis and security testing into build pipelines. This has downstream benefits; no more last-minute hiccups from code review or endless false-positives from code analysis.

So this is the Cloud reality as I see it, the end-goal has to be quality business outcomes at speed regardless of which platform the business and applications are using. Organisations should start with a concerted effort to uplift their Continuous Delivery capabilities. Uplifting their ‘legacy’ apps to put in place DevOps practices will unlock business value.

These changes will set teams up for Cloud adoption, supporting innovation and business agility.

Don’t move applications to the cloud without first preparing your software delivery practices. You might find yourself with an application eco-system plagued with the same mess as before.