In 2023, the corporate world is witnessing a revolutionary shift in data management. With approximately 60% of all corporate data now stored in the cloud, up significantly from 30% in 2015, the trend towards cloud adoption is clear and compelling.

This proves that more and more companies are choosing to migrate to the cloud as a solution for their business. But, is moving to the cloud the right decision for your organization? We tell you all about it!

Before diving into the world of cloud solutions and its potential, it’s important to first understand what it is.

What is Cloud Migration?

In simple terms, cloud migration is the process of moving components, data, and applications that are hosted on servers inside an organization to the cloud. Simple enough, right?

This solution is a relatively recent service on the market, but it quickly became the desired approach for businesses to store data. Generally, organizations have struggled to grow their information infrastructures. However, the efficiency and scalability that the cloud brought, provided more than an added option, it delivered the ideal solution. Considering this option is important, as well as determining what is needed or where to start to take on such an endeavor.

Why Migrate to the Cloud?

Deciding to migrate is, for one, cost-effective, and with any business, managing investment vs cost is key. Take into consideration that by maintaining your data in a data warehouse on-site you are responsible for managing the entire infrastructure, its needed support, and overall maintenance, which in time can become very costly.

As mentioned earlier, scalability is an important feature and a major benefit, as it allows businesses to independently manage the speed at which they expand without concerning themselves with issues like space.

When deciding about migrating, security is a clear advantage. Keep in mind that providers with data warehouses are responsible for top-notch security and provide an extremely skilled and experienced team dedicated to this. In other words, the right provider assures industry-standard compliance requirements, as well as certifications such as SOC 2, ISO27001, HIPAA, and PCI.

Lastly, support. As expected, there can be some complexity when it comes to data and cloud migration. But don’t worry, PETRA Technology have product engineers that provide support whenever needed.

How does the cloud migration process work?

To ensure a successful transition from on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based solutions, it is important to follow 4 essential steps: Business Strategy; Infrastructure; Security; and Operations. Let’s break down these steps!

1. Business Strategy

During the business strategy phase, it’s important that all stakeholders, including business leaders, IT teams, and other relevant parties, are involved and collaborate to develop a comprehensive cloud adoption strategy. The primary objective is to align the migration process with the organization’s overall business goals and requirements.

Key activities in this phase may include:

• Evaluating the existing infrastructure: Including, applications, hardware, software, and data. This evaluation helps identify the components that can be migrated to the cloud and any potential challenges.
• Identifying business drivers: Understanding the specific business drivers that motivate the move to the cloud, such as cost optimization, scalability, agility, or improved collaboration.
• Defining objectives: Setting clear objectives for the migration process. Ex.: reducing operational costs, increasing performance, or improving security.
• Establishing a roadmap: Develop a step-by-step plan that outlines the timeline, milestones, resource allocation, and dependencies for the migration process.

2. Infrastructure

In most cases, numerous aspects of the existing architecture, storage, and databases will need to be adapted or modified when moving to the Cloud.

This phase involves several activities, including:

• Deciding if Your Applications are Cloud-Ready: Evaluating applications and determining their suitability for migration. Some applications may need modifications or redesign to work optimally in the cloud.
• Ensuring compatibility with the Cloud: Making necessary changes to applications, databases, and infrastructure components to ensure compatibility with the cloud environment. This may involve leveraging cloud-native services and architectures to maximize benefits.
• Data migration: Planning and executing the transfer of data from on-premises systems to the cloud, ensuring data integrity, security, and minimal downtime.

In PETRA Technology, to accelerate this procedure, we assembled several templates, so you can automate and repeat the same processes to migrate applications to the cloud. Send us a message to know more about this.

3. Security

The security phase involves collaborating with the security team and cloud provider to understand security needs and address potential risks.

Key activities include:

• Security assessment: Assessing the existing security controls and identifying any gaps or vulnerabilities that need to be addressed during migration.
• Identity and access management: Developing strategies for managing user identities, access controls, and authentication mechanisms in the cloud environment.
• Data protection and privacy: Establishing measures to protect sensitive data, including encryption, data classification, and compliance with applicable regulations.
• Incident reporting and response: Setting up processes to detect, report, and respond to security incidents, ensuring timely mitigation and adherence to incident response best practices.
• Compliance and governance: Ensuring compliance with relevant industry standards, regulations, and organizational policies in the cloud environment.

4. Operations

The operations phase focuses on managing, monitoring, and optimizing the cloud systems after migration.

This phase involves ongoing activities such as:

• Cloud system management: Monitoring the performance, availability, and reliability of cloud resources, including virtual machines, storage, and networking components.
• Cost optimization: Identifying opportunities to optimize cloud costs by rightsizing resources, utilizing reserved instances, implementing efficient scaling strategies, and monitoring spending patterns.
• Continuous improvement: Iteratively improving the cloud infrastructure and applications based on user feedback, performance metrics, and emerging technologies.
• Incident management: Handling and resolving incidents that may arise in the cloud environment, ensuring minimal disruption to business operations.
• Capacity planning: Proactively monitoring resource utilization and planning for future growth or scalability requirements.
• Patching and updates: Managing the application of patches, updates, and security fixes to ensure the cloud infrastructure remains secure and up to date.

Remember, each organization’s cloud migration journey is unique, and it is crucial to adapt these steps to suit your specific needs and challenges. With the right approach and a trusted partner, organizations can navigate the complexities of cloud migration and reap the rewards of a modern, agile, and scalable IT infrastructure. See how we can help you migrate to the cloud.

Cloud Migration: A Solution to Problems

Without a doubt, the introduction of these serverless resources has provided a window to the future, foreseeing a solution to problems concerning managing big data and cyber-security.

For many organizations, the choice to migrate to the cloud has reshaped and transformed how technology is used and information is stored, but also how it’s shaped thanks to emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

More than ever, cloud computing must be considered, and migrating to a cloud service is becoming a current choice for many organizations. This decision has proven to be extremely beneficial, providing a major impact on efficiency, greater flexibility, and equally important, a strategic advantage, from increasing productivity to automation.

The Cloud sounds great, what’s next?

If you are considering migrating your organization to the Cloud, or if you still have questions regarding the migration process, send us a message, so we can help you.

What is DevOps implementation?

DevOps implementation refers to the adoption and integration of DevOps practices and principles within an organization. It involves aligning development, operations, and other relevant teams to establish a collaborative and iterative approach to software delivery. DevOps implementation aims to enhance agility, efficiency, and quality throughout the software development lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

What is a DevOps transformation?

A DevOps transformation is a comprehensive journey undertaken by organizations to embrace the DevOps philosophy and practices. It involves a cultural shift, process improvements, and the adoption of appropriate tools and technologies. A successful DevOps transformation transcends individual teams and departments, focusing on breaking down silos and fostering collaboration to enable faster, more reliable software delivery and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Section 2: The Three Elements of DevOps

What are the 3 elements of DevOps?

DevOps is built upon three essential elements: people, processes, and technology. These elements work together synergistically to create an environment conducive to successful DevOps implementation.

1. People

The people element of DevOps emphasizes the importance of collaboration, communication, and shared responsibility. It involves breaking down the barriers between development, operations, and other teams, fostering a culture of trust, and encouraging cross-functional collaboration. By aligning teams and providing opportunities for skill development and knowledge-sharing, organizations can empower their people to drive the DevOps transformation.

2. Processes

Processes play a crucial role in DevOps implementation by streamlining workflows, ensuring efficiency, and promoting consistent, repeatable practices. DevOps encourages the adoption of agile methodologies, such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment (CI/CD). These processes enable faster feedback loops, automate repetitive tasks, and facilitate the seamless integration of code changes into production environments.

3. Technology

Technology serves as an enabler of DevOps practices, supporting the collaboration, automation, and measurement required for successful implementation. DevOps emphasizes the use of infrastructure as code (IaC), which allows organizations to define and manage infrastructure resources programmatically. Additionally, DevOps leverages a range of tools and technologies for source code management, automated testing, deployment orchestration, monitoring, and more.

Section 3: Key Components of DevOps Implementation

What are the key components of DevOps implementation?

DevOps implementation encompasses several key components that are crucial for successful adoption and integration. These components work together to create a foundation for efficient and collaborative software delivery.

1. Culture

Culture is a fundamental component of DevOps implementation. It involves fostering a mindset of collaboration, shared responsibility, and continuous improvement. A DevOps culture encourages open communication, trust, and a focus on learning from both successes and failures. By promoting a positive and collaborative work environment, organizations can break down silos and facilitate effective cross-team collaboration.

2. Automation

Automation plays a vital role in DevOps implementation by reducing manual effort, minimizing errors, and accelerating software delivery. It involves automating various aspects of the software development lifecycle, such as building, testing, deployment, and monitoring. By automating repetitive tasks, organizations can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and achieve consistent and reliable results.

3. Measurement

Measurement is essential in DevOps to gain insights, track progress, and drive continuous improvement. It involves establishing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the performance, quality, and efficiency of software delivery processes. By collecting and analyzing data, organizations can identify bottlenecks, optimize workflows, and make data-driven decisions to enhance their DevOps practices.

4. Sharing

Sharing knowledge, information, and feedback is a critical component of DevOps implementation. It involves fostering a culture of transparency, collaboration, and continuous learning. Through effective communication and knowledge-sharing practices, teams can leverage each other’s expertise, learn from past experiences, and collectively contribute to the improvement of processes and outcomes.

Section 4: Implementing DevOps Step by Step

How do you implement DevOps step by step?

Implementing DevOps requires a systematic approach that involves several key steps. By following these steps, organizations can lay the groundwork for a successful DevOps implementation and foster a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.

1. Assess the Current State

The first step in implementing DevOps is to assess the current state of your organization‘s development and operations processes. Identify pain points, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement. This assessment will provide valuable insights into the specific challenges and opportunities that need to be addressed during the DevOps transformation.

2. Define Goals and Objectives

Clearly define the goals and objectives you want to achieve through DevOps implementation. These goals could include faster time-to-market, improved quality, increased efficiency, and enhanced customer satisfaction. By establishing clear objectives, you can align your efforts and measure progress throughout the implementation process.

3. Establish Cross-functional Teams

Form cross-functional teams that bring together members from different departments, including development, operations, quality assurance, and other relevant areas. These teams should have end-to-end responsibility for delivering software and be empowered to make decisions and drive continuous improvement. Encourage collaboration, shared responsibility, and effective communication within and across these teams.

4. Implement Automation

Automation is a core principle of DevOps. Identify areas of your software development lifecycle that can benefit from automation, such as build and deployment processes, testing, and infrastructure provisioning. Adopt tools and technologies that enable automation and streamline these processes. Automation helps reduce manual errors, speed up delivery, and improve overall efficiency.

5. Foster Continuous Improvement

DevOps is an iterative process, and continuous improvement is key to its success. Encourage a culture of learning and experimentation, where teams can identify areas for improvement, test new ideas, and iterate on processes. Regularly evaluate and refine your DevOps practices to align with changing business needs and technological advancements.

Section 5: Leading a Successful DevOps Transformation

How do you lead a DevOps transformation?

Leading a DevOps transformation requires strong leadership, effective communication, and a clear vision. Here are some key steps to lead a successful DevOps transformation:

1. Create a Compelling Vision

Establish a clear and compelling vision for the DevOps transformation. Communicate the benefits and value of DevOps to all stakeholders, including executives, managers, and team members. Emphasize the positive impact it will have on customer satisfaction, business agility, and overall success.

2. Build a Cross-functional Transformation Team

Form a dedicated cross-functional team responsible for leading the DevOps transformation. This team should consist of individuals with diverse expertise from different areas of the organization, including development, operations, and leadership. Assign clear roles and responsibilities to team members, empowering them to drive the transformation forward.

3. Foster a Culture of Collaboration and Continuous Learning

Promote a culture of collaboration, trust, and continuous learning throughout the organization. Encourage open communication, knowledge sharing, and cross-team collaboration. Provide opportunities for skill development, training, and learning from industry best practices. Foster an environment where experimentation and learning from failures are valued.

4. Lead by Example

As a leader, it’s essential to lead by example and embody the principles of DevOps. Embrace transparency, open communication, and a growth mindset. Encourage team members to take ownership, make data-driven decisions, and continuously improve their processes. Demonstrate a commitment to collaboration, inclusivity, and continuous learning.

5. Provide the Necessary Resources and Support

Ensure that teams have the necessary resources, tools, and support to adopt DevOps practices. Invest in modern infrastructure, automation tools, and technologies that enable seamless collaboration and efficient software delivery. Support teams in their learning and skills development journey by providing training opportunities and access to relevant resources.

6. Monitor Progress and Celebrate Success

Regularly monitor the progress of the DevOps transformation and celebrate milestones and successes along the way. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to track the impact of DevOps on delivery speed, quality, customer satisfaction, and business outcomes. Recognize and reward individuals and teams for their contributions to the transformation.

Section 6: The Five Pillars of DevOps

What are the 5 pillars of DevOps?

DevOps is built upon five key pillars that serve as guiding principles for successful implementation. These pillars encompass various aspects of DevOps practices and contribute to its overall effectiveness. The five pillars of DevOps are:

1. Culture Mindset

Culture is a foundational pillar of DevOps. It emphasizes creating a culture of collaboration, trust, and continuous learning. A strong DevOps culture encourages shared responsibility, effective communication, and the breaking down of silos between teams. It fosters a growth mindset and embraces experimentation, feedback, and continuous improvement.

2. Automation

Automation is a core pillar of DevOps, enabling organizations to streamline and accelerate their software delivery processes. By automating tasks such as building, testing, and deployment, teams can achieve faster, more reliable delivery with reduced manual effort and minimized errors. Automation also allows for greater scalability and repeatability in the software development lifecycle.

3. Measurement

Measurement plays a crucial role in DevOps, providing insights into the performance and effectiveness of software delivery processes. By establishing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), organizations can track the success of their DevOps initiatives, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. Measurement helps drive continuous improvement and enables teams to iterate and optimize their processes.

4. Sharing

Sharing knowledge, information, and feedback is a vital pillar of DevOps. It promotes transparency, collaboration, and cross-functional learning. Through effective communication and sharing of ideas, teams can leverage each other’s expertise, learn from past experiences, and collectively contribute to the improvement of processes and outcomes. Sharing fosters a culture of trust, innovation, and continuous learning.

5. Outcomes

The outcomes pillar of DevOps focuses on delivering value to customers and achieving business goals. DevOps aims to enhance customer satisfaction, speed to market, and overall business performance. By aligning development and operations teams towards common objectives and outcomes, organizations can drive innovation, increase competitiveness, and create a positive impact on the bottom line.

Section 7: The First Step of the DevOps Transformation

What is the first step of the DevOps transformation?

Embarking on a DevOps transformation requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. While there are various ways to initiate the journey, one crucial first step is to establish a sense of urgency and create awareness about the need for change.

Assess the Current State

The initial step in the DevOps transformation is to assess the current state of your organization’s development and operations practices. Evaluate the existing workflows, processes, and collaboration between teams. Identify pain points, inefficiencies, and areas where improvement is needed. This assessment provides a baseline understanding of the challenges and opportunities for transformation.

Define the Vision

Once the current state is assessed, it is essential to define a compelling vision for the DevOps transformation. The vision should articulate the desired future state, highlighting the benefits, outcomes, and value the transformation will bring to the organization, its customers, and its employees. This vision serves as a guiding light and aligns everyone towards a common goal.

Secure Leadership Buy-in

Obtaining leadership buy-in and support is crucial for a successful DevOps transformation. Engage executive stakeholders, articulate the business case for DevOps, and demonstrate how it aligns with organizational goals and objectives. Secure their commitment to provide the necessary resources, budget, and support to drive the transformation forward.

Start with a Pilot Project

To gain momentum and build confidence, it’s recommended to start the DevOps transformation with a pilot project. Choose a project that has clear goals, manageable scope, and cross-functional collaboration opportunities. This pilot project allows teams to apply DevOps principles and practices in a controlled environment, learn from the experience, and demonstrate the value of DevOps to the broader organization.

Establish a Roadmap

Develop a roadmap that outlines the steps, milestones, and timelines for the DevOps transformation. Identify the key initiatives, processes, and technologies that need to be addressed. Break down the transformation journey into manageable phases, focusing on quick wins and incremental improvements. A well-defined roadmap helps keep the transformation on track and provides a clear path forward.

Section 8: Overcoming DevOps Transformation Challenges

What are the common challenges in DevOps transformation?

While DevOps transformation brings numerous benefits, it is not without its challenges. Recognizing and addressing these challenges is essential for a successful transformation. Here are some common challenges organizations may encounter during the DevOps transformation journey:

1. Cultural Resistance

Cultural resistance is a significant challenge in DevOps transformation. Shifting to a collaborative and cross-functional culture requires breaking down silos, overcoming resistance to change, and fostering a mindset of shared responsibility. It may take time and effort to gain buy-in from individuals and teams, but by fostering open communication, providing training, and leading by example, cultural transformation can be achieved.

2. Legacy Systems and Processes

Legacy systems and processes can pose challenges in adopting DevOps practices. Outdated technologies, complex architectures, and manual processes may hinder automation and efficient collaboration. Organizations must assess and modernize their systems and processes, gradually replacing legacy components and adopting DevOps-friendly technologies.

3. Skill Gaps

Skill gaps can hinder the DevOps transformation. Effective collaboration and automation require a certain level of technical expertise and familiarity with DevOps tools and practices. Organizations should invest in training and upskilling programs to ensure teams have the necessary skills to embrace DevOps principles and utilize the relevant tools effectively.

4. Toolchain Integration

Integrating the various tools and technologies across the DevOps toolchain can be complex. Organizations often use a combination of tools for version control, continuous integration, deployment orchestration, monitoring, and more. Ensuring seamless integration and interoperability between these tools is vital for efficient collaboration and automation.

5. Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is a key principle of DevOps, but it can be challenging to sustain. Organizations must establish mechanisms for capturing feedback, evaluating metrics, and identifying areas for improvement. Creating a culture that values experimentation, learning from failures, and implementing iterative changes is crucial for ongoing success.

Section 9: DevOps Practices Being Effectively Leveraged

How are DevOps practices being effectively leveraged?

DevOps practices have evolved and matured over time, enabling organizations to achieve significant improvements in software delivery, collaboration, and overall business outcomes. Here are some key DevOps practices that are being effectively leveraged by organizations:

1. Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are foundational practices in DevOps. CI involves automatically integrating code changes from multiple developers into a shared repository, followed by automated build and testing processes. CD focuses on automating the deployment of code changes to various environments, ensuring a smooth and reliable release process.

2. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a practice that enables the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources through code definitions. By treating infrastructure as code, organizations can version control their infrastructure configurations, apply consistent and repeatable provisioning, and automate the infrastructure setup and teardown processes.

3. Automated Testing

Automated testing is crucial for ensuring the quality and reliability of software releases. DevOps encourages organizations to adopt a comprehensive suite of automated tests, including unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests. Automated testing helps catch issues early in the development cycle, reduces manual effort, and allows for faster feedback on code changes.

4. Monitoring and Observability

Monitoring and observability practices enable organizations to gain insights into the performance and health of their systems. By implementing robust monitoring solutions and utilizing logging, metrics, and tracing tools, teams can proactively identify and address issues, optimize system performance, and ensure a positive end-user experience.

In fact, according to The 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report by DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment), organizations that prioritize monitoring and observability in their DevOps practices have shown higher levels of software delivery performance and operational efficiency.

5. Collaboration and Communication Tools

Effective collaboration and communication are critical for successful DevOps implementation. Organizations leverage a variety of tools, such as chat platforms, project management tools, and collaboration suites, to facilitate communication, knowledge sharing, and cross-team collaboration. These tools promote transparency, streamline communication, and enable remote collaboration.

Section 10: The Future of DevOps

DevOps continues to evolve and adapt as technology advancements and market demands shape the future of software delivery and IT operations. Here are some key trends and predictions for the future of DevOps:

1. Cloud-native DevOps

The adoption of cloud computing has significantly influenced DevOps practices, and this trend is expected to continue. Cloud-native DevOps emphasizes leveraging cloud platforms, microservices architectures, and containerization technologies for increased scalability, flexibility, and portability. Organizations will further embrace cloud-native principles and tools to drive innovation and accelerate software delivery.

2. DevSecOps

Security integration within DevOps, known as DevSecOps, is gaining prominence as organizations recognize the importance of building security into their software delivery lifecycle from the beginning. DevSecOps focuses on embedding security practices, such as vulnerability scanning, security testing, and compliance checks, throughout the development and deployment processes.

3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies are expected to play a significant role in the future of DevOps. These technologies can automate tasks, analyze vast amounts of data for insights, and optimize various aspects of software delivery, such as testing, monitoring, and incident response. AI-driven analytics and intelligent automation will enhance DevOps practices and decision-making.

4. Value Stream Management

Value Stream Management (VSM) focuses on end-to-end visibility and optimization of the software delivery value stream. It involves analyzing and improving the flow of work, identifying bottlenecks, and optimizing resource utilization. VSM enables organizations to gain insights into the entire software delivery process, align efforts with business goals, and drive continuous improvement.

5. DevOps for Non-IT Domains

While DevOps has primarily been associated with IT and software development, its principles and practices are starting to expand into non-IT domains. Industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing are adopting DevOps concepts to improve operational efficiency, collaboration, and product delivery. DevOps principles can be applied to various domains to drive innovation and agility.

Conclusion

In conclusion, DevOps has emerged as a transformative approach that bridges the gap between development and operations, enabling organizations to deliver software faster, more reliably, and with greater quality. It encompasses a cultural shift, automation, measurement, sharing, and a focus on achieving valuable outcomes.

By implementing DevOps practices, organizations can experience a multitude of benefits, including faster deployment, improved customer experience, cost reduction, efficient problem-solving, and continuous improvement. However, the journey of DevOps transformation comes with its challenges, such as cultural resistance, legacy systems, skill gaps, and toolchain integration. Addressing these challenges requires strong leadership, effective communication, and a commitment to continuous learning.

As the DevOps landscape evolves, cloud-native DevOps, DevSecOps, AI/ML integration, value stream management, and the expansion of DevOps into non-IT domains are shaping the future of this discipline. Organizations that embrace these trends and continue to refine their DevOps practices will be well-positioned to drive innovation, enhance competitiveness, and deliver value to their customers.

In your own journey of DevOps implementation and transformation, remember to assess your current state, define clear goals, foster a collaborative culture, leverage automation and measurement, and continuously seek opportunities for improvement. With dedication, perseverance, and a focus on the principles of DevOps, you can unlock the full potential of this transformative approach and achieve remarkable results.

Thank you for joining us on this comprehensive guide to DevOps transformation. If you have any further questions or would like assistance in your DevOps journey, feel free to reach out to us.

What is Teams as a Service (TAAS)?

At Out.Cloud, we provide more than support to businesses across Europe. We assist organizations with Teams as a Service business model. Unlike many cloud consulting companies, which focus on the outsourcing of resources, we provide a service as a team. This means, having at your disposal skilled talent, specialized in the latest technology, with the proper know-how needed to implement an agile way, a DevOps methodology and hand-on experience in Cloud consulting and management.
TAAS can be characterized as a never-ending path for innovation. Within TAAS, businesses gain access to speed and adaptability. With a dedicated team, the constant search for knowledge and experience is no longer necessary as you have at your disposal specialized professionals. Furthermore, a well-balanced team with the right skillset is quicker and more efficient than a team comprised of people who work together for the first time, which is common with most outsourcing companies as their main resource is staff augmentation, not dedicated teams. This translates into you using your time for actual management, driving innovation and improvements, and not lagging behind with unproductive issues.

All About Collaboration

In today’s business environment to achieve greater efficiency, organizations must set goals that focus on collaboration and the TAAS model is the perfect approach. Instead of businesses having to hire individuals directly, which involves dealing with the entire hiring process, or depend on an outsourcing provider assembling a team, which takes time. At PETRA Technology, we have in place a team that streamlines this with no human resources involvement needed. This process allows us to swiftly focus on your project. With TAAS, efficiency is the top priority. Equally important, TAAS erases your concern for the development environment, project management, and server issues, among many others. This allows your in-house staff efforts to be concentrated on the business, its primary and immediate necessities.
The strength of the Teams as a Service model resides on its difference when compared to a common outsourcing plan in which the provider presents its services, while a TAAS team creates the model that best fits you. From best-practices to execution and management, among others, TAAS can be the turning point for your business.

The Appeal of TAAS

Outstanding professionals are rare and great teams are rarer, so establishing a dream team takes time and in most cases, there are frequent time-delaying stages, such as team members who go through different stages of development before being able to join the group and work at full-speed. As expected, everything must happen promptly. However, the appeal of a teams as a service is its speed and already combined knowledge. Having at your disposal a collection of minds on the go with the skills and know-how you seek isn’t just a great team, it’s a super team.
There is no denying that having a “ready-made” high-performance team, tested in delivering results, is extremely advantageous. In other words, teams that will get you out of a bind, solve it, and provide you with internal rewards are a match made in heaven!

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, Out.Cloud’s team of expert engineers can provide you with the tools and support for all your cloud solutions, from Cloud Native and Cloud Management to DevOps as a service and much more!

A hybrid cloud is a computing environment, a blend of a public cloud and a private cloud, an infrastructure where both clouds are combined. The hybrid model put simply, is a cloud computing strategy that focuses on the usefulness that two distinct models can deliver. Of course, choosing this type of model as a strategy depends on the business, its sector, dimension, and objectives. Although its appeal focuses on the amount of control provided, as well as the ability to customize the private end of the hybrid cloud to specific needs, there are plenty of other perks.

Why Go With a Hybrid Cloud?

Choosing a hybrid cloud solution supplies organizations with greater flexibility, such as remote working capabilities with on-demand access, regardless of location. It allows the movement of delicate data to private on-premises servers while making key applications and services available on the public cloud.

Although key features, most businesses have two goals in common, cost reduction and security. The hybrid cloud offers precisely that, it’s cost-effective as organizations pay for the public cloud portion of their infrastructure only when it’s needed and, at the same time, have in place high levels of protection. As expected, security is a big thing and although a public cloud is secure, it can be an easier target environment. Having a hybrid cloud means companies can weigh the security of a private cloud with the advantages and services of a public cloud. Plus, when passing information to the private cloud, there are higher security applications that can be implemented, such as complex encryption.

In sum, a hybrid cloud provides all the benefits of a regular cloud environment, specifically, integration, security, networking, and management, but applied to a partially internal environment.
Additionally, there is another important, if not crucial aspect to consider. Regardless of the type of cloud, private or public, the cloud provides on-demand storage, networking, and computing resources, becoming ideal for dynamic workloads like those from DevOps.

Combining A Hybrid Model With DevOps

More than a trend, DevOps is growing non-stop across the IT industry due to its ability to deliver applications faster and maintain an efficient development workflow. DevOps focuses on increasing collaboration between developers and Ops to improve processes and production releases, among others. As businesses continue to migrate to the cloud, there is an increasing focus on collaboration and the different ways on how IT organizations need to reshape their structure when migration to a cloud environment and this is the core of DevOps. As said previously, the goal is to become faster in reducing delivery time and even with a hybrid cloud solution, you need to implement a DevOps culture and establish what data will be kept on the private cloud, and what will be moved to the public cloud.

Objectively, both DevOps and the cloud pursue the same goals, and that is the deployment of new features as quickly as possible, avoiding any downtime. As DevOps focuses on software application lifecycle, testing, and production, it supplies development and operations teams with work together methodology, developing an operating environment for faster code execution and cost reduction. This powerful combination not only hardens DevOps but it also improves cloud integration, as well as its application development and methodology.

Ultimately, the hybrid cloud has become a favorite option among organizations due to its benefits with plenty of effective solutions for businesses that surpass the single use of a public cloud. Although the cost may be higher, it will be less costly in the future.In essence, this model provides flexibility and scalability while offering the ability to pay for additional resources only when needed, allowing the company to control costs. Becoming a choice to consider for organizations with dynamic workloads, large amounts of data, and a significant component of IT services.

CapEx vs OpEx: What is it?

CapEx, also known as Capital Expenses, are established as business expenses in the course of creating long-term benefits, specifically, in the future. In other words, this refers to assets that can range from purchasing equipment or an actual infrastructure. In the case of IT goods, it can be servers or common office equipment needed by the teams and overall business to function. Operating Expenses, or OpEx, are the expenses the business is expected to have in its day-to-day, such as bills, website hosting or domain costs. Although these expenses are considered essential for the business, CaPex assets are much more of a long-term investment.
CapEx is a common model of IT acquirement, while in contrast, OpEx is how cloud computing services are obtained. Both have different ramifications and demands for cost and operational adaptability, among others. The public cloud is very connected with cost savings and the reason is simple: a public cloud does not compel major investment in terms of CapEx. This makes it a highly sought-after model for organizations worldwide.

CapEx vs OpEx costs

When choosing a Cloud service model, the financial requirements of CapEx vs OpEx will play an important role. If your goal is to avoid cost-related risks, the ideal choice is a public cloud service which provides a major advantage: pay as you go, model. The public cloud approach continues to be one of the most sought after models by companies due to its security and money saving strategies that businesses experience, among others. For many organizations, a pay-as-you-go model is the best solution as it allows experts to manage and maintain the cloud. This frees businesses the need to hire new staff, allowing the current IT staff to focus on other specific day-to-day tasks and other responsibilities. In addition, it provides control over the financial course and strategy, increasing the predictability of the business. Overall, an OpEx approach focuses on keeping expenses down.

• Building your cloud can appear like a great investment. However, amid the constant changes in IT, specifically in cloud computing, there is a very real possibility that the investment in equipment and skilled workforce may turn out to be irrelevant before you can see any sort of profit. Remember, technology is constantly changing.
• Your staff should be contributing to better products and processes and not watch over these assets when they could support the business in other ways. This means that either you’re taking employees from what they were originally hired, removing their worth related to their work.
• Agility goes out the window when you invest too much time, money, and manpower into a CapEx expense that you later can’t change due to the amount of investment you already did in all those resources. This is a guaranteed way for your business to enter a very dangerous zone.

Advantages of the OpEx model:

• Acquiring IT resources and services make purchases less permanent and at the same time, less risky. For example, if your provider doesn’t meet your expectations, if your IT budget isn’t a steady flow as expected or if you’re not committed to an IT infrastructure that your personally, as a business, invested in, it translates into less risk.
• As in any business, time plays a crucial part. Since the services provided in the cloud are fast, the time spent on deploying new and improved products can be shortened by days if not hours, unlike many businesses that face a projection of months, compromising profits.
• The flexibility of a pay-as-you-go cloud service allows your business to keep up with the competition by paying for only what you need. This is very beneficial as it protects your investment, taking into consideration what you need at the moment and not an overall package of services that come with a heavy price. If you only need two oranges, why buy a pack of six.

In sum, in an ever-changing market, focused on delivering clients with the best solutions, knowing how CapEx vs OpEx can impact your business is crucial. Furthermore, it’s important to note thatan OpEx approach gives businesses higher agility and flexibility. With its predictable costs and resources that support scalability.

More than ever, the cloud market is reaching maturity thanks to its innovations and security. Knowing this, enterprises prefer OpEx based IT solutions to on-premises infrastructure due to the less investment needed and operating costs. At the end of the day, it’s important to realize that in the same way that you have the power of choice over your strategy, the financing model you choose will determine the presence, competitiveness, and security of your organization in the future.

There is no denying that having a “ready-made” high-performance team, tested in delivering results, is extremely advantageous. In other words, teams that will get you out of a bind, solve it, and provide you with internal rewards are a match made in heaven!

Multi-Cloud Explained

As you guessed by now, a multi-cloud is the use of two or more cloud services from different cloud providers. The primary reason why companies use this multi-cloud approach focuses on higher efficiency and lowering costs by minimizing downtime, as well as data loss. Of course, there is also the upside of not depending on a single cloud provider, allowing many organizations to create a defense in case of unforeseen issues, such as unavailability of services. Plus, a multi-cloud approach gives businesses the possibility to enjoy services from different providers at the same time, which in turn, delivers a wider range of business solutions.

Advantages of a Multi-Cloud Strategy

For many, the usage of a Multi-Cloud approach focuses on a strategic purpose. Specifically, and as stated above, companies use different cloud services from different providers because some providers are better at executing specific tasks than others. Furthermore, having more than one cloud at your disposal means you can customize a specific infrastructure. When it comes to cloud computing, thinking ahead is a must so having a back-up if something goes wrong isn’t just wise, it’s necessary. With a multi-cloud service, a business can continue to work even if a web service host fails, it’s just a matter of continuing its activities with another cloud environment. Plus, Multicloud services are also connected to DevOps practices thanks to its collaborative nature focused on agile methodology centered on automation and flexibility.
Fundamentally, companies that choose a multi-cloud approach base this choice on two arguments, being:

• Flexibility: having the possibility of choice gives greater flexibility and advantages depending on your organization’s needs at that time;
• In case of setbacks: whether it’s an outage or human error, problems happen, from the smallest thing to the biggest of troubles, hindering your entire operation. Having more than one cloud environment means your resources will always be available and with it, all of your data storage. Having your operation protected must be among your top priorities. Consider that, once you have your data spread across the network of service providers, the risk of a shutdown in case of a service outage on the provider’s side, is very low.

At PETRA Technology, we provide a multi-cloud approach that supports business strategies, empowering at the same time cloud and DevOps teams. Whether its AWS, Azure, or Google, we enable your company by having at your disposal the best cloud solutions for your business, offering flexibility, scalability, and performance.

At the end of the day, it’s all about protecting your operation and resources with the best solution, and a multi-cloud approach provides exactly that!

Serverless Computing Explained

Let’s not keep you waiting. Serverless computing is nothing more than a cloud execution model, where cloud providers govern the allocation and provisioning of servers. Essentially, a partnership of this nature works in a simple manner: it’s the provider’s function to manage the resources and storage needed in order to carry out a particular piece of code.
Keep in mind that, although the name serverless keeps popping up with frequency, there can be a tendency to assume that no physical servers are used. In reality, physical servers are still very much needed but for developers being aware of this is as crucial as knowing at what speed is the earth is spinning.

Naturally, this wasn’t always the case. Although now developers main concern is set on building the Crème De La Crème of web applications, in the past, there was only one option when it came to building an application: owning physical hardware in order to run a server, a must that turned into an expensive investment and ultimately, pushed budgets to alert status.

Later on, the cloud came along, and renting servers became a revolutionary move to this day. Now, serverless computing gives developers the option to pay depending on the consumption. In other words, service is charged on what it’s used and nothing more.
So far so good but, why use a serverless architecture? Choosing this approach is all about providing a path when it comes to the creation of modern applications, giving developers the means necessary to focus on the core product without worrying about specific aspects, such as server management, among many other requirements. This has several advantages for developers, such as the reduction of time in developing products and the overall effort needed to ensure every parameter is met.

Advantages of Serverless Computing

With the launch of Serverless computing innovation came with it, as well as the higher performance of applications, boosting businesses results. Naturally, many cloud providers invested significantly in serverless and, as you would expect, this is all due to the plenty of advantages it brings to the table and here are a few of them:

Scalling
No matter how the load on the function grows, the vendor’s infrastructure will follow, making in an instance thousands of copies of the function, scaling up to accommodate the surge. Of course, all of this rests on the number of requests received.

Reduced Costs
Product development isn’t a walk in the park. In truth, it takes time, effort, and corrections. Although issues can happen, no developer on earth wants to think of the possibility of problems when designing a product for launch. Yet, these things happen. The question is, how can you keep money from slipping away? Easy, through serverless computing that PETRA Technology provides, such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, which lowers development costs in a major way. To rephrase it: by renting infrastructures your business can save you time and money.

Quicker release cycles
By being able to take advantage of quicker release cycles, you can benefit from fast app deployments, this in turn translates into quicker updates that move in a faster way.

Security
In any business, security is a must and this is especially true in the IT industry. When it comes to secure infrastructures, it’s once again the provider’s role and responsibility to ensure safety from the potential problem, such as attacks. Yet, it’s important to note that the client also bears some responsibility.

Overall, all of this comes together as a beneficial investment for businesses since it provides faster delivery to the market due to smaller deployable units, providing adaptability to change. Of course, it’s crucial to mention that serverless computing also supports developers. Besides ensuring your tech talent can focus on launching applications that will turn your competitor’s heads around, going serverless gives way to quicker setups, leading to a goal for many: scalability

In sum, for those so spend their day’s building apps, serverless cloud architecture has become a shift in the constant progressive history of the IT industry. More than ever, a business can save time and change their approach in order to achieve a more balanced investment. Serverless computing has provided a wave of agility, as well as an environment of collaboration and improvement.

Understanding Observability: Measurement of System’s Internal States

Only recently has the terminology of observability been applied in the IT industry and cloud computing. The origins of the term come from the discipline of control systems engineering. Observability can be defined as a measurement of how well a system’s internal states could be inferred from its external outputs. More directly, a system is observable if its current state can be determined in a finite period using exclusively the outputs of the system.

Exploring Monitoring: Assessing System Performance

If observability is based on the system’s internal state, monitoring comprises actions that are part of observability, such as observing the quality of the system performance over a duration of time. Ultimately, the act of monitoring consists of tools and processes that can report the traits, performance, and overall state of a system’s internal states.

The Role of Observability in Cloud-Based IT Operations

With the constant growth of environments and their complexity, monetarization although important, can’t pursue the expanding number of problems that continue to appear. Observability comes into play as a way to determine what is causing the problem. Without an observable system, there would be no starting point to begin or way find out the issue at hand. Simply put, an observable system develops the application and the tools needed to grasp what’s happening to the software.

The Three Pillars of Observability: Event Logs, Traces, and Metrics

IT infrastructure consists of hardware and software components that automatically create records of every activity on the system, namely: security logs, system logs, application logs, among many others. The fundamental way to achieve observability is based on monitoring and analyzing these occurrences through KPIs and other data. When it comes to accomplishing this, three pillars are essential:

• Event Logs: A timestamped record of an event that happened over time. Generally, event logs come in three forms: Plaintext, Structured, and Binary.
• Traces: A trace captures a user’s journey through your application, giving end-to-end visibility. Traces are the representation of logs, providing a view to the path traveled on by a request, as well as the structure of the request.
• Metrics: Metrics can be either a point in time or monitored over intervals. They are, essentially, a numeric representation of data measure over intervals of time.

It’s important to remember that logs, metrics, and traces have one great goal: to provide visibility into the behavior of distributed systems. Having access to these insights, based on a combination of different observability signals, becomes a must-have as a method of debugging distributed systems.

What is a service mesh?

The goal of a service mesh is to control how different parts of an application share and register data so it can be determined how different parts of the application interact with each other. The objective is an optimization so that tasks such as programming and administrative requirements can be reduced, saving time and costs. The process is simple, as Red Hat describes it, “If a user of an online retail app wants to buy something, they need to know if the item is in stock. So, the service that communicates with the company’s inventory database needs to communicate with the product webpage, which itself needs to communicate with the user’s online shopping cart.”

Implementing a Service Mesh

Implementing a service mesh starts with a sidecar, in other words, by deploying a proxy alongside your services. The sidecar is a crucial part of the process as it removes the intricacies from the application while managing the functionalities, being traffic management, load balancing, and circuit breaking, among others. Envoy is amongst the most well-known open-source proxy available, directed to cloud-native applications. By running alongside the services, it delivers the needed features.

What are the benefits of a service mesh?

Better transparency into complicated interactions
When it comes to a cloud-native environment, tracking traffic behavior isn’t always a walk in the park, especially when the flow is immense and elaborate. The whole journey of a message moving between layers of the infrastructure and going from pod to pod on a specific track demands an attentive approach. Through transparency, it’s possible to track in a much easier manner the behavior in which application services are provided.
Security
A rise in microservices translates into a growth of network traffic. Although great, this translates into an opportunity for hackers to disrupt the communication process. A service mesh provides security by offering shared TLS protocol as a full-stack solution to solve service issues in authentication, encryption traffic, and executing security policies.
Encryption:
It’s a no brainer that encryption is the cornerstone of any network. Service mesh has the advantage of managing certificates, keys, and TLS configurations. Thanks to service mesh, users don’t need to worry about or device encryption or manage certificates. All of these tasks are carried from the app developer to the framework layer. In sum, a service mesh comprises of several services and functions, such as Container orchestration framework, Services and instances (Kubernetes pods), Sidecar proxy, Service discovery, load balancing, Authentication and authorization and Support for the circuit breaker pattern. As businesses are increasingly shifting to a microservice architecture, the advantages of service mesh provide additional capabilities, providing a more secure, faster, and less complex approach.

Chaos Engineering Explained

The approach to chaos engineering can be described as a flu shot. Maybe you’re thinking that its bonkers to deliberately inject something wounding to prevent damage. Yet, this method works, on people and cloud-bases systems as well. Chaos engineering focuses on hindering the system with surgical like precision, so it can be tested for weakness, analyzing how the system deals with the infection. This, in turn, can benefit companies tremendously as a way to prepare for potential problems that can paralyze the business. Take into account that several system failures can happen, such as application, network, infrastructure, and dependency failures, the list goes on. After all, if your system goes haywire due to lack of testing, it’s like going from easy peasy lemon squeeze to stressed depressed lemon zest in no time, with good reason.

Principles of Chaos Engineering

It goes without saying that chaos engineering is a carefully planned experiment. The goal isn’t purely to test the system and verify its weaknesses. As stated by Casey Rosenthal, former engineering manager on Netflix’s Chaos Team, current software systems are too complex to be completely understood. So experimenting isn’t just a way to test but rather an approach that allows engineers to generate new insights and gain valuable knowledge.
As a way to better understand and discover issues, chaos engineering follows four principles that can be defined by key steps:
Steady State: You must verify and measure your system’s steady state. The goal here is to know if the system is performing as it should. These metrics will give you a good idea if there is anything crucial to tackle and if there are any major flaws. What would happen in this moment if your system failed?

Developing a hypothesis: To run an experiment a hypothesis is needed. After all, your testing to determine if the outcome that is expected to happen, really does. In other words, will X equal Y or W? Remember, your testing your Steady State.

What could happen in the real world: This is a simple step. The object is to reproduce scenarios that can disrupt your system, common events that can happen at any time, such as a database or virtual machine crash. Take a good look into your system, determine its weaknesses and ponder if something would go wrong, what would you do and what would the immediate steps be?

Proving or disproving the hypothesis: This step focuses on comparing the steady-state metrics to those after the disturbance was added to system. The result your looking for will be on finding difference in the measurements. If this happens, your experiment has turned out as it should. The next steps will be toughing up your system, to avoid any possible issues in the future.

DevOps and Chaos Engineering
DevOps revolves around continuous improvement, continuous delivery and constant releases. The introduction of the chaos principals became a great way to test system failures and a method to uncover potential flaws, becoming the go-to testing choice in DevOps environment. Adding continuous chaos to the DevOps culture is all about embracing preparation and prevention, leading to more efficient and stronger applications.
At the end of the day, chaos engineering is a modern software development method that works towards uncovering needed improvements while at the same, gaining important knowledge that can be applied in future. It’s all about discovering the “what-if” scenario.