Welcome to a special edition of the "Cloud Collective Podcast," where we dive deep into the transformative world of cloud-native services and operations.
John Kundtz hosts this episode and features a conversation with Rishi Ranjan, a seasoned expert in Hyperscaler and Cloud Native Services.
Rishi shares his extensive experience in leading digital transformation initiatives and outlines the significant benefits organizations can realize by adopting a cloud-native strategy.
These include substantial cost reductions of up to 30%, increased predictability through automated operations, and enhanced flexibility and agility to accelerate cloud adoption.
In This Episode, You'll Discover:
- The Significant Benefits of Cloud Native Strategies: Understand how deploying a cloud-native strategy can enhance your multi-hyper scaler operations, driving efficiency, cost savings, and agility.
- Common Mistakes in Cloud Management: Learn about companies' typical errors when managing their cloud infrastructure and how to avoid them.
- Expert Advice for Cloud Optimization: Rishi shares invaluable tips for optimizing the management of your public cloud infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of a cloud-native approach.
- The Future of Digital Transformation: Gain insights into the future trends of digital initiatives and how cloud-native platforms will play a pivotal role by 2025.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to the "Cloud Collective Podcast" and today's special guest, Rishi Ranjan.
02:30 Rishi's journey into the world of cloud-native services and hyperscaler management.
05:00 The advantages of adopting cloud-native strategies for modern businesses.
10:00 Discussing the common pitfalls in cloud infrastructure management and how to overcome them.
15:00 Rishi's top recommendations for optimizing public cloud infrastructure.
20:00 Conclusion and final thoughts on the future of cloud-native services and digital transformation.
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Tips are
(00:26):
an expert in hyperscaler andcloud native services.
He will be offering essentialinsights for anyone who is
embarking on the digitaltransformation within their
organization, includingaddressing some of the common
pitfalls and mistakes executivealso encountered.
Welcome to the show, Raji.
How are you doing today?
Rishi Ranjan (00:48):
Thank you, john.
Nice to be on your show, it'sgreat to have you.
John Kundtz (00:54):
So before we get
started, I always like to let
the guests do a little bit of anintroduction, share a little
bit about your background withour listeners.
You can start anywhere you want, but specifically tell us how
you got into this.
Cloud, native services,hyperscaler, management of
infrastructure.
Rishi Ranjan (01:15):
Thank you, john,
and hello my dear audience.
I have around two and a halfdecades of experience in IT and
leading driving the agenda ofinnovation and digital
transformation.
I have worked with a lot ofmultinational service providers,
(01:37):
product companies, so on and soforth.
I joined IDM kind of aroundseven years back and I am
currently the director forpublic cloud and modern
operations.
I lead public cloud servicesoffering portfolio, along with
modern ops the new way ofoperations into a public cloud
(01:57):
world and around two years backwe were trying to innovate onto
the managed services.
And then that's where the wholeidea of cloud native services
evolved and that's how the wholestory began.
Excellent.
John Kundtz (02:16):
Yeah, that's
interesting, I think, as we
begin to see more of our clientsand customers migrate their
applications to a cloud one ofthe cloud native hyperscalers I
think in our prep we talkedabout.
That's great and fine for theapplication side of the business
(02:39):
, but you still got to run theoperations right, and so I guess
my first question to you iswhat are some of the significant
benefits for companies thathave successfully employed a
sort of a cloud native strategyinto their management of their
multi-hyperscalar operations?
Rishi Ranjan (02:57):
Yeah, john, I
think that's a very interesting
question.
So when we think of cloud now,we are in an era of thinking of
applications for the cloud, onthe cloud and by the cloud.
We don't think of thoseapplications as a data center
plus applications.
If you really want to harnessthe cloud, we need to do cloud
(03:20):
native services and cloudadoption majorly.
Which is getting now and thecustomers are on the journey is
how I can do cloud nativeapplications.
Now, cloud native platform whatwe have seen, and also to it by
analysts, is at the foundationof over 95% of new digital
(03:40):
initiative by 2025.
95% of new digital initiativeby 2025, which is roughly up
from 40% in 2021.
So that's a huge adoption ofcloud native platforms.
So cloud native system enabledcustomers and business to
migrate, modernize and optimizecritical workloads on cloud
(04:02):
environments by utilizing thewell-architected framework of
hyperscalars.
But as we move theseapplications, one key component
of the journey is to have anoperating model that supports
the deployment, scaling andoperations of cloud native
application.
And that's where cloud nativeapplication platform management
(04:23):
system comes, where it is likean operating system which serve
as the basic underlyingoperating model that supports
the deployment, scaling andoperations of application
environment.
So just to have two benefits ina traditional managed service
the cost of centralized toolinfrastructure is roughly 30%,
(04:48):
or if you move to cloud native,we don't need these external
tools.
So there is an estimated costreduction by 20% to 30%.
Just imagine cloud itself hasbecome so mature that we don't
need external tools.
If you use cloud nativeservices, we can save the cost
by roughly 20% to 30% Costreduction, I will say as one.
(05:12):
Number two which comes to mymind is predictability.
When we do this cloud nativeservices, we utilize
infrastructure as a code,automated operations, srv and
those principles they come intopicture.
That helps in reducing thehuman errors and increase our
service reliability.
(05:32):
So my cost goes down and mypredictability of the system
goes up.
That will be my number two andnumber three will be, I think,
the flexibility and agility.
As we know, no system can existon their role in isolation and
what this cloud native serviceshelps us provide is very
(05:56):
flexible integration and byincreasing the use of native
management services, say formonitoring, patching, backcub,
security, we can onboard thecustomer at the normal cost and
this protects our existinginvestment in the companies
preferred tool through API-basedintegration with cloud native
(06:17):
services as needed.
So, cost reduction,predictability and flexibility
and how it is helping all threeof them.
If I can summarize in onesentence, it is accelerated
cloud adoption.
By helping reducing the cost,by being more predictable, by
being more flexible, easy tomanage, scalable cloud
(06:38):
environment helps us in adoptionof cloud in a more accelerated
manner.
John Kundtz (06:45):
Wow, interesting.
The way I interpret that isthat the organizations are let's
say, the business units of anorganization are deploying their
applications in as cloud nativeapplications on any of the
major hyperscalers, and they'reobviously doing that because
they get a lot of benefits.
(07:05):
But it sounds like what you'resaying is, in some cases people
forget that you still have to goand manage it in the back end,
right, so you still have tostill care and feeding, if you
will, of that underlyinginfrastructure, albeit still in
the hyperscaler world.
And if you do it like you didit when it was in the data
center, you're really leaving alot of not only, as you said,
(07:28):
cost money.
You're spending more money thanyou'd aid to.
It's going to take you longerand you're not going to be as
productive and you're not goingto be able to react as fast to
the changes in the businessenvironment.
Is that a sort of a fairsummarization?
Rishi Ranjan (07:44):
Yeah, john, I
think that's perfect and yeah,
you have said it.
I think it's not only reducescosts, but it helps me making
more flexible, more predictable,and my adoption increases
Because now I'm able to see thecloud managed services the way
they are.
And, believe me, when we talkabout managed services, we are
(08:07):
talking about two and a halfyear, five year contracts, right
, so it's not like you just doit and disappear.
We have to live with thatsystem for the rest of the
contract of our developersystems, so they have a long
kind of effect onto the wholeidea of cloud adoption.
John Kundtz (08:26):
Excellent.
So let's move on to the like.
It totally makes sense to me,right?
If you're going to be forwardthinking on the application side
, you need to bring that samesort of thinking onto the back,
actually with the infrastructuremanagement side of it.
So I'm guessing a lot oforganizations and I know you've
(08:46):
got a lot of experience in doingthis so what is some of the
couple of mistakes or pitfallsthat many organizations either
fall into or obviously theyshould try to avoid to be
successful in this strategy?
Rishi Ranjan (09:03):
So I think, based
on our experience and learnings
and adoption which we are seeingglobally of cloud native
services, I would say theattachability of the solution
should also be thought of.
When we start writing asolution or a platform or a
framework, think of it inisolation, but in in customers
(09:27):
world, in a real lab scenario,there is no one perfect solution
.
They may be having some othertools, they may be having some
other methodology, they havetheir own framework, they have a
wide variety of customerworkloads, so how do you make
your system attachment to all ofthem?
So there is no rip and replacethought process.
(09:47):
The adoption increases if I'mmaking my more attached to the
existing customer realities oftheir own systems.
So use a VI based integration,use modularity into your
approach.
When you're writing a system,think of all the layers in which
you can inject yourself,because once this system gets
(10:08):
kicking into customerenvironment, you will see a lot.
Many people want to attachthemselves for managed services.
How do you attach them?
That's number one.
Number two is scaleability.
We write these systems in avery ad hoc manner, but just
imagine we are writing it forone customer environment.
Now, seeing the success causingthe reducing cost, more and more
(10:31):
workloads are coming intosystem.
It is getting used, or one typeof application, the next type
of application, the data, thenAI, then JNAI.
You can dream of all theapplications which can float on
top of it.
How I can create this in amanner that I haven't spoke
architecture.
So I don't need to do a lot ofstuff if I onboard customer.
(10:53):
How I can make it scaleable.
So attachability, scalability.
And the third one is secure bydesign.
Security should not be thoughtof as an afterthought, because
cost of injecting a security isless too much once the system
gets going.
So how I can design the systemso any workload which is coming
(11:15):
is secure and compliant bydesign.
I can integrate DevSecretsprocesses.
I can enable audit, logging,cloud security, portion
management.
All the best practices shouldbe there from the day zero
itself.
So my top three will be makersystem which is attachable,
maker system which is skillableand maker system which is secure
(11:38):
by design.
John Kundtz (11:40):
So I'm guessing
that some organizations don't do
all that up front.
Like you said, they addresssecurity but they do it after
everything's been deployed andthe initial management has been
set up.
The other thing I noticed isthere's a reason why there are,
(12:04):
I'll say, three majorhyperscalers right, aws, as you
are with Google, for instancebecause they all have different
benefits, differentarchitectures, basically based
on your workload.
One makes more sense over theother because certainly I
remember, maybe five or sixyears ago, a lot of
organizations said we're goingto try and standardize on one
(12:26):
particular hyperscaler andobviously that I'm very sure
there's somebody out therethat's on one.
But 99% of the people I run intohave multiple public cloud
hyperscaler services because,it's again, they're better
suited for each, the particularapplication and which, I'm
guessing, then means that theback end infrastructure
(12:49):
management is probably differentfor each one because there are
connected different.
But it sounds like what you'retrying to do is create an
overarching framework thatreduces the complexity, reduces
the costs, makes it more agileand more productive for the team
(13:13):
, if you will, that's managingthat infrastructure.
But obviously the secret in thesauce, I'm guessing, is that
you can't try to take theunderlying architecture on how
you do, that is going to beunique to each one of the
service provider or thehyperscalers, correct, yeah?
Rishi Ranjan (13:35):
The framework, the
operating model, is cloud
agnostic, right, but the actualexecution is AWS specific,
google specific and Azurespecific.
So think of it like this theyare like when we deploy an
application, we roughly use1,000 to 1,500 cloud services.
All these cloud services arevery different from for AWS, for
(13:59):
Azure and for Google, but thebackup process remains the same.
So the process of backupremains the same, but we don't
inject different cloud servicesfrom different cloud providers
to make it a cloud specificthing, right, but the underlying
design, the cloud process,remains the same for all three
of them.
John Kundtz (14:21):
So that sounds like
to me what probably the biggest
mistake organizations wouldmake is trying to bring that
tool set that they've been usingin their traditional data
center or on their on-prem orthe private cloud world and try
to apply it to each, exactly thesame, to each of the
hyperscalers, which I think iswhat you alluded to earlier,
(14:41):
which is why you end up spending30% more than you probably have
to, and exactly, and that wasthe time when cloud services
were not mature enough to answerthese things and needed some
tools to do that.
Rishi Ranjan (14:53):
But now cloud
providers have gone beyond
providing these services and wedon't need these type of tools
as heavyweights from day oneitself right, and the tools is.
The idea of tools itself isslowly fading away and providers
are providing those servicestheir own DR, their own
(15:14):
management, their own scenealert.
We don't need to buy most ofthe tools from outside.
John Kundtz (15:19):
Makes sense, all
right, excellent.
So one last question.
I like this one, then we'llwrap it up.
But so you talked about a lotof different things and
definitely there's a lot ofbenefits, potential benefits.
What would you, what advicewould you give someone who wants
to begin to optimize themanagement of their public cloud
infrastructure?
So how do you get started right?
(15:42):
What do you do?
What would you do next Afterlistening to the show?
What would you do next if youwanted to get more into this?
Rishi Ranjan (15:49):
So my opinion will
be, I think, two or three
things which I would suggestanybody who wants to onboard
this cloud native journey.
First, don't think ofinfrastructure support or
support of some services.
Think of a platform managedservices.
You're building a platform fordevelopers.
The idea of I'm building thisplatform for operations is
(16:14):
slowly fading away.
I'm building this platform fordevelopers.
So think of a developer andcreate a platform for a
developer.
Operations can be done, butdeveloper is the prime customer
person.
I wish we could write these.
She's our ultimate buyer orshe's our ultimate buyer Right?
So think of a platform managedservices.
What I mean?
Don't rest it ourselves fromthe ability of the environment
(16:37):
or backup or patching.
Think of their secops, think ofrelease, think of security.
All these things are very muchrelevant to a developer, which
can be done using this cloudnative services.
Second is it is automation andinfrastructure as a code.
Once the engineering skillswithin your own organization.
(16:59):
Instead of engineers, insteadof doing operations, we are
doing engineering right, andthat's the transition we all are
going through.
We are slowly seeing peopleneeding these SRE skills, the
engineering skills who can see asystem and write some workflows
and automation usinginfrastructure as a code, and do
(17:22):
this cloud native services ofintegrations right.
My two cents will be number oneis think of a platform for
developers to enhance ourengineering and automation
skills.
John Kundtz (17:37):
That's a great
piece of advice, thanks, all
right, so let's wrap this up.
In conclusion.
I want to really thank you,rishi, for a great interview.
I always learn a lot, so Iactually have one more question.
So how can people learn moreabout what we just talked about
and get started with this cloudnative management?
What would you suggest they put?
We'll put it in show notes,obviously.
(17:59):
We'll put a link to yourLinkedIn profile so people can
get a hold of you and create aconversation if they have any
questions or just want to learnmore.
What else would you recommendpeople maybe go to get started
and learn more about what wejust talked about?
Rishi Ranjan (18:16):
Yeah, as an
organization, we are offering
these type of services which canbe digitally procured using our
Kindle Bridge, so you can go tothat website and learn more,
procure more, enhance yourorganization capability of cloud
native services.
All these benefits are there,available digitally, which can
(18:39):
be procured.
Second I would like to say isgo through some of these AWS,
lco and Google best practices ofcloud native services, because
the world is changing so fastand we can only take what is
relevant to our context.
So look at these AWS as yourGoogle hyperscalers and read
(19:02):
about cloud native and see whatis those 80% of the problem
which can be done using that 20%of the solution.
Once you do that 80-20 mapping,you can go to Kindle Bridge and
procure the services that areready made assets which you
already have.
John Kundtz (19:18):
Great, and we'll
put a link to the Kindle Bridge
marketplace in the show notes,and it's a great place.
You go directly to it and youcan learn a little bit more of
self-service basis on.
There's white papers and casestudies and things like that,
and, if you so choose, you canschedule a consult with a
subject matter expert.
That's all I've got.
(19:40):
I will tell you that there's afew points I think to remember.
One is there's a bigopportunity to save some money,
particularly if you don't haveto bring an existing tool set
into the management world.
Second, there's a productivitysavings that you can bring both
to you and your organization.
(20:00):
And third, there's this agilityfactor where you can quickly
react to anything that'shappening in the marketplace.
And the fourth thing I'd alwayssay is you don't have to do
this by yourself.
There's lots of ways to engageorganizations and service
providers and subject matterexperts such as Rishi, to help
(20:21):
you, even if it's just someupfront consulting, and help you
figure out where to go and howto get started.
This is John Kuntz.
Thanks for watching again andthanks for joining us on this
edition of the Cloud CollectivePodcast.
And just one last point you cansucceed in managing and
(20:41):
optimizing your cloudinfrastructure management costs
and being financiallyaccountable and the
predictability of the highlyvariable expenses of the cloud
by creating an operating modelthat really engages enterprise
IT finance and your businessteams.
Thanks again, rajee.
It's great to talk to you.
Have a great day.
Rishi Ranjan (21:01):
Thank you, john,
nice talking to you.
Bye.