Product-based, service-oriented architecture is more relevant than ever. Businesses are increasingly realizing the need to have a modern, agile approach to software development and infrastructure architecture. The key challenge, however, is building a platform solution that can deliver on the power of service-oriented architecture, while providing a foundation to meet future cloud demands. A few questions that need deliberation are:
Based on the key challenge and the self-assessment questions, businesses can arrive at a new way of thinking. A Cloud Centre of Excellence and Expertise (CCoE) leads the organization in cloud adoption, migration, and operations. It is a cross-functional ecosystem of people, processes, and tools embedded in a business-aligned operating model. CCoE is responsible for developing and managing the cloud strategy, governance, development, and best practices - which the rest of the enterprise can transform the business leveraging the cloud.
The Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) consists of three pillars:
CCS challenges
Of the three, Cloud Central Services (CCS) offers the most challenges since it deals with multiple personas trying to understand, use, and modify the infrastructure-as-code (IaC). Also, with the constant evolution of governance, compliance, and security, it can be daunting to balance best practices, while still promoting lean, efficient delivery.
Businesses may also have skilled operators who act as producers, managing cloud infrastructures, and developers who abstract themselves from provisioning infrastructure to avoid being the impediment to delivery.
The disparity of tooling and processes increases time and resource costs, while different teams us different tools and methods, making team coordination difficult. Mixing ad-hoc development workflows and disparate infrastructure deployment processes exemplify disorganisation.
Evolving to a new operating model
A new target-operating model is evolving for the cloud to satisfy product-based service-oriented architecture. The model combines a platform engineering team, enriched with site reliability engineering capabilities that is responsible for operations. This team uses templates, IaC scripts and policies, to deliver capabilities to product teams, who consume services via APIs.
A horizontal platform can be implemented and deployed immediately , enabling developers to build reusable interfaces while establishing a core framework for integration. Enterprises no longer need to rip and replace .
Platform and Cloud Infrastructure Services - New Target Operating Model
Platform Engineering Squads:
The nirvana stage is reducing and eliminating repeated manual tasks and fully automating the tasks as cloud adoption process matures.
Business outcomes:
When the model matures, architects bridge technical and the non-technical stakeholders and implement standards that everyone can understand and apply. The model brings transparency to everyone, supports growth, and provides a standard framework for common tooling across development, operations, and stakeholders.
Key outcomes:
Improved visibility and collaboration
By having design, code, and documentation on the same platform, everyone can understand how the infrastructure is built. Teams can review code and suggest improvements. They can learn to reuse automations in other applications, troubleshoot, and review/audit for compliance.
After everyone has been on-boarded and cloud assets have been centralised, efforts can be undertaken to share a common vision on who needs to be responsible for what, along with a strong focus on execution.
Reduced costs and efforts spent on on-boarding and training new employees.
Once teams share the same working environment, communication and collaboration becomes easier. By simultaneously working on the same infrastructure, teams can mentor the new hires and teach best practices.
Teams can access infrastructure documentation and reuse templates created by other team members. By process end, the business will have a system to track all engineering work in one place and communicate it to stakeholders with minimal overhead.
Going forward, build effective, remote distributed agile teams, with transparency and ways of working that are both flexible and scalable, and fuel product-oriented architecture that leverages a resilient and fully automated platform.
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Gaurav Parakh
Director - Cloud Strategic Pursuits, iCORE – Europe
Gaurav is a Director at the Cloud Europe team at Wipro. Based in the UK, he provides consultancy and advisory services to Wipro’s key customers. Gaurav has 22+ years of experience in international business and IT consultancy in the cloud, open source, digital transformation, go-to-market, and business development.
He has been instrumental in launching multiple tech start-ups from ideation, and build, to exit across cloud, 3D printing, and AI. He holds an MBA in International Business from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chausses, Paris, France and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Bradford, UK and Digital Transformation certification from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT)