SRE Journey Extends Beyond Cloud and Container Orchestration for Post-Serverless World
Looking back in time from the year 2030, will your organization rank among the cloud success stories? In this blog, we will explore emerging tech trends and concepts you can apply to determine where your company stands in the critical new arenas of Cloud Optimization, DevSecOps, and Site Reliability Engineering.
Think about this for a moment…
…in your current market positioning, where does your company stand in the critical technology areas of Cloud Optimization, DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineering?
Looking ahead at 2025-2030, there is going to be a focus on finding high achievers in these key categories. Ultimately, it will be these teams that CIOs and CTOs will have reaped competitive benefits from in their planning towards critical automation, AI, big data, data science as well as machine learning (ML) goals.
From IaaS to containerization, PaaS to Serverless, Post-Serverless and beyond, each organization will have their own unique journey through the underlying Cloud Optimization and DevSecOps/SRE strategy.
Here are essential differentiating factors to consider:
- Novel and specialized skill sets in cloud optimization
- High value technical knowledge in advancing DevSecOps strategy
- Ability to decouple containerization from an inherent cloud roadmap
- Flexible and alternative pathways towards rapid automation
- Integration into Serverless and Post-Serverless worlds (as well as an accompanying AI, automation, big data, data science and ML investments)
Cloud Optimization Skills and DevSecOps Knowledge
Cloud optimization skills and DevSecOps knowledge are critical to moving through an elevating sector of a hybrid cloud journey. Recent AWS S3 data breaches as well as manual errors suggest that an advancement of automated DevSecOps jobs and skill sets are sorely needed. In addition, the technical expertise needs to be utilized in a framework that limits or at least reduces manual intervention as much as possible.
Because of the thousands of implementation strategies and countless cloud services outside of AWS S3, specialized solutions utilized effectively by SREs with the proper education and skill sets need to be implemented across cloud landscapes (i.e. Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP and IBM Cloud).
CD-I-Light 1: Implement securely on both Dev and Ops for a collaborative and detail-oriented DevSecOps strategy that interfaces strategically with team goals. Take a team skills assessment and continue to innovate. Assemble key resources to reach your desired destination. Define a collaborative lifecycle for your team that emphasizes team learning. If you identify gaps along the way, consider education or other investments to encourage positive tech and team building.
Decouple Containerization from Cloud Strategy
Containerization and container orchestration can be an on-prem solution that is easily traversed across multiple clouds. If a cloud platform is indeed chosen as opposed to a more traditional on-prem OpenStack or VMware solution, the investment area can be vastly accelerated utilizing the cloud services provided by either Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or IBM Cloud. Considering Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) or RedHat OpenShift for a more agnostic and portable platform is also a beneficial strategy, as it can be instantiated from OpenStack or VMware and then advanced alongside your cloud strategy.
A transcendent argument to be made is that containerization and container orchestration can be implemented via IaaS (with manual configuration) or PaaS-related automation services in a variety of ways. A key takeaway is not delaying because of the fear of making an incorrect decision, as this can plague teams attempting to make tangible progress in innovation.
CD-I-Light 2: Containerization and container orchestration are independent of cloud infrastructure strategies offered by Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP and IBM Cloud. The two portfolios can be considered separate, but their interface should be considered hybrid for higher velocity.
Alternative and Flexible Pathways Towards Rapid Automation
Various pathways towards rapid technical automation processes extend across Cloud and beyond container orchestration into both Serverless and Post-Serverless realms.
In essence, a plethora of diverse methods are available for beginning with IaaS solutions and working towards more advanced PaaS strategies. Stay the course, but within that course, allow for calculated intersections of agile adjustment (by specifically decoupling various areas of automated solutions within a CI, CD or Continuous Deployment pipelines). In addition, consider also that Cloud Optimization and DevSecOps technologies are moving rapidly and causing “cyber debt” when not implemented correctly. When secure solutions are acquired, be sure to retain them via automated strategy that emphasize source and version control for potential rollback scenarios.
CD-I-Light 3: Implement a high-velocity strategy towards Cloud Optimization and DevSecOps that allows for the routine adoption of more efficient and secure automation adjustments to your CI, CD or Continuous Deployment pipeline. Like interchangeable blocks, this can enable your strategy to continually elevate in maturity through time.