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 Hybrid Cloud
Strategy
2nd Red Hat® and Intel® Special Edition

by Ed Tittel

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 Hybrid Cloud Strategy For Dummies®, 2nd Red Hat® and Intel®
Special Edition

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 Introduction
C
loud computing is now a mainstay within the world of
IT. Likewise, cloud computing continues to grow ever more
complex and multi-faceted. Organizations often build their
own private cloud infrastructures in-house, sign up for services
from public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS),
Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, and create
hybrid environments. Other vital choices follow close behind,
including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in many shapes and
forms. Architects and engineers must deal with an array of con-
nections, integrations, portability issues among clouds, resource
options, orchestration, storage, and more. And it must all be
managed and maintained, made to work for improved profitabil-
ity and productivity.

You can probably see why a carefully thought-out and detailed

approach to cloud computing — a strategy, in other words — is
so important.

About This Book

Jumping onto the cloud is easy. Getting it right is somewhat trick-
ier. Getting it right for the long term is a big challenge. A good
cloud strategy helps you and your organization work things out,
makes sure all the bits and pieces fit together well, and improves
the odds of realizing your business goals.

This book’s topics are laid out in a logical order. But you don’t
have to read chapters in order unless you want to. Even so, I think
Chapter 1 is a great place to start. That said, if a topic catches your
fancy, jump into (and around) this book however you like. Each
chapter stands on its own, so you can chart your own course. Read
it in any order you like (but it’s probably not helpful to read it
backwards). I hope that, if you read this book in its entirety, you’ll
agree that you’ve been handed good ingredients and a recipe to
put such a strategy together.

Introduction 1

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 Icons Used in This Book
I occasionally use special icons to focus attention on important
items. Here’s what you find:

This icon with the proverbial string around the finger reminds
you about information that’s worth recalling.

Expect to find something useful or helpful by way of suggestions,

advice, or observations here.

Warning icons are meant to get your attention to steer you clear of
potholes, money pits, and other hazards. Soft clouds can deliver
hard knocks!

This icon may be taken in one of two ways: Techies will zero in
on the juicy and significant details that follow; others will happily
skip ahead to the next paragraph.

Beyond the Book

This book can help you discover more about the cloud and strate-
gies for its best deployment and use, but if you want resources
beyond what’s offered in this book, additional reading that’s
chock-full of useful info can be found at the following links:

»» www.redhat.com/en/resources/managing-­kubernetes-
clusters-dummies-ebook: Managing Your Kubernetes Clusters
For Dummies, Red Hat Special Edition, explains cluster-
management challenges and best practices for managing
Kubernetes environments.
»» www.redhat.com/en/explore/cloud-strategy: The Red
Hat website offers all kinds of useful cloud-focused informa-
tion, including a collection of resources aimed at cloud
strategy.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Linking projects to successful outcomes

»» Understanding specific terms, like hybrid

cloud and multi-cloud

»» Examining why “cloud native” and “open

source” rule

Chapter  1
Key Cloud Strateg  y
Considerations

S
treamlining and strengthening an IT ecosystem’s founda-
tion is essential to realizing business objectives. There’s no
better way to do that than formulating an effective cloud
strategy. Creating a cloud strategy involves pondering some key
considerations, which you discover in this chapter.

When building a strategy, complying with applicable policies or

regulations around your data and processes is important during
every step. Check each one!

Tying Your Project to Success

By tying your cloud project to clear desirable outcomes and ben-
efits, you define your own yardstick for success. All your goals
should have clear and specific key performance indicators (KPIs)
and success criteria. That means making important decisions as
you set those objectives. You must decide what represents success
and how you’ll measure its attainment. Is your desired outcome
“to accelerate software delivery through adoption of containers”
or is it “to automate provisioning of servers and applications over
the entire life cycle”? It makes a big difference. Or, is the true goal
to replace a legacy infrastructure and to modernize IT delivery?

CHAPTER 1 Key Cloud Strategy Considerations 3

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 Whatever your goals, you need KPIs and success criteria to match
(and measure) them.

Overcome hurdles
For cloud computing success, projects must address organizational
challenges in implementing new systems. Failure to anticipate and
handle these challenges poses dangers to project success. While
benefits from adopting a new cloud abound, change disturbs the
status quo. That’s why securing management sponsorship and
buy-in is key, starting at the top of the org chart. Get all important
stakeholders in your camp, and you’ll have less trouble from other
interests.

Identify major challenges

Start with easy apps and identify your implementation chal-
lenges. Learn about and consider various options to solve them.
Can a public cloud handle your needs and concerns, or must you
use a private cloud? Or do you need a hybrid cloud (mix of both)?
Whatever you decide, be sure it matches your organization’s goals
for automation, management, and scaling.

Think about things from business users’ perspectives. Ask your-

self, “How does this cloud project serve them?” and “By opting
to host my apps on public cloud providers, what are the risks of
locking the company into to them?” Also ask, “Does it make more
sense to build cloud-ready core applications so they can run on or
migrate into any cloud infrastructure, to avoid vendor lock-in?”
Emphasizing benefits helps gain buy-in from decision makers
and makes a project an easier “sell.”

When choosing cloud technologies, it’s not always either private

or public. You can create a hybrid cloud approach and combine
private and public clouds together.

Plan workloads
Think about the time and work it will take to bring your idea
to life. That means learning about the runtime environment to
better understand your IT landscape and its current limits. Find
out which of your applications can  — possibly through some
­refactoring  — and which ones can’t be moved to the cloud.
Through analysis, and perhaps even a pilot project, determine
how best to support current and planned workloads.

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 Migrate easy (that is, application web tier) applications and then
work into the harder stuff (like databases or message bus host-
ing). Keep compliance in mind, as well.

Brace for impact

Your new project impacts your operations team’s workflows,
automation, and management policies. Bring them into your pro-
cess early and often. If you focus on operational knowledge and
skills, you help align your organization with new or re-engineered
processes. The more Ops is prepared, the smoother your transi-
tion becomes. This makes inclusive awareness and documenta-
tion vital because it captures changes during the transformation
process and keeps folks informed.

Assembling Strategy Ingredients

An open, hybrid, business-oriented cloud lets organizations focus
on digital transformation, and it shortens time-to-market
windows. To do this right, identify common private cloud use cases
and then create architectures that fit their needs and requirements.
For example, an IT organization may need a cloud strategy focused
on security and compliance requirements, as well as regulatory or
financial considerations. It may also want to transition to a hybrid
environment in which applications run across multiple clouds. The
use case would be the point from which it picks appropriate archi-
tectures. In the same vein, a telco organization needs to understand
its service offerings and integration and interoperability require-
ments to help client organizations make the most of what they offer.

Get all key questions answered before starting a cloud architec-

ture. Don’t zoom ahead with a lot of issues open.

Putting Cloud in Perspective

To put the cloud in perspective for strategy purposes, check out
these two definitions:

»» Hybrid cloud describes a mixture of public and private cloud

resources. Such a mix offers potential for portability among
cloud elements but requires oodles of connections and

CHAPTER 1 Key Cloud Strategy Considerations 5

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 integration points. Hybrid clouds normally employ elements
such as containers, container orchestration, common operating
systems, runtime environments, flexible storage, and universal
developer frameworks and tools. A hybrid cloud may include
dynamic resource allocation and migration among clouds (called
cloudbursting). Hybrid clouds designed for portability make it
easier to orchestrate cloud workloads via unified management.
»» Multicloud is a combination of multiple cloud resources.
Thus, it may even be applied to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
or to cloud-specific tools, such as those used for data
analytics, machine learning, or database functions.

Why Cloud Native?

Whether the application level or the infrastructure level, cloud
native means that applications and services are completely at home
in the cloud. Organizations adopt cloud computing to increase
scalability and availability of apps. A cloud-native infrastructure
makes this feasible and provides self service and on-demand pro-
visioning for cloud-based resources. It also helps automate the
application life cycle from development and into production.

Why Open Source?

Linux is often the heart (and soul and brains) for cloud-native
infrastructures. In fact, open source code is everywhere in today’s
cloud environments and underlies cloud platforms that deliver
business applications and environments.

Cloud-native software is often developed, deployed, and man-

aged using DevOps practices, serving the need for highly flexible
and agile development environments with reduced IT complexity.
Developers increasingly package application components in Linux
containers that run as microservices across many different types
of clouds.

Open source provides a reasonable assurance of global connectiv-

ity and interoperability among applications and services. It also
provides a firm foundation to avoid vendor lock-in and achieve
easy workload positioning and movement.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Considering your options for maximum
cloud flexibility

»» Iterating by going from idea to product,

then back to cloud strategy

»» Reassessing and adjusting your cloud

strategy

Chapter  2
Architecting to Maximize
Flexibility

C
loud computing’s growth curve is expected to steepen.
Trends such as containerization, serverless architectures,
and the extension of the edge into the cloud, are essential
cloud computing usage trends. As the world gets more connected,
users want everything to be software-defined. The growth of
the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud services should ramp up
the cloud even further. Increasing popularity and reliance on the
cloud means any good cloud strategy must be flexible to meet new
(and possibly unforeseen) demands.

Planning for “Max Flexibility”

If you want to plan for maximum cloud flexibility, you need to
ponder a variety of different considerations:

»» Portability and manageability: The biggest enabler for

flexibility comes from adopting an open and extensible
architecture. It also helps avoid vendor lock-in and propri-
etary implementations.

CHAPTER 2 Architecting to Maximize Flexibility 7

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 »» Regulatory requirements: The private versus public
decision often comes from the data itself, where regulatory
concerns may specify that data can’t leave a certain country
or be subject to certain audit requirements. Such data may
best reside in a private cloud under tight control, while other
parts of an application (such as stateless web servers) not
subject to restrictions could reside in a public cloud.
»» IT security: Security is emerging as an overriding concern
and focus for investment and build-out in enterprise
networks, with a special focus on securing the cloud.
Among the 1,000-plus IT professionals that Red Hat surveyed
for its 2021 global tech outlook report, nearly half (45 percent)
mentioned IT security as the organization’s top IT funding
priority. Close behind: IT/cloud management (39 percent) and
cloud infrastructure (34 percent). The nexus of security and
cloud is top of mind at present and for the foreseeable future.
Get more details at www.redhat.com/en/global-tech-
outlook-report/2021.
»» Geo-redundancy: Applications that need strong resilience
and high availability can benefit from a hybrid cloud model.
This allows you to divide services and endpoints between
multiple private and public clouds. In this kind of scenario, if
a private cloud fails, you could elect to recover the service in
a public cloud. Similarly, a hybrid cloud reduces risks of data
loss or inaccessibility.
»» Best practices: Considering software life cycles in the cloud
is vital as you test, develop, and eventually shift application
environments from development into production. The same
notion applies to private cloud infrastructures. After all, a
private cloud infrastructure supports software applications
that must be maintained and tested through their life
cycle, too. This process lets a production environment run
unhampered and unhindered, ready for workaday use, with
development and testing (on different versions) in parallel.

As you work your way through this list, consider your own goals
and priorities, and adjust accordingly. You undoubtedly need to be
flexible (pun intended) when it comes to maximizing flexibility.

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 Conversations around cloud flexibility often default to the hybrid
option. Creating the right mix between public and private clouds
requires creating a roadmap. It begins with understanding overall
goals for cloud computing. Bring in all your business stakeholders
(key decision makers from business units that benefit from cloud
computing) and start laying things out. Such a roadmap need not
look years and years ahead, but it must be built to handle change
with sufficient flexibility to adapt to and accommodate new ser-
vices and deliverables. A forward-looking approach lets you take
advantage of new capabilities and functionality from the cloud as
it continues to innovate and expand.

Getting from Idea to Production

After your roadmap is laid out, what’s next? Good question! The
next steps involve discovery and gap analysis. That’s because
making cloud decisions involves a lot of choices, both techni-
cal and non-technical. Making choices must begin with a care-
ful analysis of your organizational constraints and the options
ahead. In turn, this comes from thorough discovery and analysis
of current processes and outcomes. Along the way, you’ll have
to observe (and later on, manage) how the options you choose
(or experiment with) affect interactions between operational
and development teams along with other stakeholders in the
organization.

Selection is also closely tied to proof of concept (POC) stages.

That’s because a POC usually provides the best way to inspect and
experiment with service choices that follow from an initial evalu-
ation. A POC provides a great opportunity to evaluate technologies
and outcomes as they apply to specific business requirements.
At the same time, you’ll gain insight into possible or useful
integrations.

The next step on the road to production is architecture design.

Thoughtful technology and organization design is important
because it impacts the future direction for IT for a long time to
come. It’s never easy to go back and rework things if the design
isn’t right. Here again, you must work closely with the organi-
zation’s stakeholders and with vendor partners to assess your
workload and applications.

CHAPTER 2 Architecting to Maximize Flexibility 9

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 Architecture design is an exercise where redos are insanely
expensive and can even be career-limiting (or -ending) maneu-
vers. This situation is clearly one where you don’t want to follow
that old maxim: “There’s never enough time to do it right, but
there’s always enough time to do it over.” Not so in this case, so
don’t even think about it. That said, design is when it’s essential
to ponder (and choose) architectures that are open and flexible
enough to accommodate as-yet-unknown business requirements,
new and emerging technologies, and open-ended development
environments and tools.

The best way to future-proof an IT infrastructure is to design

flexibility and openness in from the get-go. Make this a priority.

Circling Back to Cloud Strategy

As you make choices — particularly, those that involve choosing
specific platforms, tools, or technologies  — you can’t help but
notice their impacts on your organization, your processes, your
policies, and even your business goals. It’s important to recognize
that not all proofs of concept succeed. Often, such failures require
circling back to and adjusting strategy to reflect an improved and
more realistic understanding of what’s really needed. Don’t be
afraid to make adjustments as you go.

In fact, many experts argue that developing a proper cloud strat-

egy unavoidably includes at least a little bit of a “two steps for-
ward, and one step back” motion. That’s because you have to
move forward to select possible options, and implement POC
experiments, while recognizing that not all such concepts actually
prove themselves in practice — however attractive they may be in
theory. Therefore, it’s safest to neither assume that your progress
will always be straightforward — nor that a chart of such prog-
ress will necessarily be a straight line from the starting point to
the finish line. This is another reason why it’s so important to be
flexible when working with cloud strategy and related platforms,
tools, and technologies.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Looking at the cloud age

»» Achieving agility with IaC

»» Understanding why IaC matters and IaC

best practices

»» Following the four-phase approach to

cloud infrastructure

Chapter  3
Enabling Agile IT in the
Cloud

F
lexibility is key to any workable cloud strategy. It allows
many different technologies to run across various cloud
architectures, whether private, public, or hybrid. For exam-
ple, do you want to run storage services on-premises and in the
public cloud for backup? Or across clouds? You can do that. Better
yet, technologies such as containers and Kubernetes/OpenShift
open the door to truly portable workloads because they work the
same wherever they run.

Automation makes cloud infrastructure and applications more

streamlined and less complex and helps staff meet business objec-
tives within organizational and regulatory constraints. In this
chapter, you look at how the cloud and automation go together,
and how managing infrastructure like you manage code builds in
added flexibility and capability.

Living in the Cloud Age

Back in the day, getting a new server up and running was time
intensive. An administrator had to work with a vendor to buy a
physical server, configure it, connect it to the network, install
applications, test it, and image it. If something went wrong, it

CHAPTER 3 Enabling Agile IT in the Cloud 11

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 was time to start over. Weeks or months could pass before a server
went live. Then, consider the time involved when many servers
across different environments are affected.

No more! In the Cloud Age, admins and users can provision a server
on demand. This takes mere minutes (not days, weeks, or months)
by selecting parameters on a friendly user interface or via an API
call. This enormous reduction in delivery time has caused the num-
ber of servers across enterprises to skyrocket. Today, the real chal-
lenge is to find a flexible, robust solution to manage all of them.

Understanding Infrastructure as Code

The answer to managing large numbers of on-demand servers is
Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Using IaC operators can provision and
manage IT systems programmatically with a template defined in
software code. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like application
development, you’re right.

The crux of IaC is a definition file, from which the entire­

infrastructure  — networks, storage, virtual machines, and so
on — is built. Such a playbook specifies not only infrastruc-
ture elements but also how they should be configured and sets
the stage for consistency. With a definitive file, automation, and
configuration management software, such as Ansible, Chef, or
Puppet, use it to configure and provision cloud infrastructure.
And it can do so programmatically, in response to demand and
usage changes, or user requests.

Best IaC Practices

As IaC makes its way into more cloud environments, ensure
your team follows best practices as a standard for execution. The
following best practices apply to every IaC environment:

»» Use definition files as documentation: Definition files are

the essence of IaC — your blueprints for whatever type of
resource you’re creating — and they serve as documenta-
tion. In short, your code becomes your doc.
»» Your documentation is built into your code: Because
everything that describes infrastructure is in code, it’s vital
that code be crystal clear and self-explanatory.

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 »» Version everything: Use a version control system, such as
Git (see the nearby sidebar for details), to track changes,
conduct peer reviews, and provide good governance.
Versioning is especially handy for audits and compliance.
»» Validate templates before putting them to use: Validating a
template before creating or updating resources lets you identify
syntax errors, misconfigurations, and dependency problems.
»» Perform continuous testing: This invokes the big picture to
validate templates. Constantly test systems and processes to
correct mistakes quickly and ensure changes don’t create
instability or unexpected performance issues.
»» Make small, incremental changes: Making a small change
allows you to quickly see the effect and roll it back if needed
with minimal effort. Batch changes may seem faster but are
more difficult to troubleshoot.
»» Keep services available: If a server fails, another should be
ready to take over. The goal is to deliver uninterrupted
services per service-level agreements (SLAs).

THE GITOPS VISION

GitOps is a way to develop IaC that uses Git repositories as a sole
source of truth. Submitted code triggers a standard pipeline for con-
tinuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) in DevOps fash-
ion. This ensures that well-documented, policy-driven requirements
for security, IaC itself, or boundaries in the application framework are
met or exceeded. All code changes get tracked in such an environ-
ment. This makes updates easy to move through the life cycle and
provides version control should rollbacks prove necessary.

GitOps delivers the following benefits:

• Standardized workflow for application management

• Increased security through baking in application requirements
• Improved reliability with Git-supplied visibility and version control
• Consistency across clusters, clouds, and on-prem environments
Tools may be combined to build a usable GitOps framework, such as
Git repositories, Kubernetes, plus CI/CD and configuration manage-
ment tools.

CHAPTER 3 Enabling Agile IT in the Cloud 13

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 The Six-Phase Iterative Approach
to Cloud Infrastructure
IaC is what provides real payoffs from using the cloud. If you’re
ready to incorporate IaC into your IT organization, follow a struc-
tured approach to planning and design for rollout. To flesh out
and implement your cloud strategy using IaC principles and prac-
tices, follow this checklist:

»» Discover: Nail down and sort out short-term and long-term

requirements with IT and business partners. This process
includes identifying challenges, articulating business
objectives, and determining workloads to move to the cloud.
»» Design and build: Make sure the design fits your specific
business strategies and use cases for the delivery of a Minimally
Viable Product (MVP) that can scale as your company grows.
»» Testing/Validation: Validate your technical design and try
service features, assess their life cycle (for example, how
they’re updated/upgraded), see how they work, and assess
organization fit and impact.
»» Migration plan: Set a strategy for how best to migrate your
selected applications. Standardize and establish automation
mechanisms and operational processes.
»» Operationalize: Tune your cloud infrastructure to meet
your performance needs and add/integrate the operational
tools you need to detect and respond to failures at lightning
speed. The question isn’t whether your infrastructure or
application will fail; it’s all about when and how fast you
detect and recover from faults. The real goal is for no failure
to be visible or noticeable to your end-users.
»» Iterate: Revisit your initial MVP design for further improve-
ments. Design changes to accommodate new business
needs. Don’t try to “boil the ocean” in your first attempt.
Define increments and sprints with clear achievable
outcomes that are time bound.

This process helps you look at all possible technologies and

solutions and to come up with a solid action plan. It creates the
roadmap for seeing your cloud project through from beginning
to end.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Getting into the hybrid cloud mix

»» Adopting hybrid processes

»» Using platforms and technologies with

hybrid capabilities

»» Jumping on the Kubernetes bandwagon

Chapter  4
Adapting to a Hybrid
World

C
heck any cloud usage survey you like. Notice that enterprises
(and other organizations) think “more is better” when it
comes to cloud adoption and consumption. In fact, 2021
Global Tech Outlook: A Red Hat report found 27 percent of the enter-
prises it surveyed have an explicit hybrid cloud strategy, while
11 percent call their strategies multicloud (as in more than one). Put
them together, and 38 percent have a cloud strategy that involves
two or more clouds. The same study found nearly all enterprises
surveyed plan to increase the number of clouds they use. Today,
using two is typical: 60 percent of respondents report using two or
more cloud platforms. You can get more info about this report at
www.redhat.com/en/global-tech-outlook-report/2021.

It’s hard to argue against the assertion that deploying a hybrid

cloud makes good sense to more organizations, given that going
hybrid enables cloud-based and on-premises resources and assets
to work together better.

CHAPTER 4 Adapting to a Hybrid World 15

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 Using Hybrid Infrastructures
Many modern organizations already use hybrid IT infrastructures
today. Given that a hybrid cloud is an IT architecture that provides
some degree of workload portability, orchestration, and manage-
ment across two or more environments, you may find it in these
scenarios:

»» At least one each of private and public clouds

»» Two or more private clouds, and/or public clouds
»» A bare-metal or virtual environment connected to one or
more public and/or private clouds

Today, it makes more sense to define hybrid cloud computing by

what it does, instead of what kind of or how many clouds it uses.
In fact, modern hybrid clouds should

»» Connect multiple computers over a network.

»» Consolidate IT resources.
»» Scale out easily and quickly provision new resources.
»» Facilitate moving workloads between environments.
»» Run a single, unified management tool (and interface).
»» Orchestrate processes using automation.
The infrastructure that supports a hybrid cloud made of private
and public cloud components works the same as standalone pri-
vate and public clouds. Therefore, it includes

»» Networks, such as local area networks (LANs), wide area

networks (WANs), virtual private networks (VPNs), and/or
application programming interfaces (APIs), that connect
multiple computers
»» Virtualization, containers, and data services abstract
resources that may then be pooled together into data lakes
»» Management software that allocates resources into environ-
ments where applications and services run, provisioned on
demand via an authentication service

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 Individual clouds become hybrid when application or service
environments interconnect seamlessly. Interconnectivity is what
makes hybrid clouds work and explains why they’re the founda-
tion for edge computing.

Edge computing describes a computing model that distributes com-

pute resources out at the “edge” of a network — where the users
and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors reside — as needed
and also centralizes resources in a cloud model whenever possible.
Edge computing can quickly provide actionable insights derived
from time- (and location-) sensitive data. Edge computing use cases
often involve IoT, mobile technologies, and telecommunications.

Interconnectivity and interoperability in a hybrid cloud explain

how workloads move around and how management gets unified
across multiple clouds, all of which use APIs to interact with a
single set of management tools and interfaces. And finally, this
details how orchestration runs processes in the “right” cloud,
depending on service-level agreements (SLAs), security, compli-
ance requirements, and so on.

Choosing Hybrid-Happy Platforms

A handful of basic principles describe two general ways to build
a hybrid cloud environment. One is traditional; the other is more
modern (and represents the best way to achieve future-proof,
flexible business outcomes). Traditional methods mean intercon-
necting private and public cloud environments using massive,
complex middleware. One may build a private cloud from scratch
or use a prepackaged cloud infrastructure. Linking private and
public elements may use middleware or a special VPN that pub-
lic cloud providers include in subscriptions, such as AWS: Direct
Connect, Azure: ExpressRoute, Google Cloud: Dedicated Intercon-
nect, and OpenStack: Public Cloud Passport.

Using such connections to tie clouds together takes time and effort.
That’s why modern hybrid clouds focus instead on portability for
apps that run inside them. Focusing on apps means building them
as collections of small, independent, loosely coupled services. With
the same operating system in every IT environment, and manag-
ing everything on a unified platform, apps run everywhere with
equal ease and facility. They can also move easily as well.

CHAPTER 4 Adapting to a Hybrid World 17

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 Think of a hybrid cloud as resulting from running the open source
Linux OS everywhere, building and deploying cloud-native apps,
and managing environments and apps using an orchestration tool
like Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift.

Using the same OS abstracts all hardware requirements, just as

using an application platform abstracts app requirements. This
creates an interconnected, consistent computing environment
where apps can move from one place to another quickly and eas-
ily. There’s no need to set up and manage APIs for each different
connection. Better yet, you don’t need to worry about connections
breaking when apps get updates or move from one cloud to another.

Embracing Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open source container-orchestration plat-
form designed to automate how containerized applications are
deployed, how they scale up and down, and how they’re managed.
Kubernetes works across a wide range of infrastructure environ-
ments. Most cloud services offer Kubernetes-based platforms
as a service  — that is, as explicit Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments. This lets
Kubernetes function as the platform on which container-based
applications can run, scale, and be managed.

Kubernetes is a de facto operating system for modern hybrid

cloud environments. That is, if you build an application to run
in a Kubernetes-managed container, you can be sure it will run
in any cloud or datacenter environment that supports Kuber-
netes. Because nearly all of them do, it’s like getting a free pass
for interoperability, scaling and orchestration, and management
wherever the app runs.

The Kubernetes platform makes it easy to provide consistency

across different cloud platforms because applications and their
data reside within containers that come prepackaged with all
inputs and outputs, capabilities, and connections needed, regard-
less of the runtime environment (which may be private or public
cloud-based, on-premises or off).

Because Kubernetes and containers are built from Linux, it’s best
to use the same Linux distribution all over. That includes the
Kubernetes node hosts and within containers themselves.

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 Getting Past Plain Vanilla
Maximizing Kubernetes is more than simply grabbing code and
putting it to work. Some distributions include additional features
that confer amazing value. Look for, or insist on, certain features
from your toolset to create a flexible and future-proof hybrid
cloud environment. Ditto for containerized applications in that
environment. The features include

»» Application services: Applications in Kubernetes can use

generic services that work across all containers in a cluster.
Services follow a standard TCP/IP model, using TCP or UDP
port addresses. A good Kubernetes implementation offers a
large library of predefined and well-known services and also
makes it easy for developers to build their own services so
they can easily leverage common efforts and create reusable
building blocks.
»» Data services: OpenShift Container Storage Interface (CSI)
snapshot functionality offers customizable, point-in-time
snapshots of persistent data volumes. These work with
enterprise backup solutions to support Kubernetes apps.
They use APIs that provide application-consistent backup
images, complete with metadata to describe cluster
resources and persistent data volume contents.
»» DevOps tooling: Kubernetes is about running apps in
containers. Modern app development adheres to a combina-
tion of development and operations philosophies known as
DevOps. Key to this approach is for continuous integration
and continuous deployment (CI/CD). In practice, this means
your Kubernetes environment should integrate easily and
seamlessly with your development and deployment tools,
and support CI/CD.
»» ISV marketplace support: Enterprises can be comfortable
buying tools and technologies for Kubernetes application
development, deployment, and management if prospective
purchases are certified for Kubernetes. Red Hat operates an
open marketplace specifically for such software from indepen-
dent software vendors (ISVs) to simplify buying and deploying
container-based software across clouds. Find it at marketplace.
redhat.com.
»» Cloud services integration: Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift
work with the major cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure, IBM,

CHAPTER 4 Adapting to a Hybrid World 19

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 and Google. Cloud interoperability and access are essential in
any modern hybrid cloud infrastructure and provide the
foundations for workload migration, easy deployment and
management, and more.

Making Much of Management

In a dynamic and distributed environment, with containers and
clusters in multiple clouds, management and monitoring gain
extra importance and value. A single view of core capabilities is
key. Centralized management translates into

»» Control of public clouds, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud

Platform, IBM Cloud, and others
»» Management of key technologies used in the cloud and on-
premises, including virtualization (VMWare, OpenStack, and
more), varied operating systems (Linux, Windows, and more)
»» End-to-end cluster management, using Infrastructure as
Code (IaC) best practices and design principles to deliver
reliable consistent management at-scale, cover clusters
across multiple datacenters and public cloud services,
illuminate health across all clusters and pods, and provide
troubleshooting insight across all clusters
»» Baked-in security that lets developer and operations teams
work from the same playbook and account for compliance
and regulatory requirements through the entire life cycle
A strong management solution offers policy-based govern-
ance, risk, and compliance controls.
»» Centralized life-cycle management for containerized apps
that allows for intelligent placement rules, uses channel and
subscription definitions for deployment, provides usable
views of service endpoints and pods, and facilitates moving
workloads across clusters — even across public clouds
»» Better results as integrated dashboards and tooling bring
everybody together to get the work done consistently
A strong management solution helps break down depart-
mental boundaries and encourages collaboration and
cooperation across the organization.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Finding opportunities in a paradigm shift

»» Making connections with open

innovations

»» Modernizing operations and business

systems support

»» Winning the service battle for customers’

hearts and minds

Chapter  5
Cloud Strateg  y for Telcos

F
or telecommunications companies — telcos, for short — ­digital
transformation isn’t just an idle dream. It’s a make-or-break
proposition. Service providers that can’t lead the way into
modern, progressive technologies must fall by the wayside because
telcos, first and foremost, connect us all — ­companies, people, pro-
cesses, and devices. In turn, many companies rely on telcos to pro-
vide solutions to help them better serve their own clients and
customers. Today, clouds are where IT and applications live, so if
telco infrastructure isn’t modern (moving toward cloud-native
capabilities) and won’t or can’t support hybrid clouds easily or very
well, everybody comes up short. That’s simply unacceptable.

Digital transformation describes what happens to companies —

including telcos  — as they fundamentally change the way they
do business by adopting innovative ways to offer products and
services built on new digital tools and technology. For success,
though, organizational culture change must coincide because
transformation requires new ways of thinking and doing to
improve or replace what came before.

Telcos are at the forefront of digital transformation because their

services and infrastructure form the foundation on top of which
digital transformation rests. It’s fair to characterize them as digi-
tal service providers (DSPs). That means clouds, mobile apps, and
everything-as-a-service require new kinds of storage, analytics,

CHAPTER 5 Cloud Strategy for Telcos 21

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 automation, networking functions, and management. Savvy DSPs
must supply and support all this, so their customers can build
their futures.

Many telco CEOs are looking to accelerate the transition of their

companies into DSPs. But they must execute on a holistic strat-
egy so it doesn’t fall prey to short-term budget limitations or fail
to deliver on over-ambitious, poorly conceived implementation
plans. Instead, telcos must carefully weigh the business benefits
for each element they build into their plans.

Finding Opportunity in a Paradigm Shift

When the rules change enough that you find yourself asking, “Are
we still playing the same game?” that’s a paradigm shift. Digi-
tal transformation  — especially for telcos  — represents a clear
paradigm shift because it literally “changes everything.” Early
adopters of new tools and technologies can capture more of the
opportunities created. At a minimum, digital transformation for
DSPs involves a cluster of key ingredients:

»» Network functions virtualization (NFV): Virtualizes

networking functions (routing, filtering, prioritizing, orches-
trating, and organizing network traffic and structures) used
as the building blocks that create fully fledged communica-
tion services
Telcos helped create NFV and have pushed implementations
to meet telco-grade standards. Telco-grade designates systems
and equipment that support the levels of capability, reliability,
stability, quality, and availability required by telcos to provide the
infrastructures that everybody relies on and that customers can
bundle with their own services.
»» Cloud-native applications and services: Depend on using
open source, standardized containers and Kubernetes, and
associated infrastructures, development tools, environments,
and more
Telcos should seek out a cloud-native platform that allows
the same operation across most, if not all, cloud infrastruc-
tures supporting containers.

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 »» Automation: Covers the use of programming or scripting to
capture commands and configurations and the use of
management and control software to orchestrate its use
Automation is key to scalability because it responds to
events, requests for service, or incidents without human
intervention or error. Automation, once proven and tested, is
accurate, works at machine (not human) speeds, and may be
repeated. Automation usually works within something like
open source Ansible, which supports software, service and
network provisioning, configuration management, and
deployment tools. It enables infrastructure as code (IaC) —
see Chapter 3 for more information.
»» Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML):
Represent the use of computers to analyze enormous
collections of data that modern digital devices, systems, and
services generate
ML, in particular, is able to teach itself new and interesting
ways to understand data, some of which may be counterintui-
tive or too complex for humans to handle unaided. AI and ML
make sense of, protect, and enhance the value of data within
complex systems. They’re what lets online shopping sites
suggest purchases based on observed shopping behavior,
supports fraud detection for financial services providers, and
helps software developers find and fix potential issues before
they turn into real problems. AI and ML excel at building
baselines and finding anomalies in all data. This is of great
value to all organizations.

Paradigm shift opportunities go mostly to organizations that

quickly recognize the value brought by major changes and that use
new technologies to make it easy for clients or customers to benefit.
In leading the way to digital transformation for organizations of all
sizes, telcos are uniquely positioned to benefit from providing ser-
vices and infrastructures that support their customers’ effective use
of hybrid cloud and the cloud-native applications that run there.

Interconnecting the World

A modern hybrid cloud environment creates a veritable ecosystem
within which telcos — and their legions of customers — can sur-
vive (and thrive) amidst the trials of digital transformation. This

CHAPTER 5 Cloud Strategy for Telcos 23

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 ecosystem depends on a key set of foundational ingredients that,
in turn, depend on

»» Running the open source Linux OS everywhere

»» Virtualizing or containerizing network functions
»» Providing a consistent way to build and deploy cloud-native
apps
»» Managing hybrid environments with the Kubernetes
orchestration found in Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift, integrating Kubernetes and other open source

technologies, takes the work out of finding and resolving inter-
operation issues across public and private cloud platforms. It also
makes creating and running a hybrid cloud environment easier
and relatively straightforward, making it particularly appealing
for telcos.

Building blocks for modern telco

networks
As the entire telco industry moves toward 5G adoption and deploy-
ment, new technology helps deliver more capabilities to cus-
tomers faster, improve their experiences, and accelerate digital
transformation. This involves rethinking the entire telco-grade
environment and switching away from proprietary hardware and
software to open, standards-based services and software-defined
systems to accelerate and amplify new 5G capabilities, support
media and entertainment streams, and more.

The distributed architecture of 5G also permits DSPs to offer ser-

vices at the network edge, a priority for telco customers who want
to improve data access and application responsiveness. Examples
include access to complex medical imaging and diagnostic ser-
vices in an ambulance or AI-driven operation of an autonomous
vehicle in real traffic.

DSPs can use hybrid cloud to extend datacenter resources while

maintaining control over increasing presence and capability at the
edge. Edge computing is key to enabling 5G and its new service
opportunities. Many depend on localized compute resources and
data acquired and consumed at the network edge (especially for
IoT devices and sensors, or next-gen augmented reality gaming,

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 COUNTING GENERATIONS:
1G, 2G, . . .
In the world of wireless, connections are often labeled using num-
bered generations, from 1G all the way to 5G. Here’s what each of
these generations represents:

• 1G: First generation cellular telecom standards were introduced in

1979 and are no longer used since 2G came along.
• 2G: Second generation wireless standards include GSM, intro-
duced in 1991. It offers digital encryption, better wireless effi-
ciency, and early data services such as Short Message Service
(SMS) for texting.
• 3G: Introduced in 1998, 3G offers faster data rates and broadband
access to smartphones and mobile computer modems. As with
subsequent generations, 3G takes advantage of new frequency
bands.
• 4G: First introduced in Scandinavia in 2009 and the USA in 2011,
4G improves mobile broadband for Internet access, adding IP
telephony, video conferencing, and other advanced services.
Another common label for 4G is Long Term Evolution (LTE).
• 5G: Offers data rates of hundreds of megabits per second (Mbps),
up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). With its first large-scale deploy-
ments in April 2019, 5G also supports massive scaling for Internet
of Things (IoT) sensors, better transmission efficiency and cover-
age, and lower latency.

With each new generation, speeds have increased as has the number,
type, and complexity of digital streams supported. 5G, in fact, appears
poised to challenge wired and cable connections for the “last mile”
(from the edge of the infrastructure to homes and offices).

or vision-controlled factory automation that demand both limited

latency and intensive processing).

Indeed, open source and the hybrid cloud are emerging as the
building blocks for modern telco agile networks, enhancing cus-
tomer experiences, even when their needs change.

CHAPTER 5 Cloud Strategy for Telcos 25

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 The open DSP journey
Telcos today are continuing their ongoing digital transformations.
And now, compute and storage at the network edge support 5G,
reduce latency and congestion, and improve cloud-native appli-
cation performance. This lets telcos create new vertical business
opportunities.

Greater use of open, flexible cloud and networking technologies

has allowed DSPs increasingly to recognize that they shouldn’t
rely on a single vendor to drive network innovation, especially
as networks become more virtual than physical. Open commu-
nity collaboration accelerates innovation. Using an open, flexi-
ble environment also permits DSPs to add or change vendors as
their business needs, cost considerations, and customer demands
evolve, using the best solutions to offer top-notch customer
experiences.

With a mature, stable, and open foundation for hybrid cloud

infrastructures and their operations, telcos can quickly add new
functions, services, tools, and technologies. By taking advan-
tage of open technologies  — APIs, standard containers, and
­management/automation tools  — DSPs can meet customers’
needs, whatever they’re doing, wherever they’re located, on
whatever devices they’re using, and whatever content they’re
consuming. Rapid innovation helps telcos compete more success-
fully in today’s dynamic markets.

Modernizing OSS/BSS
Internal telco operations use operations support systems and
business support systems, often abbreviated as OSS/BSS.  The
former addresses how telcos configure, provision, maintain, and
troubleshoot network services, while the latter addresses how
telcos track service orders, manage customer relationships, han-
dle billing, and manage cross-carrier transactions. These are the
nuts-and-bolts internal systems on which telcos depend, but like
all other aspects of modern business, they too must change as a
part of digital transformation.

OSS/BSS gain many of the same benefits that other applications

and services enjoy when switched to a cloud-native architecture

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 and hybrid cloud ecosystem. The new capability, flexibility, and
efficiency they bring help modernize OSS/BSS.

The ecosystem supports a broad range of solutions, including

databases, data stores, AI/ML analytics, and more, designed to
enable a modern OSS/BSS environment. In turn, this makes telcos
more agile, more flexible, and more able to innovate with new
services, bundles, partnerships, and customer offerings.

Winning DSPs Serve Customer Success

DSPs can plan on future benefits from a hybrid cloud adoption and
deployment. A hybrid cloud ecosystem makes it easier and faster to
migrate workloads among public and private clouds. DSPs can read-
ily shift from internal infrastructures to public clouds across mul-
tiple providers, if desired, and support cloudbursting when needed.

Cloudbursting refers to responding to increased demand for an

application or service by placing additional workloads for it into
one or more additional clouds (usually public). It supports scaling
up and scaling out.

DSPs must understand the impact on customer experiences. Stra-

tegic initiatives that benefit from hybrid cloud adoption include

»» Strengthening customer digital relationships: By using

data analytics and AI/ML, telcos can meet and predict
customer preferences and requirements more accurately
and provide them with better service. In addition, aggregat-
ing customer data in a cloud-based datastore, instead of
spreading it across multiple systems (and locations), lets
telcos create a 360-degree, holistic view of their customers.
This plays nicely into customer interactions and feeds better
into models for customer behavior.
»» Delivering new, value-added B2B capabilities: DSPs must
be able to deliver customized, carefully crafted solutions to
enterprises. And they need to do this quickly and affordably.
To easily team up with enterprise partners, public cloud
services must be equally accessible at all times to all parties
involved. In a hybrid cloud ecosystem, cloud-native applica-
tions are ubiquitous, and consequently, everything is easily
accessible, flexible, and extensible.

CHAPTER 5 Cloud Strategy for Telcos 27

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 »» Gaining a competitive edge by building new revenue
streams around 5G: New core and edge capabilities are
necessary for telcos to better monetize their infrastructure
investments. Edge clouds offer all the benefits associated
with more distant public clouds but with lower latency and
more immediate access to compute and storage resources.
The real trick is to identify the best opportunities that 5G
and edge computing present and to deliver differentiated
cloud-based services with more agility and speed, using the
hybrid cloud ecosystem to obtain a first-to-market (or
early-to-market) advantage.

The biggest benefits of the hybrid cloud ecosystem are probably

yet to be discovered, but the necessary tools and scaffolding are
already available. Telcos can seek out and capitalize on the oppor-
tunities as they emerge.

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 IN THIS CHAPTER
»» Moving appropriate workloads to the
cloud via a roadmap and checklist

»» Increasing agility and flexibility across

disparate environments

»» Managing it all with unified views and

tools

Chapter  6
Ten Reasons to Develop
a Cloud Strateg  y

E ach For Dummies book ends with a Part of Tens chapter. This
one gives you reasons to develop a cloud strategy:

»» You get a roadmap: A cloud strategy provides a roadmap

for becoming cloud native. You’ll understand your goals and
objectives, what you can migrate to the cloud, which
challenges you face, and how to overcome them.
»» Increase your cloud flexibility: A cloud strategy also helps
you ramp up cloud services appropriately to meet both
existing and new (and possibly unforeseen) demands.
»» Go open source: An architecture based on open source
software is the cornerstone of a cloud strategy. Adopting an
open and extensible architecture adds flexibility and
portability (and avoids vendor lock-in).
»» Meet compliance requirements: A well-developed cloud
strategy helps you ensure that you’re meeting regulatory
and internal compliance requirements. It also designs in
policies, tests, and checks to compare and synchronize
what’s required and what’s built.

CHAPTER 6 Ten Reasons to Develop a Cloud Strategy 29

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 »» Follow a proven approach: A cloud strategy provides a
checklist to ensure nothing is overlooked. The checklist
covers discovery, design and build, testing and proof of
concept, and migration.
»» Reach your goals more quickly: Making cloud decisions
involves many technical and business choices, input from
operational and development teams, and proofs of concept.
A solid strategy ties it all together and keeps choices on track
toward achieving business outcomes.
»» Increase agility with automation: Infrastructure as Code
(IaC) lets you provision and manage servers automatically by
using a defined template. There’s no need to touch a
physical box. IaC is the essence of agility. Check out
Chapter 3 for more information about IaC.
»» Embrace Kubernetes: A cloud strategy looks to replace
one-off, manually configured runtimes and applications with
cloud-based containerized equivalents that are standardized
and automated and can be quickly created, turned off, or
replaced. See Chapter 4 for more info.
»» Unified IT management is in play: Single-pane-of-glass
management increases efficiency, makes complex environ-
ments easier to manage, and builds in reliability and
scalability.
»» Get better visibility: Unified IT management results in
highly accurate data. Plan better, spend more wisely, and
lower overall IT costs. From GitOps to global management, a
cloud strategy illuminates the entire IT life cycle and drives
continuous improvement.

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