Hybrid Cloud - Yes,You can!

I recently posted this blog on the Cryptzone website. You can find the original posting here.

I was recently with 7,500 of my closest Amazon AWS friends at the AWS Summit in San Francisco. Generally, when you go to an AWS conference, the talk is ONLY about AWS: the latest features, implementation and design, or optimization of the AWS configuration. And certainly – those conversations were happening. But from my vantage point in the Cryptzone booth, there was another conversation, one that I touched on a bit in my previous recap blog. People at an AWS conference are finally talking about the hybrid cloud.

The concept of a hybrid cloud is not new – in fact, it has been around long before the term was even coined. But the fact that customers / potential customers are searching for ways to integrate their AWS or public cloud infrastructure with their on premises resources is exciting to me for a number of reasons:

1. Reality Check: For years, I have been preaching the benefits of a hybrid cloud solution. It never seemed realistic to me that an established company would dump 100% of all of their business workloads on a public cloud. Sure, your company could have been “born in the cloud” and optimized from the start to use only cloud-based resources. Some of those companies exist (and are THRIVING, BTW). But most companies that I have chatted with have adopted the cloud over time, meaning that they are in the process of migrating existing on premises workloads to a cloud infrastructure. I think that is great! Testing the waters in a measured and calculated fashion is often the best and most cost productive way of taking advantage of cloud resources.  Of course, those in the public cloud space would like you to move a little faster, but conducting thorough evaluation of cloud solutions while maintaining your on premises environment just makes sense.

2. Manageability: One of the many things that has been a barrier to public cloud adoption is the ability to manage users and resources in the public cloud with the same tools used on premises. Who wants to manage multiple IAM solutions? Also, users that attach to the cloud need to be able to do so without going through a dozen authentication steps. Simply put, IT administrators are hesitant to expose their users to any additional processes or environments that will exponentially increase the IT admin’s workload. Can you blame them? On this front, the great news is that the management solutions for hybrid cloud infrastructures are becoming more mature EVERY DAY! Because of this, those IT admins are not as skeptical about adding another layer of infrastructure to their environments, especially if they can all be managed without any significant changes to how the user would consume that infrastructure.

3. Scalability: Moving workloads to a public cloud environment has always been about the ability to scale up a workload with very little effort – it is as simple as setting up an AWS account, starting up an instance, and deploying the workload. Easy peasy. Developers have realized this for a while now – creating testing environments for QA, demo and proof of concept for years. It also created a stealth IT problem (something that we will address in a different blog at some point). Traditional IT (and their risk managers, executives, and line of business decision makers) have become more and more comfortable with moving workloads to the cloud, and the ability to expand the technology footprint into this space is very appealing, not only from a time-to-market rationale, but from the enormous cost savings. And the inherent barrier of hybrid cloud integration and management preventing rapid growth has pretty much disappeared.

As an IT professional, business leader or decision maker, once you cross that hump and gain comfort with having a hybrid cloud architecture for your company, you start to realize the benefits of having that kind of environment (again, the subject of a future blog). AppGate, from Cryptzone, is the perfect tool to bridge your on premises workloads with your AWS or other cloud provider environment(s).

I challenge you to explore the tools and capabilities that are constantly be invented and revised to help your company embrace the benefits of a hybrid cloud architecture!

AWS Summit San Francisco...

I posted this blog on the Cryptzone website after the AWS Summit.  You can find the original posting here.

Another great Amazon conference just wrapped up. The AWS Summit in San Francisco was earlier this week, and 7500 of my closest Amazon friends met at Moscone West to learn about the latest from AWS and their partners.

Amazon does not traditionally make any major announcements at these Summits (they save those for the re:Invent conference in December), but they did make a couple anyway: A SaaS licensing model (in addition to the other models that they have) and a code writing interface called CodeStar for writing optimized application on the AWS platform.  You can read about these and all of the other announcements here.

We had hundreds of people stop by the Cryptzone booth, interested in learning how AppGate can help secure their AWS and hybrid environment(s) and more about the Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP). And learning (for me at least) is always a two way street – I am constantly probing and prodding for the real world concerns that our customers and potential customers might be having. Here are the most common themes that I heard about while visiting with exhibitors and attendees in the expo hall:

ANOTHER Security Product for AWS: Yes, as you might imagine, there were MANY security vendors at the Summit (and at re:Invent), all claiming that you need to buy their product or your AWS environment will perish and be wiped from the Earth. Well, as much as I appreciate the zeal of our competitors in the security space, those attending AWS are a bit more sophisticated than that – they understand that security in AWS may not be perfect, but it is pretty decent for what their requirements are, and that any third party security solution needs to address specific shortcomings that they see in their environments. The sky is not falling, and they are looking for a partner that will make their enterprise more secure and easier to manage.

Addressing the Hybrid Cloud: It is almost blasphemy to discuss environments that are not AWS while at an AWS Summit. But the fact is that every person I talked to had workloads that were NOT located exclusively in the AWS cloud – every one of them had some kind of hybrid environment. Connecting and managing those separate environments is a challenge, and IT professionals are looking for ways to solve this challenge.  Thankfully, AppGate is the solution!

Compliance is Lurking: While seemingly never front and center at these events, addressing regulatory compliance considerations is always in the back of people’s minds.  So many of the security solutions on the market are purchased – at least in part – to address a compliance-related concern.  Security professionals often to not have the luxury of purchasing a tool only for compliance reasons. They are very aware however (and are showing  greater awareness) of how a particular tool can be used to address compliance regulations while solving their security needs.

As I said – great conference, and I am looking forward to the future AWS Summits / conferences / meetups!