What’s driving the cloud today?

If you are an IT provider and aren’t already thinking about the cloud and building hyperscaler partnerships, you’re not alone, yet these partners run the risk of falling behind the curve.  While nearly all businesses still rely on on-premises servers, 75%  of those customers are actively migrating applications and web-facing computing to the cloud.  It might seem complacent – even business-savvy – to stick with an existing motion and service customers the way they’ve been serviced in the past, but the reality is that the cloud is an evolution.

Why the cloud is the next step.

The forces driving this evolution come from many directions. First, on-premise servers have a defined lifespan of sub-5 years; while in the past there were at least a dozen server manufacturers, today there are only four.  Servers continue to increase in price, as does cloud computing, but the former has been running 2%/month, while the latter is <4%/year.  Simply put, organizations have to look at the cloud for server replacements for cost alone. 

Second, the internet is the cloud: thanks to COVID-19, most of the business world had to pivot quickly to remote access over the internet, and users became very comfortable with the cloud.  In fact, remote access continues to be a dominant trend:  37% of all jobs can be done remotely, and users are resisting returning to full-time, in-office positions. Nearly half of users polled said they would leave employers if remote work weren’t an option.

Finally, companies are finding that cloud computing is both less expensive and more productive than traditional computing.  This is a perfect storm for cloud computing. It’s cost-effective, users are comfortable, and it’s efficient.  Nobody believes on-premises – or even traditional computing – will go away, but it will be a legacy necessity versus a business strategy.

How did we get here?

Cloud itself is in somewhat of an arms race. Traditional computing was built upon decades of experience and necessity. To displace traditional computing, the cloud needed to offer services that were at least at parity, if not better. The hyperscalers went one step further: by designing cloud computing platforms, they could turn what used to be bespoke applications into services.  It’s hard to think of a better example than artificial intelligence (AI). While AI goes back to almost the dawn of modern computers, languages like LISP (an early “artificial intelligence” programming platform) failed in the 1980’s.  It wasn’t until the 21^st century that you could license products like Allegro ML (still available as ClearML today), but today, you can use some cloud AI for free. It’s difficult to go back from “free.”

Of course, nothing is completely free, but cloud computing is as much about the journey as the tools. Cloud services are today’s equivalent of what used to be apps (or better, applets or licensed sub-routines) that developers would leverage to build their apps. Cloud services are both seductive and incestuous. It might be free to use a Google AI app, but there are limits as to your dataset size. No issue, just increase that dataset size for pennies per hour. And adding encryption? No problem, that’s SAIF (Secure Artificial Intelligence Framework and Google Security Center) and you can add it for a few more pennies per hour. And while you can pay only for what you use,  you’ll need to be mindful to suspend servers, services, etc., when you’re not using them (which gets complicated).

This cost does quickly add up—which is a different topic—but it also effectively prevents companies from moving away from a cloud-centric application stack. It would be nearly impossible to find and license all the discrete services they can license from their hyperscaler for pennies per hour. So once you go cloud, there’s really no going back.

And why would developers want to go back? Solutions like AWS’ Code Whisperer eliminate one of the most tedious and onerous jobs of coding – documenting your code. Code Whisperer (using AI, of course) does this automatically as you code (how cool is that?)

The cloud and the ecosystem.

So, assuming the cloud is here to stay, growing, entrenched – how does that impact the decades-old ecosystem around distributors, partners, and customers? Yes, it fundamentally changes how many core IT solutions are deployed and licensed: servers become virtual, applications become services, it’s pay-by-the-hour, a totally new paradigm. Or not. Customers want – many, in fact, mandate – predictable costs, and most like the notion of fixed multi-year prices. Customers want – often demand – partners who can deploy and manage cloud solutions for them. Customers want – often insist upon – that in-place contracts and purchasing arrangements with partners and even distributors be honored regardless of what they’re procuring.

In short, the game remains the same, just with different chess pieces. But evolution also creates opportunities. In the cloud, they are manifold. There are entire companies stood up solely to evaluate and maximize customers’ returns on cloud investments (it’s easy to set up a Virtual Private Server, but much more difficult to track down ones that aren’t necessary or performing).  There are partners who focus on nothing but cloud deployments: the cloud is both flexible and complex. At last count, there were over 200 discrete Azure services – choosing which, what, or how much … the choices can be daunting. You can learn it yourself or find a partner who knows that hyperscaler’s offerings.

Finally, there is security. There’s a correlation between speed and security: the faster the speed, the less secure. Not only are there known risks, but there are also inherently unknown risks.  As terrifying as GenAI might seem, it is, on the one hand, just a tool that has broad topical knowledge and can speed innovation. Threats become more innovative, and security becomes more adept at recognizing them. It might seem like an innovation precipice, but future generations will look at GenAI like we look at encyclopedias vs Wikipedia.

What security does do, however, is put itself at the forefront of today’s cloud evolution. The cloud moves fast, innovates quickly, and creates huge security gaps. Companies like Barracuda and our partners exist to fill those gaps. Even as hyperscalers build security into their cloud platforms, the way customers use their clouds will continue to create security issues.

Partners are key.

Partners looking at the cloud should look instead at the security lapses the cloud creates. One of Barracuda’s hottest solutions today is XDR – very simply, a managed SOC or Security Operations Center.  Customers want to buy fully managed security solutions, and they essentially want partners to manage them.  The need for skilled security professionals far outstrips the supply, but partners with robust security offerings can handily fill that gap. Customers also have limited security budgets, even in light of the fact that numerous organizations haven’t survived a successful attack. Leveraging partners to provide cloud security is far more cost-conscious than trying to do everything yourself, and organizations across the spectrum – including Fortune 500’s – leverage an array of partners to provide security in depth.

Our goal is simple: protect our customers for life, and our go-to-market is 100% focused on partners. Email, Applications, Networks, Data, and fully managed SOCs – these are in Barracuda’s DNA. Learn more about our comprehensive cybersecurity platform and our award-winning partner program at www.barracuda.com.