In the beginning, Cloud solutions were built using a Best-of-Breed approach: mix, match and integrate the best hardware, software and services from the best available vendors.
The advantage of this approach today is primarily flexibility. You control the environment, so you can control the functionality and features. Controlling the cost and time to deployment, however, is another matter. Building your own Cloud architecture typically costs more—and takes more time—than using a pre-integrated solution or a converged infrastructure.
Still, there are cases where a best-of-breed Cloud architecture makes the most sense:
- Heavily regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and energy may be required to build a Cloud architecture that has limited connectivity to other systems (think of these as a private, private cloud);
- Another aspect of regulation is the strict documentation of new architectures, which can make it more practical to use an existing architectural approach (even a best-of-breed approach) rather than have to document and create a new architecture—even one that uses an off-the-shelf solution or standardized elements;
- A best-of-breed approach may also be necessary to get the right combination of features and functionality, especially where enterprises want to bring new or disruptive technology into the mix that isn’t supported by an existing Cloud architecture or solution.
Enterprises may also decide to take a best-of-breed approach if they already have many of the technologies they need in place to build a Cloud architecture. If an enterprise already has seventy or eighty percent of the hardware and software they need for their Cloud solution, building a best-of-breed solution with what they already have could be a short-term win.
In the longer term, however, enterprises need to guard against what I call the “accidental” architecture—that is, an architecture that grows by accretion but eventually requires a significant rethink to support integration with other private and public Cloud solutions.
An accidental architecture can quickly result in higher costs down the road that eat up any of your initial ROI or savings. For that reason, we always tell our customers to envision their Cloud architecture three to five years in the future. If enterprises anticipate having a hybrid Cloud environment tomorrow that combines private and public Cloud solutions, they need to be thinking about integration and scalability today.
I’ll be covering the concept of pre-integrated/validated Cloud environments in my next blog on the Reference Architecture approach to building a Cloud solution. ▪