One of the challenges with infrastructure solutions is you have to deal with a variety of different personas who each have a critical role in the solution but can easily be overlooked. Each of these constituents have different needs and concerns that need to be addressed. In no particular order: first, you have the executive; second you have the administrative user (IT Staff), and lastly we have the end consumer (developers). Let’s take a look at what each of these personas is facing today and what they need from a future solution.
Executives are stuck in a tough spot. They have to balance innovation with cost, while cloud providers have long claimed to be the panacea for this group, the reality is they are falling very short. CIOs have concerns with cloud computing around security, data privacy, flexibility, and roadmap clarity all while seeing their cloud spend skyrocket year over year. As they look to move workloads back on-premise they are faced with solutions that are out-dated, overpriced, and a skill gap created by overdependence on cloud solutions. The driving factor for this group is cost, for years they have been paying annual cloud spend but have no assets that can be used for on-going operations. Where once hardware could be reapporiated once paid for they now simply have a new bill from their Cloud Provider and are on a never ending treadmill of on-going costs. Executives can see that the cost benefits for stable applications is clearly on the on-premise side but they can’t fill the skill gaps needed for the IT administrators to stand-up and maintain these new infrastructures.
IT administrators have long been the unsung heroes that lurk in the data center and make due with what they have to keep the world running. Now there is a skill gap as businesses return from the pendulum swing from being all in on the cloud to realizing the benefit of a hybrid approach. The skill gap is actually a lack of solution gap. With modern technology there is no reason to expect (or want) every IT Administrator to be an expert in everything from distributed storage to event passing systems, and databases of every type. Rather they should be able to rely on their platform to automatically identify their hardware, recommend middleware, provide battle tested configurations, deploy that configured middleware in seconds, and maintain the infrastructure in perpetuity. Insights should be surfaced to this group, highlighting decision points, then just taking action. It is time for a new focus on great products for our IT Administrators rather than forcing them to make due with frankenstein products formed through decades of acquisition and poor strategy focused on locking customers in.
Why did we let our developers get jerked around for over a decade? Shift left …. no wait Shift right … how about we just let them code. That is what they love and what they want to do. As we move workloads back from the cloud we need to enable our developers to just describe what they are building then present them an instance that allows them to build exactly that. When they are done building their glorious applications, environment promotions should be simple, quick, and secure. With modern technologies this is all possible, but not if you are bolting these new technologies onto your outdated solution in an attempt to stay relevant.
At Stealth Automation Startup this is what we are building towards. It may seem aspirational but you can have it all. A lower cost alternative to your current cloud spend. True automation for your IT staff that drops your rollout time from months to minutes. Always in compliance with complete insight across the entire infrastructure. And lastly, on demand instances based on application needs. The team at Stealth Automation Startup is the same team that brought the world SaltStack. This is a team that understands systems automation better than anyone in the industry. But don’t jump to conclusions! This is not a new version of Salt, this is a new way of approaching infrastructure, one that is long overdue. This is a new paradigm that will ease your systems management by orders of magnitude.
Be honest, do you really love your current infrastructure management solution? Are you ready for something awesome? For the first time, our team has created a system that can truly do it all, deliver a system that is automated, easy, secure, and significantly cheaper.