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The cloud is not a quick fix for enterprises looking to get rid of systems admins
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Orbital Sidekick's Principal Software Engineer, a former AWS staffer, highlighted some common pitfalls cloud newcomers face
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The takeway? Stick to what you know
Plenty of companies are in a rush to get to the cloud. But overeager and underprepared enterprises may find themselves hung up on one of the cloud’s many “sharp edges,” Orbital Sidekick’s Principal Software Engineer Andrew Guenther warned.
“There’s a lot of groups who kind of hear ‘Oh this is what everybody else is using so it’s obviously a good tool and we should use it too’ and people just kind of tendency to dive in in that way,” he told Silverlinings. “I have seen that — the shiny object chasing — kill startups.”
He pointed to the “hype train” around Kubernetes as one example of a trend that turned sour for those who weren’t careful. Some companies, he said, ran out of money trying to figure out how to run Kubernetes rather than focusing on running their core businesses.
Guenther knows a thing or two about both the cloud and startups. Founded in 2016, Orbital Sidekick (OSK) is startup that provides hyperspectral imaging for clients via sensors placed on satellites. Data generated by the sensors is stored and processed in the cloud, and it is used by companies and governments to spot things like gas leaks or chemical weapon production.
Before joining OSK, Guenther spent nearly seven years working at Amazon Web Services (AWS), first as a senior software engineer and later as a Technical Lead for AWS WorkLink.
Sharp edges
OSK solely uses AWS for its compute and storage. Guenther said when the company chose its cloud provider, it quickly ruled out Oracle due to a lack of widespread adoption and Google Cloud due to a perceived lack of customer support. When it came down to AWS versus Azure, it went with AWS mostly because that where its in-house talent had experience.
For him, Guenther said AWS’ integration with infrastructure-as-code tooling — which allows the company to model out its resources as code, deploy those and maintain version control — is appealing. But he acknowledged that while working on AWS “feels easy” to him because he’s been doing it for so long, “AWS and the cloud in general has plenty of sharp edges for newcomers.”
“There’s a lot of levers and knobs that you can pull and twist. That works for them and against them,” he said. “It can be a huge hurdle for newcomers.”
Beyond complexity, Guenther pointed to security and ongoing cloud maintenance as two other areas cloud newcomers often fail to account for. On the security front, they assume that simply being in the cloud makes them safe. But that’s not always the case. Guenther noted that AWS, for example, operates using a shared responsibility model for security, meaning clients are responsible for securing their own applications while AWS takes care of the infrastructure. And on the maintenance front, he said companies can be surprised by just how much muscle is required.
“The fairy tale of you’re going to move to the cloud and you don’t need sys-admins anymore and the cloud solves all these problems for you – to some degree that’s true but it’s not this magical thing that you just deploy your application up to and you never have to worry about it,” Guenther said, noting oftentimes dedicated cloud engineers on staff are required. “A lot of companies don’t start thinking about that until it’s too late.”
His advice? Stick to what you know. Guenther said it’s “very rare” for a company’s core business to require AWS or another specific cloud and noted enterprises can always move fastest when they play to their strengths.
Want to hear more from Andrew Guenther? He will be speaking at Silverlinings’ Cloud Executive Summit which is being held in Sonoma next week. Register here using code DIANA50 for half off your conference pass and catch him in person!