Is open cloud  the next generation for hybrid IT architecture? IBM’s Open Cloud Architecture (OCA) Summit, which took place in Seattle on June 22, brought together a number of industry leaders to discuss “Learning to Love Open Hybrid Cloud” – and learning to avoid some of the risks involved in transitioning to open source.

A CrowdChat preview before the event offered an overview of current discussion points in the field, as well as advice for those just getting started with open hybrid cloud initiatives.

First steps

In line with the OCA Summit theme, the first question pondered was: “Where should companies start in their journey?”

The first step is clarity, said RackN, Inc. founder and CEO Rob Hirschfeld, and “understanding that ‘open’ means a lot of things. AWS has open APIs but not open code.”

Mark Thiele, chief strategy officer of Apcera, Inc., said that clarity of need and expectations is also important at the beginning of the open-hybrid-cloud journey. “We need to evaluate current need against expected need to avoid painting ourselves into a corner,” he said. “Reviewing clouds isn’t helpful as much as reviewing the framework/platform approach for using those clouds.”

Jason McGee, IBM fellow and VP and CTO of the IBM Cloud Platform, offered some practical advice: “Empower your developers and business leaders. They know your systems and needs better than anyone. Introduce them to tools like Bluemix [IBM’s hybrid cloud development platform] that enable them to experiment,” he said.

And the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s newly appoined Chief Operating Officer Chris Aniszczyk echoed a number of earlier comments about the importance of involvement in the open-source community. “Start by participating in relevant open-source communities … and engage in open-source foundations that are serving as the bedrock for hybrid cloud technologies,” he said. After all, this collaborative exchange and cooperation is at the core of Open’s promise.

Portability and governance

As the field grows, questions of governance and the implementation of new technology like containers grows. The most popular question asked during the CrowdChat was: “The portability that containers allow is helping to drive hybrid cloud adoption. But could more open governance increase the benefit? Why/how?” Responses were somewhat divided on this big-picture issue.

Jason McGee suggested that governance streamlines problem-solving. “We sometimes solve the same problem in many different ways,” he said. “If we could agree to solve orchestration, as an example, in one way, we could move on as an industry to the next issue.”

Stormy Peters, VP of Developer Relations at the Cloud Foundry Foundation, said that having more options makes innovation easier for developers, but added that solutions for customers were top priority. “We need to solve, in many ways to innovate, but customers need portability and interoperability to move quickly and solve big problems,” she said.

Others, like cloud consultant Antonio Carlos Pina, said that it really depends on the user, so a case-by-case approach would be helpful. “A startup will required speed and almost no process, while the enterprise will require process, governance and …. tons of reports,” he said.

Several CrowdChatters agreed that containers alone are not enough to solve major problems. Jason McGee commented that companies “need the full lifecycle of tools around containers to make it real.” And Mark Thiele said that it takes more than moving a workload to achieve true portability across the cloud.

“Right now deploying containers in any real way is a snowflake activity. … Security, trust, audit, [are] all key to appropriate governance,” Thiele said. He concluded: “It’s also about time to value. We shouldn’t force one thing or the other on the community, but rather provide tools that give them real time to value w/ flexibility.”

Key open technologies

The OCA Summit team turned the conversation toward new technologies. “Moving forward, which open technologies will have the most significant impact on hybrid cloud adoption?”

Contributors highlighted a number of advances. Sriram Subramanian, founder and CEO of CloudDon, said that adoption would come from a “combination of many” – “OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, [and] open container initiatives.”

Jason McGee said that he believes flexibility will be a defining characteristic of successful new tech. “The technologies that support flexibility and interoperability will surface as leaders and will see the most adoption. Containers is certainly going to be one of them,” he said.

The community behind new technology also matters, Stormy Peters theorized. “Cloud Foundry will have significant impact on hybrid-cloud, multi-cloud adoption, because it has a strong, diverse, cross-industry community creating solutions to solve the world’s hardest problems,” she said.

Duncan Johnston-Watt, founder and CEO of Cloudsoft Corp., agreed. “The open technologies that will have the most impact are those that are open to adjusting their own footprint and aligning themselves with similar initiatives,” he said. “Real-world example: @cloudfoundry, @cloudnativefdn dialog IMO.”

But some contributors still saw barriers to increased adoption. Rob Hirschfeld said the technology is “still maturing” and that “open Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is required for hybrid to advance.” He added that he thinks “business needs, infrastructure choice and competition drive hybrid more than the tech.”

Open cloud: The next generation of hybrid?

One of the most contentious discussions centered on the role of open tech in the future of cloud, a helpful question for those considering making the switch. “Recently, IBM Cloud SVP Robert LeBlanc called open technology ‘the foundation of the next generation of cloud.’ What evidence are you seeing to support this (or not)?”

Most agreed that it’s just too soon to call the cloud tech game. Mark Thiele said that “it looks good for open source, and I’m certainly a supporter. But we’re still in the second inning of the cloud game. There will be risks and failures that keep the need for proprietary and open.” And those proprietary advances, by definition, won’t be seen by the community at large until later in the game, as Sriram Subramanian pointed out. Open technology seems to be winning at the moment, but only “if you ignore AWS/Azure or if you ignore public cloud,” he said. But “while open tech is continuing cloud innovations, one cannot ignore the innovations major players are making behind walls.”

On the other hand, Ruben Orduz, technical advocate at Blue Box, an IBM Company, reminded the CrowdChat participants: “The vast majority of tools and tooling powering the cloud today are open source.” And Antonio Carlos Pina added, “Crowd development is surpassing proprietary models in new features, releases, etc. It’s the power of many. And it’s exponential, impossible to curb.”

Mark Thiele summed up the overriding sentiment by pointing back to the ultimate goals of cloud technology. “There is no guarantee that what we’re seeing will be the future,” he said. “What’s more important is that we continue toward the notion of providing customers [with] choice that can drive value.”

Is there such a thing as too much cloud?

If the ultimate goal is to drive value, then it’s vital that companies ensure hybrid cloud tech is appropriate to each use-case it’s applied to. When is it not appropriate? Opinions varied.

Mark Thiele said he doesn’t think there is necessarily an “inappropriate” use of hybrid cloud. “It’s all about business case and appropriate solution selection,” he said. “Need to bust assumptions about what is real and what isn’t.” An “inappropriate” use would be “more associated with inadequate [business] case or design.”

Ruben Orduz emphasized the need to have “requirements drive the solution” and not put the cart before the horse. “Trying to prescribe a cloud architecture without looking at requirements is a haphazard” and could theoretically lead to inappropriate applications, he said.

Some newer applications, like cloud-native apps that use new data sources might not need to involve hybrid tech at all, said Jason McGee. But even when the requirements and business cases are in place, Antonio Carlos Pina said that “there’s the customer personal taste” to consider. “After all customer is king,” he said.

Photo by George Thomas

Read the full chat below: