“It ain’t what you do; it’s the way that you do it … that’s what gets results” is the ear-wormy lyric from 80’s Brit pop bands Fun Boy Three and Bananarama. Turns out the advice is sound for cloud computing adoption, where the gung-ho cry of “cloud first!” has turned into the more cautious “cloud smart” as companies realize that a wholesale lift-and-shift approach is both costly and potentially unsecured.

“As a company, we see a tremendous opportunity to help our customers figure out the right way to move to cloud,’ said David Cramer (pictured), president of digital service operations at BMC Software Inc. “Just a few years back, you heard people talking about ‘cloud first,’ ‘lift and shift,’ ‘I’m moving everything to the cloud.’ I think people have stepped back from that and said, ‘Well, wait a minute, let’s think about what cloud infrastructure, cloud services can provide us, and then let’s optimize what we put in the cloud.’”

Cramer spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd; during AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. They discussed changing strategies in cloud adoption. (* Disclosure below.)

Migration, cost, security and governance

“One of the challenges in information technology has long been: ‘What do I have, and how is it configured?’” Cramer stated.

BMC’s experience in the data center gives the company an advantage to help customers identify both the high-value assets that will benefit from being migrated to the cloud and the assets that are best to keep on-premises, according to Cramer. Information on performance and capacity optimization, along with application discovery and dependency mapping, are analyzed to establish the most cost-efficient and secure configuration for migration.

While Amazon is clear that under its model the customer holds shared responsibility for security, in Cramer’s experience many customers don’t realize they have to play their part.

“Like the ostrich in the sand … they expect Amazon or someone else to take care of all these problems,” Cramer stated. BMC focuses on security and configuration of the cloud infrastructure and platform layers, securing the software and services that would otherwise be vulnerable to attack.

Yet another challenge is the changing face of the work environment. Chief information officers realize they have to relinquish control, but DevOps teams tend to focus on innovation to the exclusion of everything else, Cramer pointed out.

“DevOps and the desire to release more software to get new products, new features, innovation into the market means that you have to let your teams be autonomous,” he said. “You can’t have a command and control structure where every decision comes from the top, but that autonomy creates an opportunity for waste, creates an opportunity for mistakes, misconfigurations, security issues.”

While cost-reduction is key throughout the optimization process, cloud smart CIOs implement guardrails to curb misplaced employee enthusiasm and overspending, according to Cramer.

“If you give a developer access to Amazon and the suite of services they offer, it’s like a kid in the candy store. Of course they want gold-plated everything … the best environment with the best database, the most advanced services, and all that ends up costing a whole lot of money,” he said.

“Run and reinvent” is BMC’s concept that links traditional operation methods with transformation into the digital age. “You’ve got to continue to run your existing business,” Cramer stated, “but you’ve also got to reinvent, and you’ve got to compete.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: BMC Software Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither BMC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE