Supercloud is quickly becoming a reality for enterprises and their business-critical applications. 

Organizations must be able to assemble infrastructure services from multiple cloud providers to deliver optimal results for their business.

“You need consistent architecture, obviously not just for one cloud, but for any cloud,” said Steve Mullaney (pictured), president and chief executive officer of Aviatrix Systems Inc. “Now it’s no longer good enough to just use the native constructs because of a lack of visibility, the lack of controls, the lack of troubleshooting capabilities, all these things. I now need an enterprise-grade network.”

Mullaney spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante at AWS re:Invent, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how the maturation of supercloud is driving the need for new tooling. (* Disclosure below.)

Automation must cover entire life cycle

Enterprises demand agility. In the cloud world, that means the flexibility to pick infrastructure-as-a-service solutions from multiple cloud service providers. Some CSPs may excel in one area but not be best-of-breed in another. Some enterprises may need a hybrid cloud solution that combines a cloud application with an on-premise solution, according to Mullaney.

“In order to get that agility, you have to have that consistency,” he said. “You have to have automation; you have to get these people out of the way. You have to use software.” 

The automation has to cover the entire life cycle — from application development with tools like Jenkins, to CI/CD pipeline, to building infrastructure in real time with tools like Terraform, and finally the automated decommissioning of cloud resources when they are no longer needed, Mullaney explained. A common architecture that works across all cloud service providers is the key to enabling abstraction and driving productivity for infrastructure teams.

“Every enterprise I talk to says multicloud is inevitable,” Mullaney said. “Whether they’re in it now, they all know they’re gonna go because it’s the business units that demand it.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent:

(* Disclosure: Aviatrix Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Aviatrix Systems Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE