It’s different in the cloud

The cloud isn’t really a question of ‘to go for it or not to go for it’! It’s a more a matter of when. Standard hosting doesn’t really pay in the long term because it’s easier to manage applications in the cloud. Well-configured services offer a greater chance that the cloud will be a more economic solution. Something else that comes into play here is scalability and flexibility, in other words, making use of the resources we actually need. Over time, the cloud also requires a smaller maintenance team.

It isn’t difficult to programme in the cloud. It’s just different. If we want to do something well, then we have to adapt to certain services. First, we have to learn how to choose the right services and, second, how to connect them. We don’t write solutions off the top of our heads. There are ready-to-use blocks we have to choose from. In our case, what might be a problem is the fact that, given how IT surges ahead, our many years of experience could almost be a drawback. We’ve grown accustomed to a number of concepts primarily based on custom development and there’s a tendency to try and compare the new to what we were doing before. Meanwhile, the services-based concept is hugely different. A great many other things are appearing and they have to be taken on board and digested, which is what reveals that it really is better.

At the moment, our adoption of the cloud is fairly low scale because we were in a different situation from other companies on the market. We’ve always had our own DC, so we didn’t go for using virtual machines in the cloud, which is a natural transition between a DC and service-based solutions in a public cloud. Other companies didn’t have that comfort. The situation often forced them to buy that kind of machine from cloud suppliers, where the simplest form was always a console and network settings. In addition, the cloud still isn’t the most popular solution among clients. As they see it, it’s more expensive and, apart from that, the changeability of the cost is often a hinderance. They’re used to one way of working and settling up, as well. In the long term, we’re going to have to convince clients that the cloud is better for them and we need to be competent to do that. There are more and more applications and it’s a lot easier to keep them in the cloud and communicate with each other there. And there’s another thing. The cloud is a solution to the lack of personnel on the market. When we use cloud solutions, we need a smaller team than for standard options.

There’s nothing better than practical experience gained ‘under fire’, so to say, but that’s not always an option. To begin with, it’s enough to go through what’s available on the training pages of the operators’ websites, their e-books and case studies. Above all, study all the documentation on the producer’s website. Paid training courses won’t tell us all that much more, so it’s well worth making the most of what’s already within reach.

Piotr Skunka was talking to Marta Piotrowska