Multi-cloud 2.0

In 2020, just at the start of the pandemic, I started writing my book about multi-cloud architecture and governance. The reason: I couldn’t find books that explained the differences between the big public clouds Azure, AWS and Google Cloud and how I as an architect could benefit from services in these different clouds. 

I simply wanted to use the best services, regardless of which cloud provider offered these services. As always, I started reasoning from the business perspectives: what is the best solution for my business, what brings the most value? Then I came to the technical issues, such as: what if I wanted a part of my environment – or my data – to stay on premises for compliancy reasons, but still be able to make use of scalable cloud services? How would I do that? That’s how the idea for the book was born. 

The first edition sold pretty well. But as I expected already two years ago: public clouds develop at warp speed. A lot has changed since I wrote the first chapters in March 2020. Hence, it’s time to start thinking about the second edition. 

In the first edition I used the four pillars of the cloud services model: BaseOps (basic, foundational operations of the landing zones), FinOps (cloud financial management), DevOps and SecOps (security operations in cloud). The idea is to ‘extend’ these pillars in the second edition. But this time I want to approach this from the use case-angle. 

“Learn how to choose the most apt cloud service and how a business can manage operations, costs, and security perspectives, and overcome the complexities associated with multi-cloud by learning via use cases.” 

Next, I think it’s fair to also look beyond the “big ones”. After all, multi-cloud is not solely about the hyperscalers, but involves a lot more. As I presented the other day: almost every enterprise is multi-cloud these days. They use Office365, manage HR topics in Workday, supply chain in SAP and customer relations in Salesforce. It doesn’t get more multi-cloud than that. And there’s already one of the use cases: SaaS. The world is moving to SaaS, a completely different business model, focusing on customer experience. 

And what about the challenges in terms of privacy and compliancy when it comes to data? Data-gravity is a topic. As is interoperability. What do clouds such as Oracle and the new European-founded Gaia-X bring to the table? What value do they bring to the enterprise? What would be the best solution for realizing and managing digital twins? AI? What could a business do with quantum propositions in cloud?

So many questions and topics – but a limited amount of pages, unfortunately. Hence: I need help. The publisher, Packt, has issued a short survey. What would you like to see in the new edition when we discuss the challenges of multi-cloud? Your insights will definitely help. 

What’s in it for you?

1. You get early access to all chapters/content.

2. We will list you as a technical reviewer of the book and include your bio.

3. You get a free e-copy of the book once its published.

4. Most importantly, you get to co-produce the book by sharing your feedback and knowledge with us while the book is in development. 

Much appreciated!