Many of us in technology regularly experiment with new tools and technology. We often do this to adopt new skills when we need to solve a problem or we have inherited some code that needs enhancement. The cloud is in many ways no different than things we’ve done before, but the way we do them, or maybe the way the cloud handles some things, means that we need to change how we view a task or perform our jobs.
Migrating to the cloud is something that many of us have had to tackle at some point. I’ve seen a good amount of lift-and-shift, including many companies who just mandated moves to the cloud without much planning. As mentioned in this article, that was cloud migration 1.0. Really, I think this was something that’s been going on for years, and continues to occur today. Lots of management are seduced by the promises of the cloud to make their organization’s IT systems better, so they move everything without thinking.
Then many run into cloud migration 2.0, or maybe that’s coming. I see plenty of customers with things in the cloud they complain about much in the same way they did on-premises. Nothing has changed with regards to how their systems work, and they are likely spending more money on the same services they had on-premises. With the same people. They didn’t plan well, didn’t provision well, and they haven’t changed anything but their costs.
Cloud migration 3.0 is what many tech professionals would like to see. Evaluate apps, decide which benefit from the cloud, and leave the rest alone. Leave them on-premises in a familiar environment. That’s hybrid, but that’s fine.
What many tech professionals worry about are their jobs, so they don’t often consider where the cloud can provide benefits from some apps. The flexibility and scalability are undeniable. You just need to ensure that you understand where the cloud fits, where cloud-native can benefit your org, and then make sensible recommendations.
No matter how your organization approaches the cloud, likely you’ll have engineers from the provider or third-party consultants involved. Do what I do with people I’ve hired: ask a lot of questions. You’ll learn something, flex your knowledge, and even if you never work in the cloud yourself, you’ll be better prepared to make recommendations and evaluate future choices.
Steve Jones
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Voice of the DBA 
“Cloud migration 3.0 is what many tech professionals would like to see”
This is exactly what I’ve been arguing for over a decade. I didn’t use the term Cloud Migration X.0 but I did point out how the “move it all to the cloud” approach was foolish. The Cloud like everything in technology is but a tool. Unlike some tools the cloud does more than 1 thing but it’s still a tool that can’t do everything for everyone and yet that’s how the Cloud Promoters push it as being the be-all-end-all solution to your technical woes. Not only have I been arguing for a Cloud Migration 3.0 like approach but often professionals including within my own industry, people like you but not you, have been critical of my take. Granted as time has passed and the truth about the cloud has been revealed to more people I don’t hear the criticisms of my take, that it’s a tool good for select things, that I did 10 years ago but I still get push back just less of it. When you toss into this a lack of Cloud migration planning it’s a guaranteed non-success.
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It’s no different than a lot of “new” tech I see. Let’s adopt it without a plan because everyone else seems to be doing it.
Quite a few people have been asking for this Cloud 3.0 approach, but far too many tech people just push back against everything, and mgmt wants something, so we end up waiting until a CTO says just lift and shift without thought.
I think there are plenty of tech people that have wanted to push to the cloud because it’s fun and exciting. New tech to play with, like containers, easy spin up / down, plus programmatic fun with spin up/down.
It’s also what I see with things like NoSQL. Lots of tech people think it’s great because they read about it on HackerNews and they are annoyed by DBAs, so they think it magically makes dev work easier.
Everything should be a cloud 3.0 approach. Evaluate it dispassionately, argue for what’s good, accept or mitigate what’s not, and move appropriately.
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