Fitz ䷀

This article [1] is a good rebuttal for anyone talking about "cloud lock-in", it shows how a company gained more freedom by moving to the Cloud.

Moving to any of the major cloud vendors (#aws #azure #gcp) should provide you with more product choice (for example relational database offerings). But, more importantly, moving to the cloud helps transform all the knowledge about how your systems run/work out of docs, opaque config, and peoples head's and expresses it as code . When " everything is code " its a lot easier to experiment, and will make it easier to move from one vendor to another. When everything is code, then you can adopt an " evolutionary architecture ". When you build using an evolutionary architecture, lock-in should be something you never worry about - as evolving your product should be normal activity, you should not fear ripping out the central database, messaging system etc.

When I worked at #aws on AWS Well-Architected we defined evolutionary architecture [2] as:

Allow for evolutionary architectures: In a traditional environment, architectural decisions are often implemented as static, one-time events, with a few major versions of a system during its lifetime. As a business and its context continue to change, these initial decisions might hinder the system's ability to deliver changing business requirements. In the cloud, the capability to automate and test on demand lowers the risk of impact from design changes. This allows systems to evolve over time so that businesses can take advantage of innovations as a standard practice. So build your product so that it can be deployed automatically, with automated tests. And run performance, security, reliability tests as part of CI/CD. Don't try and build your product it works on any cloud, build for the cloud you have chosen - that way you can take advantage of what they offer you. I know lots of people will tell you otherwise , but all they are doing is make you pay for something you may never need (and charge you consulting/licence fees). What do I mean? if you build so you can run on any cloud 1) you build for the lowest common denominator (so you move slowly), 2) you are paying for moving to another cloud, which is something you may never - hence you are paying for a move you may never make.

Instead build for you current cloud, but build it in a way that you never fear changing anything in it - this is something you gain from good architectural and code practices (like CI/CD). Then, if you ever want to move to another cloud, pay the cost of moving at that point, it will be lower because you have adopted an evolutionary architecture, and it will only be paid when you actually need to make the move - all without giving up the speed you gain from using the unique abilities of your current vendor.

Choose evolutionary architectures, not lock-in FUD.

[1] The CTO of a 120-year-old company explains how yanking out most of its Oracle technology after a surprise $1 million bill is helping it move faster with Amazon's cloud (ORCL), https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/thomas-aws-oracle-amazon-cloud-2020-1-1028931191

[2] AWS Well-Architected, General Design Principles, https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wat.design_principles.wa-dp.en.html

Fitz ䷀

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