HashiCorp's multi-cloud vision
We're entering cloud phase 2 says VP EMEA Duncan Greenwood
It used to be that you could look at the US to predict what was going to happen - technology wise - in Europe. There were exceptions to that rule, of course, one of them being mobile, whose rapid rise in EMEA took the US by surprise. And advances in AI are as likely to come from Asia as they are the Americas, but by and large the US market was ahead of EMEA, and still is - just about - according to Duncan Greenwood, VP EMEA at HashiCorp.
"I'd say on the market side of things the US is around two years ahead of Germany, France and the UK and maybe three or four ahead of Eastern and Southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa," he said.
The reason for this is largely cultural, he went on. In the US there is a widespread belief that the states are all very different from each other, but while there are certainly disparities, the differences are much greater across EMEA, with its wide range of spoken languages, customs and traditions. Even in the biggest economies - UK, Germany and France - attitudes and priorities vary hugely, as Brexit and divergent responses to Covid bear out.
The internet, mobile and latterly cloud have all been great levellers, of course, bringing at least the wealthier parts of the world closer to IT parity, and allowing countries with poor infrastructure to leapfrog the requirement for cabled connections in many cases. In tech management terms, they have removed silos, opened channels of communication and allowed cross-national cooperation in a way that was impossible before. But this process has its limits.
The cultural element
"Eighty per cent of what you do with cloud can be done anywhere in the world," said Greenwood, who has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. "But the other 20 per cent is the cultural element."
This 20 per cent is very important to understand. To ignore it means an international business failing to reach its full potential at best, and causing offence and rejection at worst.
"It's not just the regulations, but it's understanding how those customers like to make their decisions. There are significant differences across different geographies."
Cultural differences should not be seen as another silo to be broken down, therefore, but rather respect for choice should be built in. According to HashiCorp's vision of the future, this means multi-cloud.
Cloud is currently in its first phase, the company's strategists believe, with the low-hanging fruit of easily refactored applications and development operations still being shifted cloudwards. But within five or ten years, most countries and sectors will be ready for the second phase, which it contends will be cloud-agnostic.
'The cloud' is multi-cloud
"We see the cloud as being multi-cloud, and even the hyper scalars are acknowledging that, for the foreseeable future, particularly enterprise organisations will operate a multi-cloud environment," said Greenwood, confirming that by ‘multi-cloud' he meant both hybrid cloud, and integrated combination of private and public cloud, and also the use of more than one public cloud.
The latter, he said, will be substantially driven by the public sector, which after initial caution is now putting more and more services into the cloud but cannot afford to chuck all of its eggs into one basket. This is particularly the case in Europe.
"The UK is a great example, and we're also seeing [rapid cloud uptake] in countries like Germany and then the Nordics where they are incredibly progressive about how they operate in a hybrid model."
But won't the hyperscalers be looking to hold onto their advantage by making more services proprietary, or at least hard to replicate?
Greenwood says their strategies have changed. Phase 1 was about proving the concepts and getting businesses to trust their platform, whereas phase 2, which we are entering now, is about consumption.
"They know they can't survive on proprietary. Proprietary always has some form of limitation, but they've got to engage with certain ISPs and strategic advisors, integrators and service companies, that can then enable that consumption to take place quicker, and that means more open, more automation."
Navigating seamlessly between these more open clouds requires what HashiCorp calls a cloud operating model, built from service meshes and other cloud native technologies. For companies developing software, it will mean a shift to what Greenwood calls DevOps 2.0 where network and security teams play a larger role in the development lifecycle, and where companies can choose services more freely, from whichever cloud platform they may be on.
"We're focused on phase two, which is replatform, rebuild, refactor, to move on from models that you would have used in the past to modern architecture and supporting challenges that we see coming."
Deskflix: The future of hybrid and multi-cloud takes place on 22 February. Register today