Started talking yesterday about the apparent issues with cloud based solutions, components, etc.
Of course the whole story is really one of choosing the right tools for specific tasks… can lead to lock-in on those tools. And, with the use of more specific tools and technologies and then bringing them together to build an overall solution environment, there are some real issues managing through that systems design cycle.
That’s a big mouthful.
Basically – we’re collectively more open to using specific, pin-point tools within an overall solution. The issue is that that means we have more pieces and parts to our environments. In addition, those pieces and parts may be hard to swap out or replace. That may be the case if you want to change vendor-providers or even developers that you may have on-staff.
We’ve seen this with our own application development here at sswug.org. We have been through our fair share of applications developers, of course. And we’ve seen more than once where we had larger teams on things that the more specific the developer assignments were (rather than working collectively on an overall project), the more likely they would put very specific code bits in place.
This is true of using a reporting tool, an analysis piece, a big data processing database (or even databases) and so-on. These pieces work really well, hopefully, as you roll out the application.
But you’re facing some pretty strong lock-in – the inability to swap pieces out – as you put these specific chunks in place.
Sometimes it’s unavoidable; it’s just the platform choices you’ve made and that’s that. It doesn’t really matter if it’s cloud or on-premise or hybrid or the new jupiter-gas-cloud environment. (Hey, it could happen)
Be very aware of those pieces and make plans for support and replacements – at least consider it. I’ve always been one to go into a decision like that with transparency and eyes wide open. If you make the choice to use a given tool and do it knowing that it brings with it certain dependencies, great.
My issue in working through things like this usually come from management (sorry) – where they have a functional requirement, a sales person whispering in their ear about the outcomes and nothing about how it gets there from here. It’s just not pretty.