There seems to be a shift going on at the moment. More accurately, there are multiple shifts happening. On the one hand we see organizations switch between public and private cloud solutions to get the optimal solution for their use case. And on the other we see cloud solution providers scaling back on their OpenStack services and focusing on containerization platforms.

But what if you decided years ago for an OpenStack private cloud solution, that is a success and you want to extend it? And your users want to expand it and the services you provide on it? Are you able to provide 24/7 support, uptime KPI and help your users innovate gradually towards containerization?

We see a lot of companies who truly enjoy their OpenStack private cloud platform that don’t want their current CloudOps teams to keep investing precious time into this infrastructure, but instead of that moving up the stack to add value for their users. And it becomes increasingly hard for a small CloudOps team to keep up to date with the OpenStack knowledge, as every 6 months a new release should be deployed. Other companies have outsourced their private cloud operations already to large OpenStack vendors or smaller service companies such as Fairbanks, to mitigate just these issues. But many of these companies now feel that the they have lost control over the way the platform can be optimized and the speed the platform can be innovated for their specific needs.

A study showed five key challenges CIOs and IT-managers cited when moving from traditional to a cloud native approach:

• Skills and people challenges.
• Cultural challenges.
• Cost challenges.
• Technological challenges.
• Governance challenges.

Whether you have your own private CloudOps team or a fully managed private cloud, they cannot solve all these challenges at the same time (skills, for example). And shifting from your successful private cloud to a public cloud just to solve your remaining challenges, will introduce other governance and cultural challenges. So, don’t change the solution, but solve the remaining challenges!

At Fairbanks, we have transferred OpenStack private clouds from fully managed to customer managed, if that fitted the use case. We also did it the other way around: taking over a successful running OpenStack private cloud, as built by our customer, to free up skilled resources on their part. And off course we have taken over managed private clouds from other managed services suppliers, as sometimes one managed services company fits your culture more than another. As Fairbanks is and remains fully dedicated to OpenStack private cloud solutions, we find and solve most of the challenges, if needed with some tailor-made solutions. Maybe add a service to their platform for which they cannot get supported elsewhere, help out with the onboarding of applications, provide and prepare innovations, work closely with the customer cloud operations teams and supply an abundance of experience with different private cloud platforms of other customers. In telecom, but as well as in governance datacenters, hosting and more.

Some companies want Fairbanks to build them a new cloud infrastructure, but a lot of these companies already have a successful OpenStack cloud platform running and want Fairbanks to manage it as they designed and configured it. Sometimes we take over responsibility of a current platform, while building a new platform besides it. Our Cloud Operations team is dedicated to all OpenStack platforms! We don’t force organizations to change their cloud architecture, their management tooling or their OpenStack distribution. We evaluate their platform and report back: what are the maximum KPI’s we can provide their users with this deployment, what really needs to be improved in the short term and how will we take over responsibility. After that we can fully manage all their private cloud, 24/7 and with active monitoring of all the systems.

So, what to do when your private cloud is a success, and your current managed services or CloudOps team cannot keep up? Be proud on the success you have achieved, find a managed services supplier that matches your culture, governance demands and innovation roadmap. And then keep carrying on the road to success!

If you have any comments or additions or if you’d like to know more about the Fairbanks solutions, I am happy to hear from you.