Session Information:

Creating native EA integration strategies with modern-day multi-cloud environments for agility and adaptability

Organizations are adopting a Multi-Cloud approach to host the right business capabilities in the right cloud. Choice and flexibility of services coupled with a mature management layer enables cross cloud mobility of workloads. In such a scenario, re-assessing the integration strategy is imperative to provide holistic insights for better decision making.

• Understanding the challenges and benefits of integration.
• How to start the journey of chalking an integration strategy for a multi-cloud environment.
• Identify the dependencies and opportunities of integration.
• Decision framework for the right integration technology for applications.

Session Transcript:

Excited to have Bobby's So, the Arusha with us. Bobby is coming today from Coachee in India, where he is a digital transformation leader with a designer mindset. He finds this flow, integrating the needs of people with possibilities of technology to deliver a successful business outcomes.

Bobby has two decades of experience working across multiple roles as an IT architect and head of delivery and operations.

Prior to his work at Diageo, DI Geo, he held technology roles and Microsoft and General Electric, Bobby, what a pleasure to have you with us. It's late right now in Lean. Yeah. And you're here with our global audience. We're so privileged and grateful to have you share your expertise with us.

Thank you. Thank you, Jose.

Thank you. Thanks for having me here.

So, today, I know I'm standing between you and lunch for many. So good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all viewers.

Thank you for taking time and joining us. I'm a practicing enterprise architect.

I'm also learning, I wouldn't call myself an expert at, you know, at any.

Oh, my, my objective here is to share with you, whatever I have gained knowledge and experience about. So today.

We will be talking about enterprise integration strategy for an enterprise when they are in multi cloud environment.

Today, many, many organizations are in multi cloud environment, for various reasons. We'll get to that. So, my presentation is actually for today is split into three areas I would largely call it as the why.

We are in multi cloud and what's Why do we have to relook at integration strategy for enterprise?

Then the what is integration complements What are the competence which you need to look at?

And how do we arrive upon an integration strategy? So I've tried to split this into 3 3 areas.

So having said that, let me just quickly take you through the agenda.

The first portion we will cover about multi cloud and the integration overview.

The Challenge is multi cloud poses for integration of application and data, and even infrastructure.

We look at the benefits. If you have the right integration strategy in place, what's the benefit and positive impact it makes to the organization?

That's something which we will look at.

Then, we will look at the competence of data, application, and infrastructure integration competence, what are, what, what, what other different areas, and what are the other surrounding competence, which you need to look at, in terms of security, and the governance, which just briefly cover those areas.

Then, we look at the framework to actually arrive upon an integration strategy, and we'll summarize next 30 minutes or so, I would be taking you through that.

Firstly, the why, the why, why do we have multi cloud?

I mean, if you look at enterprises, about 10 years or 15 years back, and I recall many of my conversations with CIOs, they were reluctant to actually adopt cloud.

The, the instances, they said they're quite happy with their optimize. The very processes of Well, defined the efficiency is a good and why look at cloud dot.

Cloud doesn't really give me anything much than more than what I can build and deliver from that point to today and maybe the pandemic might have fueled it or accelerated it.

Cloud has become a norm, in most organizations.

And to the point where we are now looking at, not just one cloud in an organization, we're looking at multiple clouds.

I might just take few names of clouds, but they just don't get. You don't misunderstand.

I'm not evaluating any cloud or I'm not proposing it one cloud against the other.

It just to compare and it makes it easy for me to compare. I might just take few names of cloud, like, you know, most of them, the top tens.

I know Azure or AWS, Google is really coming up And now there is now Alibaba Cloud.

So there are various v.m-ware has their own cloud of Rackspace Cloud.

So I'm just might just take these names, but if you look at, most enterprises are adopting multiple cloud and also the sess.

So why do they adopt these multiple cloud?

Why, what's, what's the primary reasons?

one of them I see is that they look at with the philosophy of the right cloud for the right reasons, right workload, For instance, data and analytics, you might look at one particular cloud for running your business applications. You might look at another cloud.

4, four, No, it's autonomous systems.

You might even look at assess, which is hosted, I know, and why did as a, as a complete service to you from a from out, from a no cloud standpoint.

Enterprise also looks at multiple cloud for data sovereignty reasons, many, many, many countries are quite strict about data being confined within their geography boundaries.

So, you look at the cloud options.

You might be in one cloud, but then you want to expand into an area that business is expanding to a, to a region where the mandate data to be there, and then you are forced to look at a cloud, which actually provides that kind of coverage across the globe.

And most of them are actually seriously ramping up the data center presence across the globe.

That is, you know, every month, or every two months I see Google or Azure or, and everybody is actually building data centers across and, and it's actually growing.

And, and as I said earlier, the situation.

We are all an unfortunate, as it may be as a pandemic consumption of cloud and the cloud services as as really, really gone through the roof for the enterprises. So that's one of the reasons that the growth is also going really high.

Then, another reasoners, the marketplace and Cloud, they're really maturing. When I say marketplace.

Traditionally, if you look at firewall vendors, they've grown optimized, right? When we set up something on on premise data centers, you need to secure it.

So we built a, a secure vault, which is a ...

defense in depth strategy, so we build security and multiple defense, defense in depth.

All these solutions have now matured and available in cloud, as appliance, as software appliances. So there is nothing stops, enterprises now setting up a cloud environment, which is fully secure.

The way they used to run it in cloud, and to that point, I would say even better, because cloud brings innovation first into it.

So, innovation is first hits cloud, and then probably hit and optimize technology.

Another reason I look, I see is that application services are up native Cloud native services.

They are maturing so fast. It's that a lot of them provide services, which you probably cannot build on from eyes.

Cognitive services, AI ML, that the level of, know, the maturity or the other features, which is coming into and the innovation, which is coming into these areas.

It's became becoming difficult for enterprises to actually keep up with that. Right? So these are the reasons, then probably derisking locking. So you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.

You just just want to see if you want to move your data or an application from one cloud to the other.

Enterprises like to have that flexibly to move things around a little bit, although it's not as easy said than done.

That's something which look at disaster recovery. So, you may have your application in one cloud, probably your disaster recovery in another cloud, which makes sense.

Said that this is just something which we see, I thought.

It would also be interesting to see what analysts are saying, but if you look at Gardner Sylvie, 81% of respondents have said that, they're working with two or more providers, 75% of mid-size and large organizations.

They will adopt multi cloud by 2021, and we are already there, Right?

If you look at the one of the 10 biggest public cloud provider, Dave would actually take the 50% of the market share by 2023.

And I would think much more than 50. My guess would be something 75.

They're all consolidating and really no competing and brick coming out of new services every hour, every other month.

Same same goes like data management.

If you take a survey of that set today, they they have the data in multiple clouds, the sets.

An interesting segue into our conversation, which is integration.

Integration is nothing but bringing together, right?

It's about bringing your data together, bringing your application together, so when you have multi cloud, it poses its own challenges to you.

Multi cloud challenges, As, as as it's clear, when you add one cloud, you have challenges of managing and integrating data.

Now you have multiple cloud. So obviously, it's multi fold.

The challenges also increases your data is spread across, so there is a challenge of data governance.

No data management, There are solutions in the market, which addresses all this, but before we get into that, your applications are more and more distant and siloed. There's a challenge of those communicating with each other.

You want to keep all this automated for bringing inefficiency. That's, again, a challenge.

When, when you want to run an automation across different cloud providers, having different no formats and instances, right.

So, that's one.

Another challenge is the standards let us look at if you look at a DevOps and want one cloud.

I'm sorry, DevOps, in one cloud?

The entire process of DevOps has multiple thing as SSD and know that the repository.

every cloud has its own native no depositories and standards.

So when you want to develop an application for an organization's, when you're in multiple Cloud, how do you manage this? That's, again, a big challenge.

Integrating all this DevOps, as I said, data governance again.

But then, if you get your strategy right, then, you can actually reap all the benefits of cloud. You get agility for bringing data together for business to make the right insights.

You get, oh, thereby, know, you can reduce manual efforts. You can cost, save time, and cost.

The visibility of moving, moving the data between clouds is very clear, if you get the integration strategy and the monitoring, and all of them, right?

So, these are all actually, actually leads to an accelerated growth, you become, your business can be a lot quicker and nimbler.

So, this is what the benefit it provides, and the positive impact, it actually makes to the enterprises and many, many business functions which we may or may not really realize.

But, look at sales, you know, having the customer information from CRM integrated and readily available with all, bringing all the data together, actually gives the sales, the right insight about the customer, what they're buying.

What's the cross selling opportunity, what's the upselling opportunity? All this actually becomes a lot clearer for, for, for sales. Similarly, for production, planning, finance, everybody gets to benefit out of these, right?

So, this is something which I thought I will set as a, as, as the reason why, we need to look at integration strategy.

Now, going into the integration strategy, let us understand, what are the three pillars of integration?

I would say there are a lot more, I mean, if you look at processes in many, But I've focused here in today's 30 minute session, as about data, application and infrastructure, which I would call it as a technology foundation.

The data, as you know, there is a lot of data, which now comes from things, which is IOT.

That's that's actually gaining a lot of ground in enterprises, especially manufacturing and various other industries.

Then, there is a consumer data.

And there is a business to business data.

All this, as one wants, one part of it.

Then there is applications.

We have another applications are across SaaS, which is Software as a Service, which is finished. So, there's like a Workday today.

Sir, no service now.

Salesforce, these are all SaaS applications, then you have PaaS application platform as an, as a service, you would have built, no, you would have just written the code and leveraged PaaS services from cloud service providers.

Then, of course, there is a legacy all that what we've had all these years, which is probably within our own data centers.

And if you look at the foundation technology infrastructure, which we need to integrate, we have integrated the network. Now, that is, every cloud has its own network design, network layout.

Now, as an enterprise for me to keep secure and monitor that I have to integrate all of them and, and from a central point, I need to manage and monitor.

DevOps is something which I just spoke about earlier.

Identity, which is very critical, your, your use, your every user, personas of your organizations, y'all, customers, yaws, employees, your partners, your trading partners, you know, distribution and supply, this is, I'm more from the manufacturing side I'm talking about.

But if you relate this to your own industries, identity of all, these personas, identity required for applications today. All this needs to be integrated tightly.

And your strategy needs to actually look into all this area. That's what I'm just trying to stress upon here.

And ensure that they are designed by, by with security as, try most areas, right?

And also look at where they are originating.

The data is now coming from on prem, cloud mobile IOT as an edge devices. So data and applications are now so far and spread.

This brings the area of what governance which needs to.

Enveloped is entire.

Pillows and all these competence, you have to ensure that they are managed monitored.

They're available for audit trails.

So this, this is, I would say, the hows of integration if I were to call it every key pillars of the data application and the technology foundation.

From here, let me quickly move to what is a data integration.

So when we look at data integration, if I were to street the actual definition, it's about combining data from multiple sources to create a unified view for your organizations so that they can derive insights out of it.

All right.

So today before the organizations have a data integrations I do.

I do believe that organizations should also have a data strategy, which is centers around your dataset, strategy for an organization could be, and one of the areas, it might central around, SEO, consumer, consumer experience. How do you improve that? That could be using data. I'm talking about using your data you have gathered across over a period of many years.

How do you improve your customer or consumer experience?

How do you improve your products and services by feedback, from social feeds and things like that, right? So that's, that's the data coming from there.

Sorry, how do you improve your operational excellence, operational efficiency, how do you achieve that using data, and, more importantly, if you're in the right business, How do you monetize your data, which is within all the legal limits?

And I know, covering all the GDPR and all the compliance and all those areas in place?

So, so, the sist up strategy, you need to understand the organization or the interface needs to have that in place.

In order for prior to data integration, I would bill, because that would actually help you understand what areas you need to prioritize.

Do you look at customer and consumer data first, an integration integrating, or you look at an IOT?

So, if you look at from the left to right, the data sources are many Today. The data comes from your existing databases. It comes in files, which we keep sending back and forth across e-mail.

Does IOT is This is API sources, because many applications are API API, they expose their services through API, right?

So, these are different sources, And now, the data integration has actually goes across multiple stages.

You ingest that data on to the staging area.

Probably, no ingesting process could be many, if an IOT could stream the data, because it's real time insights and data, right? Or, you could have a batch process. You can have a micro batch processes.

So, you have CDC, right? So change data, which is moving from one place to the other. So, this all can be prepared, first, you need to stage it.

The raw data, probably in an object store, or, you know, IOT hub, like areas, and then you prepare the data.

Once you've cleaned this data, then you transform these data to the Target store.
18:44
So the transformation, because this is, in many ways, they say, you know, the ETL processes, the transformation, and load, so you you probably load this to a data warehouse for the traditional analytics. The BI.

are you probably loaded to the data lake based on whether you need a conformed data or you want data that can be further used by data science like an AI and ML sort of workloads.

So this is finally and the data consumers on the other end.

So between the data source and consumers, this is the actual sort of a very high level steps it goes through before the data breaches and becomes meaningful.

Similarly, let me just look at Application integration, application integration, ...

process of No Bringing together.

So, enabling independently designed applications to work together.

So, there is a workflow that needs to happen from, let's say, an HR system like a Workday to a service now. So, how do you keep these applications talking to each other, communicating to each other? So, that's the application integration. So, if you look at traditionally, all these, what you see here, there are various applications, E-commerce.

Legacy systems, your business intelligence system, financial systems, mostly probably know, the ERP is of the world.

They all talk to each other, and where else, your third parties, which is distributors, all of them, those applications, all talk to each other.

Exchanging data.

And that was yuste, either probably a middleware, that is based on the protocol and whatever. That's what you had in place.

But today, the enterprise expectation is that the integration of application should be from anything.

It could be any application or any anything, when I say IOT devices, anytime, and anywhere.

So having said that, let's just look at some of the integration patterns on a very high level from an application standpoint.

Traditionally optimized, as when you have everything, what we had with the neo four volts, you had an app talking to a CPI. Is, again, I've just taken a sappy as a representational. It's not that that's, that's the only app it can talk to.

So an app, to App, be, let's say, in this case, app, because Sappy used to have a middleware.

But if you look at up, no, as we came up up the curve and then said, they started adopting Cloud, then there is a requirement for cloud applications to talk to optimize.

And the on premise need to talk to cloud.

Let's say, you know, a workday as an application, which is hosted in cloud, it's a SaaS applications, might need to talk to sappy.

So, there are multiple ways to do this today.

But there's a trend that it's all moving to a, This more of a marketing board, maybe, but, again, it's a very effective. I pass integration platform as a service.

So many solutions out there, which is really maturing fast in providing what the earlier middleware has used to be and many and beyond that.

And providing that as a service and, and making it available, either as a SaaS, or you can actually deploy within your own no environment.

So, this actually helps enterprises now leverage these platforms, too, actually, help applications should talk to each other.

So, that's, that's, that's a cloud to on prem, to cloud, there is a cloud to cloud, let's say Workday to service.
22:33
Now let's just take an example of an employee on boarding and off boarding, right.

When when, when you have an employee coming into your company, when you're joining them, you want to do a pre boarding experience for them because you don't want him to show up on a Monday morning and not having any, you know, user login details or laptops. no access to any applications.

No other soap.

Companies are actually looking to improve those experience for employees, so they do a pre boarding experience, pre boarding preparations actually before the employee actually walks into an office.

That's actually happens between many system, that the bucket, right? So, if you look at a Workday is where the employee details get loaded first after the hiring has done.

Even the pre hiring actually happens a lot, in many cases, right.

So, then, what happens is, once is hired, we want to ensure that all the applications and systems that users needed is made ready to access as soon as the user or the employee comes into the office or in today's world, and all the, the laptops, or other devices get shipped to their homes, right.

So, that integration has actually, again, done using iPads, platforms, it can be done using traditional methods, but today now, as I said, every, you know, there's there's a growing trend in using ... kind of services to actually integrate applications. Same goes with the IOT.

Many cloud providers have their own streaming services, which is straight.

If it goes into that, or in some cases, from the edge gateway. It takes it through the iPad system and into the cloud.

So, the options are there.

It's just about flight, finding the right integration patterns for enterprises, actually to look at different ...

use cases. So.

1, one area where it's getting even, in fact, when I think of Gartner has called this out, they're saying hybrid integration platform.

So you may continue to have your own legacy.

You may build an optimized platform, and you may leverage us, it hosted platform.

Hosted platform also could be, partially, the control plane could be hosted by the vendor, and hoe and and manage that as your data plane is something which you manage within your advice.

So, this is all, I know, a couple of integration patterns, which I thought I would, same goes with, they know, now, let's move quickly into infrastructure integration.

Uh, here, you look at identity.

You have to ensure that it's federated with and different vendors.

So that in one cloud, one, identity can be used across multiple clouds, so you don't need to have 1 cloud one ID, and that's that's going to be a security nightmare.

So you look at a network integration.

If you look at across, Oh, when you, when you bring in network integration, must be familiar with the concept, likes, no software defined network.

So, this software, the virtualization of the network functions, which is a V and F, I have written there.

This actually helps you bridge that gap between the traditional network to the modern cloud based network.

So, it is a lot easier for you to actually integrate those, no different clouds today, as compared to earlier, because most network functions are virtualized and it's easy to actually connect between clouds that are cross connects, provided between clouds, which gives you a private connectivity between clouds, so your data is never on the internet.

It's actually not just a secure path between clouds, so and and fast across the globe. So those features are available.

So that's, that's where it comes on the network.

It is and compute, you expect the VMs to actually move across.

Different clouds, As I said, vendor lock in, no, no customer wants vendor logins anymore. They expecting containers to really pick up. Containers is a way of deploying applications in a very efficient way.

More and more applications, when they leverage microservices, they're gonna be containerized. And we're going to see a lot more movement of those between cloud service providers.

So this actually, sort of brings us into saying, I spoke about what the the what the why Now is most important as the hub, right?

So, here is where I'm going to just talk to you about from an Enterprise architect standpoint, How do you get it?

The way I think this is, these are all the tools and processes and a framework, which I I think is very important for us to actually define an integration strategy.

First is, defining the principles of integration, it can be aligned with the EAA principles.

That's, that's, that's very key area. So, you're clear, when it comes to decision making.

Then you can build a capability model.

Probably a technology capability model against the business, and different level, L zero to L four, which will actually tell you, what kind of capability would you need?

What's the business capability with which you would need to start mapping out?

Is it decomposed capability?

No, Stage's, actually, so, if you take one high level, let's say data integrated data as a high level data integration might be one data management, might be one data governance. Might be L L L ones. Then within data integrations, you have various capabilities that you build.

So you sort of, lay out this, and you understand that what is the capability currently business app, and what does that they're expecting to have?

And the reference model is sort of a quick, uh, superimposing a technology onto a capability model and I'll just go through that, then the time model the time model actually gives you, the, know the garden time model probably gives you about what to tolerate, where you want to invest now, where you want to migrate, or bare you want to eliminate. I'll just look at that.

Then we just covered a quickly about, couple of integration patterns, the way that, that would help adoption of these technologies and the Roadmap.

Finally, once you define all these technologies, you may also want to define a technology selection framework.

So having said, maybe, just conscious of time.

Let me quickly take you through the, uh, the integration principles.

If you want to look at an integration technology areas, which is probably buy versus built, you may want to go for assess, versus an ..., which you want your ability yourself.

Look at, me, know, an API first design principles for applications, and in a technology selection process, you may want to have reusability of competence.

You don't want the technology to be no dependent on the underlying platform that's the platform independence.

You want to have the data and, know, the data is ensure that it is considered as an asset today.

And it should be shared and accessible to all applications and wherever it's required, and all of them, this needs to be scalable, reliable, so, these other high level, it's not limited to this, depends on the organization's priorities.

These principles could define, this is just a sort of a high level guidelines.

This is about a capability model I just spoke about. So, you have different gifts. Let us look at a data and application, data integration might be an L one capability. Under data integration.

You may have ingestion, that's actually a sub capability.

So, you decompose alders and you arrive upon L three processors.

So, each of them could be a function, auto feature of certain applications, certain, certain technology, which you are going to bring into the Enterprise.

So you can understand what technology provides most of this as part of your evaluation process.

This is the time model of God.

Now, this has actually helps you to understand in your organization, where does the technology that, the application landscape lies.

So, if an application is actually scores reasonably well in terms of say, it provides business value, but probably it might be no sunsetting soon.

That's one thing, which you think you will have to tolerate for a little more, while you may not invest anything in it, but you just have to live with it for some more time because it's actually giving enough business value.

But it's actually not may not be fully supportable.

But at the same time, most of the, not the new innovation new application, that's where you may want to know, look at where it gives high business value. So, if you look at the X axis and Y axis, the business value score is high, and the architecture score is high.

That means: normally there will be in the invest cottoned, which we'll see.

This is where most investment of note.

What would would go in?

You may also want to look at migrate wed.

It provides good enough business value, but maybe system has no due for a upgrade.

And so, that's, that's one on the migrate and things of which is low in both. The wants to be eliminated. Why this, this is important, is when you look at the integration strategy.

You're going to finally integrate applications and data. So this data resides in all these applications and stores.

So, you may want to focus more on the, the I, and the M, the right-hand side than the left-hand side.

And maybe finally, I might just Not sure let's time, but I might just talk about how you Oh, no.

help.

Your application owners are the, the the business actually owners And the domain architects or whoever it was in your organization takes no decision around these, how do you help them pick the right integration, tools and technologies.

So, you may have a business requirements.

You may want to define an assurance level based on business, application, or network, and, you arrive upon these integration patterns based on that. So, let us say in the business level. Assurance level may be that, if I were to pick an invoice, I want that invoice to stay.

No, in the system for probably ETAs as as you move the invoice from application to application fee.

So, this is where, no, the assurance level definition matters.

So, when you, when you sort of put these two across, you'll get different use cases You can build for your organization, and that's what actually helps business to adopt the right technology.

So, this is more often post defining the standards of integration, probably either, you know, on iPads, or, No, You know, bring in whatever the technology, which is now coming into the enterprise of, across the stack of most cloud, which which works across the stack.

Then, you probably, between that, what's the right area to choose what. So, that's what this would go.

And I think, having said, probably, that's my last slide.

And this is sort of a summary of what I've just talking about, the whole framework capability models, build your reference models, the roadmaps, Something which I didn't put a slide specifically for it, but it goes without saying that you gotta have a technology roadmap for it.

And, you know, making your patterns and blueprints for the, for the enterprise.

That's said.

That's my closing slide, I hope this was what, the time, and I might be on time, I hope.

Fantastic presentation. Bobby, I'm going to ask you to stop showing your screen. And I'm going to come back on momentarily.

I'm scanning for some of the questions here right now that the audience has provided.

And the first one that I'm gonna ask you to start with is that, you know, what a fantastic journey that you have share with us here when it comes to to the, to the strategy, but also the tactics and the processes that you're using to implement a crowd cloud strategy. At the question is, if you could distill it down, for someone who is kind of in the beginning of this journey, is someone who has maybe maybe more of an ad hoc basis, done enterprise architecture, and, and really explore the cloud environments, and specifically multi cloud environments.

What are some of the, for someone who's beginning on this journey, I think, that, let me, I forgot to turn my camera on for someone who is ill in the beginning of this journey.

And they look back, and a lot of people were going through the cloud for potential cost reasons. And then they kind of evolve because there was potential of applications that were better run through on the Cloud.

And based on where things are today, two part question. First one is that, what are the good reasons to go to a cloud environment Or a multi-cloud environment today and the, and how do you start the journey on the right foot?

Yeah, so first question, if I did a little bit of, Sorry, Static on my site. The first question, if I heard, what are the good reasons to go to multi cloud?

The good reasons are, cloud gives you a lot of opportunities in terms of the, the cloud, native services, which is coming around, are not readily available, even if you were to build on premise, like, cognitive services, AI, ML, Various workloads in cloud, which enterprises are looking at cloud for those workloads.

It's actually a quick win, and the time to insight and all of them, which the business really needs today, because this is the data driven and the amount of challenges.

The competition is a very competitive market out there, right. And data is it is an asset.

So, how do you analyze data, and give you the time to insights shorter, right? That's one of the reasons why enterprises actually adopting cloud and multi cloud for that, really, for that matter.

But you may have, for some reason, for some areas, your applications.

You may want to host it in one cloud, for leveraging and, and data, and analytics capability of a different cloud.

So, that's one reason.

Another, the second question, if I heard you correctly.

How do you keep it all this managed?

So, one of the areas is, I think, very important in cloud is a cost management.

The more you go to multiple cloud, it's better to have a centralized governance scheme.

So, probably many organizations are starting to feel although cloud provides you with all these great features and functionalities and services, which you can quickly adopt and deliver to the business.

But at the same time, the cost is high, right?

How do you keep it under check because it's just like turning a tap on, right? And if you don't turn it off or the right time, you're just gonna not waste resources.

So how do you ensure the optimal usage of resources?

The costing? So governance is a very important factor.

Having the right strategy in terms of drawing out what standards in each technology, which technology to be used, in which cloud needs to be defined.

Otherwise, if you don't define this clearly, business has the wherewithal actually to go and spin up something.

When they want to because cloud, it makes that easy for business to do that. They might just go to a cloud and do their own analytics.

I hope I answered it. I'm not sure.

No, I think you've captured the essence of it. The second portion of the question was a little bit on how to get started on the right foot. What are the best things to, you know, if I'm Neal, especially in a multi-cloud environment, you know?

What are, what are the benefits? they're driving me, really, to go to a multi cloud and cloud environment? Is it really cost? Because it sounds more costly if I have more more clouds, but maybe it's not, is if functionalities as security, it's probably a combination of a number of things, depending on what are you doing? In your experience, what do you think has been the biggest driver for the multi cloud environment?

And then, and then for people who are getting started, I think you already partially answered this. How do you get started with the on the right foot on the right with the right, you know, best practices right off right off the bat?

Many organizations, I've seen, they become into multi cloud organically.

They start somewhere.

Then they realize, OK, that's a service, which I'm not really great here, So, I need to look at elsewhere.

So they, they start to bring in multiple Cloud, without even really realizing that they are actually in multi cloud, because, in some of them, by acquisition, you bring in multi cloud and company that acquiring more and more So, you don't.

You don't have a choice because the company you're acquiring in a cloud, A, you're in cloud B, and then you're there, you're there to cloud, and now you've got to deal with it.

So, how do you do that?

And my way, as I said, I think, most important does, which, you know, I've experienced us, you have to have the right governance across this. That's the most important thing.

And many tools, many, almost every cloud vendor, is focused on providing that, but, again, each cloud vendor provides their own governance tools.

So, I would say, you gotta have a centralized governance team, and, and, and tools and processes in place, so and standards, to have that, I'm not sure if I was repeating myself. But, you're basically, you bring a very good perspective, which is the fact that maybe it was not multi cloud by design was multi cloud by acquisition, which is something that maybe we hadn't thought about.

So let me ask you, this question. Is multi cloud, by design, is still the right option to be had.

or, or really, if you can consolidate around one cloud system, if you have that luxury, if you're not making acquisitions, if you're not inherit in this new children, can you get should do? Is there should you go of a single cloud approach or a multi-cloud approach is still superior for a number of reasons?

I feel multi cloud is still superior because each each cloud provider has their own strengths while they have, uh, I know, a bouquet of services which is common.

There is something which has a value added.

So the audit or a key area, which they're really innovating, there is never that you will have everything in one cloud.

And as the enterprises mature more and more, in terms of their requirements, then it becomes more and more important to have multi cloud.

But if it's a, if it's a smaller organizations just coming.

You may need, whatever you may need, might be there in one cloud, but if your enterprise maturity level, in terms of the the data maturity level, the now, the, the analytics and the data analytics maturity level within the organization, I'm just going back to analytics.

Because that's a very, know, very, very close exampled or something, which you can relate to that actually forces you to look at the best in, available out there.

So you may not have the, the best in the cloud you are in today, Right. So for that workload, we might have to look at something else.

So I feel the way it's going.

Each cloud service provider is building their own niche areas.

And these are all combining together, and they are talking to each other really well.

It's not each cloud vendors are going silos.

I think there are a lot of a lot of synergy, in terms of connectivity between them.

All of that is actually getting established, so it's getting a seamless.

At the same time, you are able to now pick and choose what you want to access, different place. Yeah.

Excellent, excellent, Bobby. We have about NaN here. So, on our wrap up with something that you're excited about, you know, when you look at cloud technologies, When you look applications, you know, if you look at the last 12 months, or maybe in the near future. Is there anything on the technology or application side of the clouds? Clouds that are you, that you are like excited about. It's maybe something that most people are not aware off, and then you think it's exciting that you have those capabilities today.

I think, I think it's data science.

Everybody. The data is the key.

Every organization that was actually grappling with not getting the right insights, although it's been there for many years.

I think that's the, that's the field.

That's the area which the cloud is bringing in.

No, that's the investment and the research and development and innovation that's going in cloud is what excites me the most.

I mean, my, my focus is there.

Not in the infrastructure or the application side of it. I think data is king.

Data is the new oil, as it says.

Right, And it's actually Those capabilities in cloud, I think most of you might be aware of. But I feel that they are the ones.

And and other areas might come and I'm not not too sure about that, to be honest, but data is for me is the next destination and cloud yeah.

That's fantastic. Babi Listen.

On behalf of our global audience I want to say thank you for taking the time to be with us. I mean it's really late right now in India. And here: you are thought in the industry leadership with our global audience, and we sincerely appreciate you doing that. We appreciate your expertise, and ..., you're sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for having me here, Jose.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. That was Bobby. So the archons, who is the Associate Vice President of Enterprise Architecture and Cloud Services at ..., and sharing his knowledge, expertise and wisdom when he comes to implementing an enterprise architecture strategy, and really leveraging a multi cloud environment.

So, this is our final session for Enterprise Architecture Live.

On behalf of the entire team at ..., and the Business Transformation and Operational Excellence World Summit, we'd like to say thank you to every one of you for being here with us on this journey.

We have learned from tremendous industry leaders and experts covering process and architecture, and the culture, business, and digital transformation.

And none of this would be possible without the stewardship of Brian Raffle who is our conference director. So, Brian, thank you for making. it all works. So seamless. We now also have can chancing with us.

And she is doing a tremendous job of making sure that all those pieces are aligned, so that we can provide you with a seamless experience on a global basis. So, thank you, Brian. Thank you. Can check for your leadership. And, of course, the CEO of ... Digital, VJ, by George, who makes this possible, who creates an environment, where great people and great ideas can connect Globally VJ Barrage.

Thank you, again, for your leadership And the last, but certainly not least, our sponsors. None of this would be possible without the sponsorship of valuable mega international, Lena X, and this design.

Thank you for bringing a world-class virtual event series to our global audience and no cost. So again, Valuable, Magna International, Lean I X, and this design. You're leading the way on enterprise architecture and intelligent automation. And we appreciate your leadership on that. Now, our next conference will be the Business Transformation and Operational Excellence World Summit, focus on digital workplace transformations. Our agenda is already online, and you can access through the link that I post posted on the chat. It's going to take place July 27th through July 29th. So, make sure that you sign up and register for that, because being registered for this conference does not automatically registered for the next one.

So, make sure you're a part of that, and you'll connect with us on digital workplace transformation. You can look at the agenda.

It's already available, Tremendous thought and the industry leaders will be sharing their experiences on their digital transformation in the workplace with that, you know, on during that three day conference.

We have post conference. We're going to send you a link and e-mail with all this session recordings so that you can consume this content at your own leisure and time And, and, and, and maybe repeat some of this presentations and see some of the insights that that went by fast and you can take a little bit more time, internalizing this incredible content. So you should receive that e-mail. The next week or two. You will have a protected link and password. They'll give you access to all of the sessions.

Also, on LinkedIn, on there, my name, shows that Paris, you will be able to see the posting for this conference, and under that posting, we have updates for these 1, 2, and three. We have comments from speakers, from participants, We have questions, so, please feel free to, like, share and engage on that content. If there are any additional questions that were not addressed during the conference, you can post them there as well, and certainly, please say a thank you to our speakers. Say a thank you to our sponsors for making this all possible, and sharing their expertise and with us.

So, I hope that whatever you are in the world, that you have a great rest of your day. They have a great rest of this week and I look forward to seeing you back at these to workplace transformation on July 27th for 29th. So for now, bye Bye from San Antonio, Texas to the world.

Take care. Have a great week.