Beyond Borders: A Global Perspective of Cloud Governance

Kaylee: Hello and welcome back to another episode of CloudBrew! For our first time listeners, my name is Kaylee Raduenz. I am on the Strategic Alliances team here at CoreStack and for those returning, I am back so let's get into it. Today's topic – “Beyond Borders: A Global Perspective of Cloud Governance”.

Kaylee: Today we have one of our very own Sanjeev Arya. Hi Sanjeev and welcome to the CloudBrew!

Kaylee: We're excited to have you on board, will you give the audience some details about what you do, who you are, a little bit to meet the audience.

Sanjeev: Hi Kaylee, thank you! My name is Sanjeev Arya, based in London. I look after CoreStack's European Business, prior to CoreStack, I was with the likes of UiPath, Infosys and Capgemini, and very happy to be here to share my thoughts on CloudBrew.

Kaylee: Yes, we're excited to have you, welcome on board! Alright, so let's get into the meat of it.

Kaylee: Let's start unfolding what we mean by “Beyond Borders”, will you kick us off by giving us your view of the Europe Market for cloud and how do they rank Cloud Governance.

Sanjeev: Sure thing, “Beyond Borders” first of all you know when we look at Cloud, it's supposed to be democratic everywhere, anything can be accessed from anywhere. But there comes the challenge with the growth, with the regulations, with the nuances and a whole lot of other things. So then comes those guardrails and do's and don'ts, but looking at the European Market first of all, growing market quite substantial and as is the characteristic with any technology consumption in our Global Markets, European Market trails the American Market a bit by three four years. Now if you look at the cloud as a Global Market as such, it's about 600 to 700 billion you can take a number of reports, the data will vary, but it's that ballpark and I would say Europe is about one-third of that, one third of that but growing faster than the rest of the geographies. The base is smaller, growth is higher, but with the growing consumption come the additional challenges and I just alluded to one of those which is the regulatory part but there are several more. Other aspect of the European Market with respect to cloud is not only the hyperscalers but there are several local/regional cloud providers. OVH for example in France. Now pandemic kicked off a whole raft of new demand of cloud of technology, at the back of that not only the public cloud providers grew but also the local/regional ones to serve the local markets, local languages etc. Everything put together, Europe benefited from the availability of technology, innovation was at an all-time high, innovation not only in the current business models but new innovative businesses took shape to serve the customers who were locked away because of the pandemic. Now that growth, we have all seen worldwide in technology and services related to technology, but keeping up with that growth has become a, I would say a latest challenge and that's the challenge we see in Europe as well. Other aspect we notice in Europe is with the increased adoption are the increased challenges, do it right and that's where, I would say not only us as a Cloud Governance Provider, a lot of our competitive peers are working very closely with the partners to make sense of those challenges and solve the problems for our end customers collectively and as they say you know and I'm a firm believer in this “Partnership is a new leadership”, we collectively need to help our customers do it right the first time.

Kaylee: I completely agree, I think from the Strategic Alliances standpoint too, it's I don't know how many times I say it in calls it's truly The “Better Together” story right, so I love that you pointed that out. So let's take it a little deeper. Are there any unique aspects emerging in Europe things such as diversity, culture, decision making etc? I'll let you lean in on that.

Sanjeev: Oh no yeah, I think you picked up the right words, it's a very diverse market, it's a very heterogeneous market, not only on the culture aspect but languages, borders and whatnot and with that I think Europe has been traditionally the cradle of innovation. Go back centuries, a lot of things you know emerged from or were born in Europe and that that streak continues even today. If you really are into the corporate world everything translates into our corporate business decision making also another day it's people who are making the businesses work, people who are consuming technology, who are shaping technology and making good use cases out of it. Latest being the Corporate Governance, ESG, Sustainability everything is coming together and and European Enterprises are very conscious about doing it right as I mentioned and hence they put they put the the framework in mind first than quickly rushing into a decision, so that's one. Second is as we mentioned the regulatory aspects, we all know BREXIT happened, that's just the within Europe story, but across borders across Europe and Americas, they've been they've been uh various uh data protection regulations, for example the US EU privacy shield, the CLOUD act, but very recently and these are supposed to protect the data and the flow shape the flow in such a manner that it's uh it's meaningful as well as it protects us as common citizens, but recently the court of justice in European Union, they ruled that the EU US privacy shield is invalid, now what do you do with that shield created and it's invalid because there are differences between GDPR and the U.S. regulations. That's the job of the the administration the government to put the policies in place, but how it reflects in the businesses day-to-day is it makes the operational and financial implications harder to meet and it those decisions go beyond the control of IT department. Now when somebody is trying to put a cloud model in place, we got these regulations to look after, I think it it slows it down a little bit but it's all for the good reason for sure. Next I would say is the localization, I mentioned the data flow between US and EU but what about the data flow and sharing between EU and UK, similar stuff happens, now hence, it's very important to when you're playing in the markets to be aware of where your customers where your partners pain points their regulatory needs or brackets are and accordingly build a solution to co-create and work with them. Another important thing to to look at from European perspective is the accountability, I was at a FinOps org event recently in Amsterdam and we were talking to a lot of FinOps Engineers and all. The reporting line of a finance engineer is still not very clear, it's not bedded – the entire framework as I say is still being laid out in Europe, we are just you know a little behind the the adoption curve. So the CIO is responsible, the CDO is responsible, CFO is responsible, COO is responsible, the entire C-level is responsible, in a way it's a collective responsibility of a European Enterprise, but it still is not clear who is accountable, so all those things are still taking [ __ ] and and you know we may call it it slow but I think they want to do it in the right manner and hence making Cloud Governance as an org wide culture is the key thing right now than to quickly rushing into measuring it and enforcing KPIs or Metrics. That was my learning also meeting up a lot of FinOps Practitioners and peers at the event, it's more focused on the culture and the True Governance part of it than the KPIs and Metrics on day one, they will follow they'll be our you know guardrails or or or measures but how do we do it in the right manner, so those are some of the things I think stand out in my experience.

Kaylee: I hope that makes that makes total sense and I wanted dig a little deeper on something that you touched on and I think it's going to be one last doozy for for our audience. You know we hear Cloud is Universal and it doesn't necessarily have borders but from your point of view what are some geographic nuances that you've experienced when working with your customers and partners and I think you touched a little bit so can we dig a little deeper there.

Sanjeev: Yes regulation first of all you know – data flow, data protection, data privacy, EU with US, EU with with the UK and rest of the world, I think those things still make the consumption models a little I would say tricky you need to have the local specifics to be taken care of. Next is the, as Europe is in the early adopter stage of these technologies the U.S is far ahead, if if Europe is early adopters, I would say US should be mid to late uh majority. Now with that adoption maturity comes a need for org wide standardization, so that standardization which is taking shape in the US, it's still being crafted or being thought about in Europe, so that's one main difference which which we see. Second is, several European Enterprises, they focus on end-to-end cost, cost of cloud not only at the infrastructure layer but also the service which runs on top of it and we all you know in FinOps Practice, we hear about chargeback, showback and chargeback, the question has gone beyond just chargeback of the infrastructure, it is also about the service and the application running on top of that infrastructure and there are many I would say leading Enterprises in various industry verticals who have already started putting their own methods and tools in place to make sure it's an end-to-end cost measurement hence the complete TCO or accountability to the pnl who's consuming these technologies including infrastructure, so that's that's number three. Last and the big one -Sustainability, it's ingrained in everything European companies do and hence us as service providers or partners also tend to do. EMEA probably is the leading geography to measure Cloud Carbon Emissions, of course I think followed by Latin America and other countries, but look at the conscious focus on even cloud consumptions carbon emission. that's huge that that's a big statement and they they relate or correlate Sustainability and GreenOps with FinOps. They say it's complementary if you're doing FinOps you are in a way amplifying GreenOps and vice versa and hence you know any decision we take, in compute, in any resource, in any infrastructure or application, we need to be conscious of the Carbon Footprint we are leaving behind or creating. In the end you know Kaylee, it's we can spin up our dev test environments the way we like, we can measure how effective our go live environments are, but in the end we should remember there is only one final production environment and that is our planet. So, everything adds up, it's creating an impact somewhere we can save and shave cost at a given point from something which is very narrow to a point but the larger impact must still be measured and accounted for and I think that's where I would say True Governance becomes a need of the hour. Governance at every single layer and including Cloud Governance which is which is a very important discipline for every Enterprise.

Kaylee: Yeah that's it, I think you know we had another episode very much specific to Sustainability and why it should be in the boardroom, why we're hearing it so often and why it should really be a priority for everyone across the globe. So super amazing insights, thank you Sanjeev! Keep on wrapped some amazing insights and experience many many others are experiencing as well across borders. Do you have any closing thoughts for the audience, I think we've covered quite a bit of content in this episode, anything you want our audience to take away from today?

Sanjeev: oh yeah, I would say just a few last words would be, be confident in what you do uh be conscious of the impact you're creating and do it right.

Kaylee: Fantastic, Sanjeev!

Kaylee: A big thank you to our guest Sanjeev and to our listeners!

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