What should you consider when deciding whether to use a centralized, decentralized or distributed network architecture?
If you ask somebody what problem they’re trying to solve and they tell you, "I need cloud for X," they typically can't tell you what they need which cloud for, other than one specific workload. That's the whole thing. Why does it have to be based on workload? Where's the bigger vision to go forward with? Otherwise, you're just creating another silo.
I'd advance that further because oftentimes, it's not just that they can't tell you what workload. Another issue is that, if they're non-technical, they're working on the assumption that cloud will save them money. And that's why they want to get there. They may not even be able to signal what they want to move to the cloud, but there's still a perception that going there will save them money. That's their driver.
Choosing cloud to save money is absolutely the wrong assumption. You do get agility and perhaps flexibility from cloud, so that even if you don't want to move your production workload, you can have a scalable throwaway infrastructure that you can adapt for development and testing. And if you want to deploy to your production environment, in your own dedicated environment, you have the flexibility to do that. But cost is going to kill you at some point. I run cost management for all our cloud native surveys and we grapple with cloud costs every week. Every Monday, there is a meeting about where the costs are, what the burn rate is and which team or customer to attribute it to. The goal is to figure out how to contain this thing but it's tough.
Whenever anybody asks me about cloud, I ask, "What problem are you trying to solve? And what do you need to solve that problem? Does cloud fit that model?” If it does, then go as fast as you can. But if it doesn't, and you're being intellectually honest, why should you do it? It's hard to solve all of the problems with one approach, unless that one approach can encompass and make all the different models possible.