Ep. 26 Explaining Complex Cloud Concepts to Stakeholders with Wesley Niels

00:00 - Introduction to Wesley Niels

Matt Pacheco
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Cloud Currents podcast, where we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing and its impact on modern businesses. I'm your host, Matt Pacheco, the head of content marketing at TierPoint. Today, we're thrilled to have with us Wesley Neals joining us. Wesley is the director of cloud EMEA and partner at Dept, a digital agency. With over 2 decades of experience in IT and cloud technologies, Wesley has navigated the evolution of the industry with traditional data centers to modern cloud environments.

His journey from help desk support to cloud leadership offers a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities in this rapidly changing world of cloud computing. Always changing. Today, we'll dive into Wesley's experiences, uh, with cloud migration, managing cloud operations, and the art of translating complex technical concepts for diverse audiences. We'll also explore the future of cloud technologies and, uh, how digital agencies like depth are leveraging the cloud to, uh, drive innovation with their clients. So, Wesley, we want to welcome you to Cloud Currents.

Thanks for being here.

Wesley Niels
Thank you very much for having me and thank you very much. Really looking forward to this.

Matt Pacheco
Awesome. So, so we can jump, uh, jump right into it. Um, can you walk us through your cloud journey to becoming a cloud leader? Tell us a little bit about your experience.

Wesley Niels
Yeah. I think you briefly touched it, Joe. When I started my career, um, I actually started from the bottom. Well, it's a little bit, uh, you know, broad thing to say, but it's more like you know, I started as a help desk, uh, engineer, um, and then moved into a role where, uh, where I went to more in in terms of a consultant role, assist admin role, uh, going actually to clients back in those days where there were still physical servers on location, um, uh, really going and patching switches and firewalls, etcetera. And then, obviously, um, you know, moving more into to the world of cloud.

Uh, I stepped there in as a as a cloud architect. Uh, started first as an engineer, but cloud engineer, but then moving more into a cloud architect role because, um, I think, uh, sort of, um, uh, the red line within my career is more, uh, into sales and leadership maybe even. Uh, but, um, uh, yeah. That's where I went as a cloud architect. And, um, uh, I think, like, 7 years ago, I started to think about, you know, being so long in the IT industry, do I really want to, you know, keep here keep there, uh, doing the same thing all over again, uh, and decided to move actually to a digital agency.

And, um, depth, uh, was, you know, was coming by. I wanted to jump on the train and, you know, starting, uh, and kick starting a little bit in my career again. And, um, uh, yeah. I started there. There was nothing in regard to cloud.

There was still everything was in data centers. And, uh, and I started building up my own teams there and moving everything away from on premise environments to the cloud. We can talk a little bit later about that topic. Yeah. And then jumped as a head of DevOps to a director role.

03:40 - Cloud Migration and Strategy Insights

This director fits me best because it is not per se, um, heavy techie, uh, to be honest, but it does help the organization with driving, uh, the craft cloud in in our organization, uh, and managing our most important partnerships with the biggest cloud providers out there, um, um, but also, uh, developing new propositions. So, understanding what the client's needs are, um, uh, helping to drive their digital transformation when it comes to cloud, uh, and support and being in a supporting director role within our organization as a whole to other directors as well.

Matt Pacheco
Awesome. How has your experience in some of those different IT roles, uh, throughout your career shaped your approach to, uh, cloud strategy and management?

Wesley Niels
Um, yeah. Good question. So, I think, um, with the background that I have in terms of understanding really where the IT is coming from, having physical servers in inside a building or in a data center, and really understanding the concept of the cloud itself. Um, uh, I was able to really understand and how to design these new cloud environments on, uh, sorry, uh, these new environments on the cloud. So, um, that helped with the background that I had to actually move forward and understanding what the cloud is actually meant for.

09:08 - DevOps Practices and Team Management

Matt Pacheco
We ran to your point, we recently ran a survey, um, of 400 IT decision makers. And amongst their biggest priorities for IT modernization coming up in, well, in 2024 and leading up into 2025, um, was cloud adoption, cloud migration. That was that was a big thing. They want to move to the cloud or move more workloads to the cloud, uh, from on prem. Um, in your experience with cloud migration, um, and customers and clients wanting to do these things and you yourself also wanting to do these things, what are some of the biggest challenges, uh, you faced when migrating, uh, clients to the cloud?

Wesley Niels
Yeah. So, and good question in in terms of really understanding the technical, um, difficulties because where we were used to actually building stuff in a data center or on a virtual station layer like VMware or whatsoever, it was always built on virtual machines. Right? By almost by default. Like 99%.

And that was the old school server. You have a server in here. You install your application here or your SQL database. And then suddenly, you have the cloud in here. And it was easy to just move your server easy.

It was sort of, you know, replicating the work that you did on VMware, do it in the cloud. However, um, the cloud was actually more meant and not I'm not talking about the beginning, but especially in the last 4 or 5 years was more meant to, you know, run cloud native, uh, components where you migrate your application to an abstraction layer where there is no virtual machine, or no OS involved anymore. And that and that is that is a difficult part because it's not just, you know, grabbing your application and just putting it on the cloud, and it works. It's not like it's not like that. Um, as well as integrating, uh, to external system, for example.

Those kinds of difficulties, uh, where you where you cannot just use one discipline like only a cloud engineer, you also need a developer that actually develops that application to make sure that an application runs properly on that web app or a, uh, a function app or a Lambda or whatsoever. And those kinds of migrations were the most complicated ones that we've encountered. Um, but it is, I in my opinion, still the right way forward instead of just, you know, grabbing your server and putting it in the cloud. That doesn't make any sense in terms of cost, but also, uh, you know, it doesn't help you with driving forward with making a scalable solution, uh, a leaner and meaner setup at Zebra. So that that is that is, I think, the biggest difficulty.

And the second one, briefly touched it already, the integrations with third parties where you suddenly have an endpoint or a source or, um, uh, that that or destination that that comes that is in a different area. And especially with the cloud where they want to make things scalable, where you have so much different IP addresses and subnets, uh, that is sometimes challenging to ask an IT, uh, party of a of a vendor, like, hey. Do you want to can you maybe, um, uh, IP allow list these 3 IPs or these 7 IPs? And that brings a lot of questions. And that was always the hardest part in terms of communication with these kinds of parties.

Matt Pacheco
Those are great examples of challenges. What are some ways you overcame some of those challenges for customers?

Wesley Niels
Um, yeah. The best part or the again, so talking about the application, migrating into the cloud, what is really needed is understanding, you know, how the application is built and what you eventually want to achieve by running it in a cloud native resource. It's not something, you know, that can only be done by a cloud engineer, as I already mentioned, but you need to make sure that these disciplines work together. Right? So, uh, where, you know, you all in in the old world, you had an engineer and a developer.

Nowadays days, DevOps is a sort of a practice that helps you with, you know, achieving that. But there are still there still boundaries there. Right? So, I think the best part is putting those people together, sitting next to each other. Well, virtually, maybe physically.

It's kind of hard these days. Uh, but, um, um, having really working let them work together and making sure that the app is, uh, distributed from where it was from, where it's running on a virtual machine, to converting it to run on a cloud native service. So that's, I think, the biggest stake here. And for, um, you know, for working with third parties and, you know, doing these IP allow leasing or getting access, etcetera. Communication is always key.

Don't be negative in terms of, you know, uh, I'm in the cloud. You guys are not. And, you know, this this is just how it works. Think with a solution. Communicate properly with, uh, with these parties.

And, um, uh, at the end, uh, you know, just emailing and back and forth doesn't help. Uh, so my big stake is here as well. Just organize a meeting with your engineers, with their engineers, setting it up and making sure that, you know, that that, you know, that we're good to go and everybody's on the same page. And eventually, what you want to achieve is, you know, the end result for your client. And in most of the case that, you know, it's both of your clients.

So, uh, communication, again, is key.

25:08 - Cloud Cost Optimization Strategies

Matt Pacheco
Very interesting. Uh, so we're going to switch gears to, uh, talk a little bit about cloud costs and optimization because, uh, so in the in the survey I mentioned earlier, um, we also found that one of the biggest challenges to IT modernization was budgeting, cloud costs. We know it's a big thing on everyone's mind year after year, um, and it's not going anywhere is my guess. Um, what are some key strategies, um, you employ for optimizing cloud costs, especially for projects at your company?

Wesley Niels
Yeah. Um, I think this is a really big topic, especially for digital agency. We work with clients that not per se don't have a big budget, but it's more like we they don't want to spend any of their marketing budget on cloud or things that they don't see. Right? So, for example, if you if we need to build a new website and 10% of, uh, of their budget goes to cloud and building a cloud environment and running costs, etcetera, that is a lot.

So, uh, we always have to be really, yeah, how do you say it? Adventurous. We need to sort of invent, you know, the best things because it still needs to be scalable, it still needs to be reliable, and it needs to be secure. So, um, how can you cope with that? It is really important that you understand their business needs and translate that back into what you're building in the cloud.

You can build a Ferrari, but if they don't have the budget for a Ferrari, then, you know, don't build it. But make sure that you make at least something that is a verbose as something like that. Right? And also give them an understanding of how important it is to build a proper foundation in the cloud for their application. And sometimes they then they understand, like, uh, wait.

Okay. So, if I don't make a redundant setup, then that means that my availability goes from 99.99% to 99.95%. Those kind of triggers helps them sometimes to make a different decision. That's not per se in optimization, but it gives at least some clarity for that client to understand where their money goes to. If we look at the optimization part in terms of really building the environments, what we always do is build a service architecture.

So, we try to minimize the number of components within a cloud architecture and making sure that they're really lean setups, like, not, like, over committed. Uh, we always look at the low we do load test before. We make sure that they're sized so much down that the costs are as low as possible, but it still runs the application properly. And that is that is really important to constantly look at how, uh, how does your environment perform versus the costs? And I think if you look at the majority of our, uh, projects, uh, they're not per se the most expensive ones, um, comparing to what we sometimes inherit from other, uh, parties.

30:20 - Bridging Technical and Non-Technical Communication

Matt Pacheco
Listeners probably picked up on it. You have this great skill of, uh, translating these complex concepts, um, and making them easier to understand, uh, for especially for nontechnical stakeholders potentially too within your company and for customers. You're probably talking to a lot of different people in the process. Um, how do you what's your what's your approach to doing? Like, how do you what's your approach to translating complex cloud concepts for people who are not technical?

Wesley Niels
Yeah. I think it comes also from my background as a help desk engineer, where you really have to listen and understand what somebody on the other side of the phone back in those days. Because they just called up, you know, my mouse doesn't work, or my account is locked or whatsoever. And you really have to focus on listening what they actually wanted. So that's what I learned throughout the years as well as designing new architectures or having a sales pitch or whatsoever.

Listening to the client and then trying to translate that back into what you want to say from a technical side but then translating back in there in their in their language. Because otherwise, you'll you know, they will get lost, and they don't understand what you actually mean. And my what I've learned as well in the company that I worked that I'm working with right now at depth is what really helps is doing, like, a sort of an elevator pitch. And the key here is a slide deck. And, again, for techies, that's probably they will say, like, you know, there's a marketing or the sales pitch again.

35:52 - Global Cloud Operations and Regulatory Challenges

Matt Pacheco
And I'm sure working with a global cloud operation with people located in a bunch of different places, that adds some complexity. What are some unique challenges, um, when managing cloud operations across, uh, EMEA in your region? Um, what are some of the challenges you face, uh, when managing those teams?

Wesley Niels
Yeah. Again, the physical the physical, uh, part is obviously always a thing. But, um, uh, as I mentioned, we try to, um, we try to actually make sure that we standardize, um, everything as much as possible. Right? Because if you standardize a lot of things, everybody understands how it works.

When we when, you know, when we started with this whole journey, we had different teams, we had engineers in the beginning, in different countries working on you know, having a different way of working and that doesn't help with collaborating. So first of all, what we did, like, bringing all the engineers together. Having them sit together, do a Miro board and, you know, with yellow, uh, with yellow stickies, uh, on there. And, you know, what do you think is best? Uh, and then eventually and that's really hard sometimes for engineers.

Meet in the middle. Because, you know, one of the things that that I also don't believe in is, um, or maybe, um, where I believe in sorry. Where I believe in is multi cloud engineers. My engineers are trained on GCP, AWS, and Azure. And you have a lot of engineers.

They say, like, oh, yeah. I'm really on into AWS. I don't like Microsoft Azure, for example. But why not? It's just a cloud environment.

You need to make it abstract. And I know, you know, you love Ferrari or love Virginia. I understand that. But this is this is a cloud environment. It's not it’s not a car.

Right? So maybe they treat it like that. But, um, yeah, I think it's really controversial. Like, you know, who cares if your client really wants to go on Azure? You know, just, you know, move forward and do it.

And, um, uh, obviously, they have their preference, uh, in my teams. They have preference on Azure. They have preference on AWS. And we try to put them on projects where, you know, where the preference is. But if that's not possible because they're booked or whatsoever, you know, they should also be able to deploy environments on Azure.

And then coming back to that whole, you know, cloud operations and working together, making standardized, uh, solutions, uh, putting things in in Terraform, like standardizing these templates, uh, making sure that we're all agree on using this technology, making sure that we use Cloudflare as a CDN or and etcetera too. So, you know, if you agree on that and work together, they already what I already said before, they speak the same language and then they come together as a group. And then they will be strong, and they will do knowledge sharing, and they will collaborate way better than, you know, just putting them in silos and doing let them do their thing.

Matt Pacheco
So how do you navigate, um, differences in regulations, um, across different countries? So, you're working cloud operations is one thing, but how do you manage um, the different laws? And it's constantly changing. Like, there's data privacy, uh, laws, uh, in certain countries. There's sustainability law.

It's all changing constantly, and, uh, Europe is often at the forefront of some of that regulation. How do you manage that?

Wesley Niels
Yeah. Yeah. That that's a difficult topic, to be honest. And, uh, I want to be clear. We do have engineers throughout the entire world.

So, they're in Australia. They're in the US. They're in Argentina and in the etcetera. So, it's a constant, uh, conversation that you need to have internally to make sure that if a client, especially with government clients, that that it's really hard for them or to for us that we make sure that they are not able to reach those environments. Right?

Just to make sure there there's no possibility for data leakage, for example. And, um, it's a constant conversation going on, but the majority of our clients don't really, they're not on the forefront of, you know, having their environment so protected as a government or, uh, or a military environment where, uh, you know, these engineers are not able to go to these environments. So, we try to, you know, to look at per case, client per case. And if it's really needed, then we make sure that this engineer or this person is not able to, uh, uh, to get to these environments, uh, to make sure that indeed there is no possibility for a data leakage or for privacy or whatsoever.

41:30 - Closing: Future Trends, Advice for Transitioning to Cloud, and Final Thoughts

Matt Pacheco
Great. Really interesting. Um, as we wrap up, I'm going to ask you some, uh, future forward thinking, uh, questions. Uh, let's start with, uh, what is the most exciting, uh, cloud technology or trend, uh, that you see coming in the next 5 to 10 years that that really gets you energized and excited?

Wesley Niels
I'm not going to say AI. Sorry. I'm a little bit, uh, tired of AI. No. No.

No. No. That's a joke. I think AI is a great tool and, uh, you know, you should we all should leverage from it, uh, to make sure that we, you know, enhance things, make things better, etcetera. However, if I purely look at cloud itself, I think cloud component based, uh, computing is something that, you know, that will make a next step.

And what I mean with that is the abstraction layer is what I talked already before where we went from virtual machines to going to a cloud native service. I think, eventually, it will go a level up where and that that is SaaS, so that software as a service. But leveraging more from different SaaS services and building one environment. And I think, for example, the Mac, uh, Alliance, that's, uh, uh, microservices, API, composable, and, uh, headless, they embrace that whole idea of making an extraction layer of, you know, putting products next to each other instead of building actually things in the cloud.

And not saying that per se this is the new thing because it's already there for a couple of years, but it is something that I do see as a trend and moving forward more often.

But there is also a danger in there, and that's also something that there's a there's a different side and danger in there because it's all SaaS. And SaaS is not per se the biggest it's not per se, uh, then the most scalable solution out there. You're you do incorporate a sort of a vendor lock in. They are able to say to you, like, hey. You've used our cloud services, and now you suddenly have to pay twice as much for it.

And that's not with all SaaS providers, but that is a danger. They are able to, you know, to just say that to you. And you can say that with the public cloud providers as well. However, if you make sure that your application or your solution that you've deployed on the cloud environment is cloud agnostic, then it's way easier to just move out instead of having a tool where you run your front end web application, where it's really hard to move that to a different SaaS provider or even back to the cloud, to a public cloud.

Matt Pacheco
Excellent points. Thank you for such an insightful conversation, Wesley. It's been a pleasure to have you.