I often brow-beat people into the notion that “cloud is all about developers.” That’s hyperbolic - there’s actually a lot more to cloud than just supporting custom written software…and yet, that seems like the bulk of it. By “developers” I mean you’re running a SaaS (you’re a company who sells the SaaS, like an “ISV” would sell packaged software) or you’re a company that uses cloud-based applications to help run their business (think of online banking, or Uber, or mobile loyalty apps like the Starbuck’s app…or internal applications just used to help run a company).
“Developers” seem like one of the best work-loads for cloud and what cloud platforms are mostly oriented around (there’s some NFV stuff scurrying around in the OpenStack world which is possibly “a thing” - there’s also HPC/batch/Big Data/Hadoop which matches as well…I’d suggest that the second is just a stats nerd type of programming, sort of) What cloud doesn’t seem perfect for is running packaged software. That might work, but it seems like your best bang for the buck would be using it to run and support custom written applications. And then, you probably want DevOps.
This may seem obvious to many of you readers…however many of the conversations I get involved with as an analyst never talk about developers, ever. It’s worth pointing out, then, that unless The Point of your cloud project is to support developers, you’re probably doing it wrong (or know so well what you’re doing that you don’t need silly diagrams).
Footnote: there’s also what I’m going to start calling “The BlueBox Private Cloud Correction,” so named because they always chime in when I over simplify “private cloud” in public. Their point is that “private cloud” is a lot more complicated/expansive than just “on-premises cloud run by the company using the cloud.” I think they’re right. Remotely managed “private cloud” is a-OK in my book.