Episode 35 - Cloud Management with Kim Weins

State of the CIO

Kim Weins is the Vice President of Cloud Strategy at Flexera, where she helps build awareness of its award-winning cloud management solution. She has held executive marketing positions at a variety of enterprise software startups as well as public software companies. Most recently, as Senior Vice President of Marketing at OpenLogic, she helped evangelize and drive demand for open source and cloud technologies at large enterprises worldwide. She has also consulted as interim CMO at a variety of high-growth startups. Kim received a B.S. in engineering from Duke University.

Kim discusses the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report. Kim also shares strategies that companies can use to manage multi-clouds and find and remove cloud waste.

Show Notes:

• [01:01] Kim shares how she got into the enterprise software industry. She is now working closely with CIOs.
• [01:32] 2012 was the first year the State of the Cloud report came out.
• [04:05] Private cloud means to have most of the characteristics of the public cloud in a private data center.
• [06:34] Private cloud was very popular 7 or years ago, really declined, but is now getting new life again.
• [07:06] Today on average companies use 2.2 public clouds. They usually have a primary with 70-80% of their workloads and a secondary with 10 or 20%. As companies get more mature in their cloud use they are more likely to add on that third cloud.
• [07:56] On the private cloud side there is also an average of 2.2 private clouds.
• [09:10] Some clouds don’t require you to use containers.
• [11:06] The most common multi-cloud architecture is data integration. Many companies are doing some data integration between clouds.
• [11:31] One-third of the companies were doing a more sophisticated architecture including work-load mobility between clouds, failover between clouds, or individual applications going between public and private clouds.
• [13:19] 59% of the companies they asked expect their cloud use to be higher due to COVID-19 than what they had planned.
• [13:58] In some industries, their usage of cloud is falling off because they are getting so hammered.
• [14:48] For companies that were on a path to migrate to the cloud, the pandemic has made them accelerate their plans.
• [17:04] Budgets for people migrating to the cloud are growing quickly.
• [19:15] Saving money and optimizing existing cloud usage and costs is the number one initiative in the cloud. Followed closely by migrating more workloads to the cloud.
• [19:52] Moving to containers can be a cost-saving mechanism because it allows for more efficient use of infrastructure.
• [21:11] If you overprovision in the cloud you will pay more money. You have to right-size as you move.
• [21:48] Finding and removing storage that was being used and is no longer being used can be a quick win.
• [22:33] People are starting to use more of the discounting mechanisms from the cloud providers.
• [23:45] Buying for your peak to get a bigger discount is the wrong thing to do in cloud management.
• [25:24] You need to think carefully about your commitments. It is important to optimize first and then make your commitment at the right level based on optimized usage and future plans.
• [27:25] Kim’s advice to herself at the beginning of her career would be serendipity is your friend. If you find something you are interested in, work hard, do a good job, and go above and beyond opportunities will arise.
• [28:51] Kim shares her best worst boss story.
• [30:31] Make sure to go check out the State of the Cloud report on the Flexera website.

Links and Resources:

• State of the CIO Podcast Website
• State of the CIO Podcast on Apple Podcasts
• Dan on LinkedIn
• Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report
• Flexera
• Kim on LinkedIn