Humana: Complexity and the Cloud, Enterprise Edition

Abstract

Is your company failing to get the expected ROI on its cloud investments? Are your software engineers spending far too much time thinking about containers, pub/sub topics, and cloud functions instead of focusing on the business problems their software is meant to solve? If so, you are not alone.

Many large enterprises face disappointment with their cloud investments, failing to achieve the expected return on investment. This issue often stems from focusing too much on the easier aspects of cloud adoption, such as setting up infrastructure, while neglecting the more challenging task of adapting software architecture for the cloud’s unique demands.

In traditional data centers, hardware is reliable and failure-resistant, which shapes the way software is designed. However, the cloud environment is inherently ephemeral, with transient virtual machines and distributed storage that requires applications to be resilient and fault-tolerant. This shift necessitates a new approach to software architecture, one that many enterprises overlook, leading to inefficiencies and increased development times.

The cloud often shifts complexity rather than reducing it, placing new burdens on software engineers. They must now handle transient failures, ensure data durability, and maintain distributed consistency. These challenges not only erode the anticipated benefits of cloud migration but also increase cognitive load, distracting engineers from writing good software and focusing on business logic. Furthermore, this complexity shift often benefits cloud providers from a billing and revenue perspective, as organizations may end up paying more for additional services and resources to manage these complexities.

Temporal offers a solution by providing an abstraction layer that simplifies the development of resilient cloud applications. It includes built-in primitives for managing state, retries, timeouts, and long-running workflows, allowing engineers to focus on business logic rather than infrastructure complexities. This results in applications that maintain high availability and fault tolerance, essential for cloud environments.

By using Temporal, software engineers are relieved from the burdens of cloud-specific challenges, improving productivity and accelerating the delivery of cloud-native applications. This alignment with modern software development practices, such as microservices and event-driven architectures, ensures that enterprises can modernize their application portfolios effectively.

The key to maximizing cloud investment ROI lies in rethinking software architecture to embrace the cloud’s unique characteristics. Temporal enables this transformation, ensuring cloud applications are as resilient and dependable as traditional on-premises systems, thereby realizing the full benefits of cloud migration. By addressing the true complexities of the cloud, enterprises can avoid unnecessary costs and achieve their strategic goals more effectively.

About the Presenter

Chas Meyer has spent the last decade of his career driving digital transformation initiatives spanning from the Fortune 500 to the Fortune 50. Throughout his journey, Chas has observed a common pitfall: organizations invest substantial resources in creating advanced cloud environments that their product delivery teams are simply unprepared for. Realizing that frameworks and services like Temporal offer the crucial abstraction layer needed to bridge this gap, Chas is passionate about empowering enterprises to fully realize the potential of cloud computing through these innovative solutions.