1. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Taming Cloud Sprawl
with a Composable Environment
Architecture
Kief Morris

2. © 2023 Thoughtworks
"Scale at
all costs"
The path to the cloud age
2
"Grow
sustainably"
"Move fast and
break things"
Business
Tech
Iron Age
of IT
Business
Digital
Age of
Shadow IT
Tech
Business
and Tech
Cloud Age
"Technology is
not core"
Business
Digital
Age of
Digital
Sprawl
Digital
Digital
Tech

3. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Infrastructure enables value
3
Infrastructure strategy
Value to customer
Drive design and
implementation
Enable value

4. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Distance between value and infrastructure
4
Infrastructure strategy
Value to customer
Engineering strategy
Product strategy
Organizational strategy
Drive design and
implementation
Enable value

5. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Is cloud our infrastructure strategy?
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/the-17-ways-to-run-containers-on-aws/
"17 ways to run a container on AWS"
"17 More Ways to Run Containers on AWS"
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/17-more-ways-to-run-containers-on-aws/
"17 Final Ways to Run Containers"
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/17-Final-Ways-to-Run-Containers/

6. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Is cloud our infrastructure strategy?
https://landscape.cncf.io/
Cloud Native Computing Foundation Landscape

7. © 2023 Thoughtworks
https://landscape.cncf.io/
Cloud Native Computing Foundation Landscape
🎩 David Bell @dastbe

8. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Is cloud our infrastructure strategy?
8
Cloud is the start of an infrastructure strategy

9. © 2023 Thoughtworks
How does infrastructure support organization strategy?
© 2022 Thoughtworks
Add users
Add products
Grow the business Sustain the business
Operational quality and confidence

10. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Infrastructure capabilities
© 2022 Thoughtworks
Ensure
compliance
Manage cost
of ownership
Provide
customer
environments
Add users
Provide
delivery
environments
Add products
Grow the business Sustain the business
Operational quality and confidence

11. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Measuring infrastructure capabilities
© 2022 Thoughtworks
Add users
Add products
Grow the business
Ensure
compliance
Provide
delivery
environments
Manage cost
of ownership
Provide
customer
environments
Sustain the business
Operational quality and confidence
Software delivery metrics (4 key metrics)
Time and effort to set up for a new product
Time and effort to integrated an acquired product

12. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Measuring infrastructure capabilities
© 2022 Thoughtworks
Add users
Add products
Grow the business
Ensure
compliance
Provide
delivery
environments
Manage cost
of ownership
Sustain the business
Operational quality and confidence
Provide
customer
environments
Time and effort to set up a new customer environment
Incremental ownership cost of each environment

13. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Measuring infrastructure capabilities
© 2022 Thoughtworks
Add users
Add products
Grow the business
Ensure
compliance
Provide
delivery
environments
Sustain the business
Operational quality and confidence
Provide
customer
environments
Incremental ownership cost (per product, customer, …)
Variation across environments (technical debt)
Manage cost
of ownership
Time and effort to update

14. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Environment architecture

15. © 2023 Thoughtworks
How to provide infrastructure to multiple product
development teams
Environment
Infrastructure
Software Web Storefront Mobile Apps Product Admin
Catalog Shopping Checkout Customer

16. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Monolithic environment design antipattern
Environment is defined,
provisioned, and managed as
a single architectural unit.
The antipattern:
Infrastructure is owned by a
single team (Conway's Law).
Simple way to start, grows
organically.
Why:
Infrastructure
team
Environment
Lower effectiveness of
infrastructure change
delivery due to scope of
each change
Slower time to value for
new products, markets,
teams, services due to
friction for adding and
changing infrastructure
Higher technical debt due
to less frequent updates
and fixes
Either a single infrastructure
project or multiple projects
with tight coupling.
How:
Infrastructure
Code
Infrastructure
provisioning tool
Time, effort, and risk of each
change grows exponentially
with the size of the
environment.
Consequences:

17. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Composable environment design pattern
Environment
baseplate
Infrastructure
Products
Provision and integrate
independently delivered
infrastructure products.
The pattern
Use the packaged
infrastructure products pattern
with a minimalist "baseplate"
environment.
How:
Decouple delivery of
infrastructure and enable
alignment to workloads.
Why:
Design, build, and deliver
infrastructure around user
concerns
Apply rigorous testing and
governance processes to
"build quality in" for
infrastructure
Update, upgrade, improve,
and fix to each
infrastructure product
Flexibility to deploy subsets
of infrastructure to any
given environment
Enable sharing and
integration of
implementations

18. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Horizontal environment provisioning antipattern
Infrastructure is designed and
deployed separately from the
software that uses it.
The antipattern:
Infrastructure for all
applications is built in one
step. Then each application is
deployed and configured.
How:
Product development and
infrastructure are separate
teams. Desire to treat
infrastructure as generic.
Why:
Lack of alignment between
infrastructure and the
software that runs on it.
Consequences:
Lower software delivery
effectiveness due to
dependencies across teams
Frequent disruption to
delivery due to need to
coordinate infrastructure
changes across all workloads
Higher cost of ownership due
to effort needed by
infrastructure teams
Higher technical debt due to
overheads of fixes and
updates

19. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Application-driven infrastructure provisioning pattern
Trigger provisioning of
workload-specific
infrastructure on-demand,
with deployment
The pattern:
Options include use of GitOps
and Infrastructure as Data
How:
Reduce dependencies on
infrastructure and platform
teams, align resource usage
with need.
Why:
Lower cost of ownership
since infrastructure teams
spend less effort on routine
tasks
More effective delivery
due to reduced bottlenecks
Faster time to value since
product teams are
empowered to make
infrastructure changes
Higher operational quality
by clean separation of
concerns for infrastructure
provisioning

20. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Delivery environments

21. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Test Stage Prod
How to support the path to production for software
Software release
Environments

22. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Crowded environment antipattern
Dev
Multiple teams using a single
environment for unrelated
development and testing
activities
The antipattern:
It's easier to share an existing
monolithic environment than
create a new one
Why:
Lower software delivery
effectiveness because
work is often blocked
waiting for environments to
be available
Lower software delivery
effectiveness due to failed
deployments or tests from
changes made by other
teams
Excessive hosting costs
from underutilized
environments kept running
because they're too scarce
to let go when not in use
Technical debt because it's
too disruptive to apply
updates to environments in
heavy use

23. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Just enough environment pattern
Full Production
Environment
App A Development
Environment
Faster time to value by
providing resources for
software delivery
Reduce costs by provisioning
only what's needed
Reduce costs by using
on-demand provisioning to
remove the environment when
not in use
Reduce technical debt by
using the most up to date
infrastructure
An environment provisioned
with only the infrastructure
needed for a specific purpose
The pattern:
Use composable infrastructure
products driven by the subset
of the workload needed
How:
Low barriers to provision an
environment and simplified
process for selecting needed
infrastructure
Why:

24. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Snowflakes as code antipattern
./test ./stage ./prod
Environments
Infrastructure code
Maintaining a separate copy of
the infrastructure code for
each environment
The antipattern:
Infrastructure code changes
are copied and customized for
each environment
How:
Takes less initial effort to
implement variations between
environments
Why:
Higher cost of ownership
for each environment
Additional manual effort needed
to change infrastructure in each
environment
Consequences:
Increased technical debt
because updates, fixes, and
improvements are less likely
to be applied quickly to all
environments
Lower delivery
effectiveness due to
inconsistencies between
environments

25. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Multi-deployment infrastructure pattern
Packaged
infrastructure
code
Environments
Build versioned packages of
infrastructure code to use
across environments
The pattern:
Manage variations between
environments using
configuration parameters
How:
Need to standardize practices
and tooling for provisioning,
configuring, integrating, and
sharing infrastructure code
Consequence:
Faster time to value by
simplifying the process to
provision infrastructure
Reduced technical debt by
making it easy to deliver
updates, patches, and fixes
with less disruption
Improved operational quality
by ensuring compliance,
performance, and other
qualities are built into
infrastructure packages

26. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Market environments

27. © 2023 Thoughtworks
How to serve multiple, different user bases
Customers
in Germany
Customers
in Korea
Customers
in UK
● Regional
deployments
● SaaS business model
● Partnerships
Examples:

28. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Single shared tenancy environment
Customers
in Germany
Use a single environment to
host multiple customer
bases
The pattern:
Keep cost of ownership low
Why:
Customers
in Korea
Customers
in UK

29. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Multiple single tenancy environments
DE
Customers
in Germany
Maintain a separate
environment for each
customer base
The pattern:
● Commercial
agreements
● Regulatory
requirements
Why:
Customers
in Korea
KR
Customers
in UK
UK

30. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Snowflake market environments
Customers
in Germany
DE
./de
Maintaining a separate copy
of the infrastructure code
for each environment
The antipattern:
Takes less initial effort to
implement variations
between environments
Why:
Higher cost of
ownership for each
environment
Increased technical
debt because updates,
fixes, and improvements
are less likely to be
applied quickly to all
environments
Customers
in Korea
KR
./kr
Customers
in UK
UK
./uk

31. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Snowflake delivery environments for Snowflake market environments
Customers
in Germany
DE
./de
Customers
in Korea
KR
./kr
UK
./staging-kr
Maintaining a separate copy
of the infrastructure code
for each environment
The antipattern:
Takes less initial effort to
implement variations
between environments
Why:
Higher cost of
ownership for each
environment
Increased technical
debt because updates,
fixes, and improvements
are less likely to be
applied quickly to all
environments
UK
./staging-de
Customers
in UK
UK
./uk
UK
./staging-uk
Even higher cost of
ownership
Even more technical
debt

32. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Composable market environment pattern
Customers
in Germany
Customers
in UK
Customers
in Korea
Build custom environments
for different customer bases
from standardized
infrastructure product
packages
The pattern:

33. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Wrapping up
33

34. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Packaged infrastructure products
Separate the concerns
of developing and using
infrastructure Declare use of
infrastructure
product Develop and use
infrastructure for
particular needs
Infrastructure product
is provisioned for use
Empower teams
to build custom
infrastructure as
needed
Standardize how
infrastructure is
built, governed,
shared,
provisioned, and
integrated
Provide infrastructure
built around the
concerns of its users
Align infrastructure
with the strategic
goals of the
organization
Develop
infrastructure
product package

35. © 2023 Thoughtworks
Thank you
Kief Morris
kief@thoughtworks.com
35