As the cloud and business landscape grows more complex and interconnected, businesses are continuously searching for solutions that offer the right mix of flexibility, efficiency, and security. Today, however, companies often face a limited choice between either self-managed software or fully-managed service, and each option poses their own specific security and management challenges.
Over time, the list of business and deployment pressures have only increased, as illustrated in Figure 1:
Figure 1: The business and deployment challenges faced by businesses
Initially, organizations adopted cloud deployments to benefit from their elasticity, ease of self-service, and cost-effective scalability, in addition to reducing their CAPEX (capital expenditures). However, as cloud adoption grew, OPEX (operational expenditures) became a concern, leading to cost-optimization strategies like annual commitments or selecting lower-cost regions.
The ever-changing landscape of compliance and regulatory requirements adds further complexity to cloud deployments, requiring companies to ensure data locality in addition to considering other governance measures. Cloud offerings and architectures are becoming increasingly more diverse, with organizations adopting multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud models. However, the rate of adoption differs across departments within the same organization, with each business unit moving at its own pace based on specific needs and resources. Finally, the rise of sophisticated cyber threats in recent years heightens the need for enhanced security measures within the cloud ecosystem.
Finding the ideal balance can be challenging with any deployment option, as it must deliver the right level of flexibility, efficiency, and security to address the specific needs of the business solution. We’ll refer to finding the balance of these three elements as “The Dilemma”.
The Dilemma
When choosing to implement a solution, businesses are met with the dilemma of how to choose a deployment that best balances the needs of:
- Flexibility: Including self-service options and portability.
- Efficiency: Maximizing investment value and optimizing costs.
- Security: Addressing the limitations of traditional security defenses in an evolving threat landscape.
Figure 2: Finding the balance between security, efficiency and flexibility
Today, there are two widely accepted and popular deployment models:
- Fully Managed Cloud Service: In this model, the vendor manages the entire infrastructure stack within their own environment, delivering the product as a complete service. This approach aligns with the traditional "Software as a Service" (SaaS) model.
- Self-Managed Software: In this model, the vendor ships the product as a set of deployable software artifacts, which the customer is responsible for managing entirely within their own infrastructure.
Both of these common deployment methods have their own strengths and weaknesses:
The Fully Managed Cloud Service model offers advantages such as economies of scale, on-demand elasticity, reduced CAPEX, complete infrastructure management, seamless self-service updates, operational support, and a pay-as-you-go pricing model. This heavily balances the flexibility and efficiency of the deployment method, but it offers less security.
In contrast, the Self-Managed Software model enables alignment with customer-specific security policies, customization, proximity to existing and legacy services, comprehensive observability, and reuse of existing infrastructure investments. This deployment model prioritizes security and offers some flexibility, though it generally lacks the efficiency of a cloud-based deployment.
Recognizing the strengths and potential benefits of each, Ververica has consistently offered both of these deployment options for our Unified Streaming Data Platform. While these options each meet a wide range of business needs, we identified an opportunity to create a new deployment model that bridges the gaps left between the two existing ones.
Ververica now offers the Bring Your Own Cloud deployment option, enabling customers to leverage existing cloud resources while retaining full control over their cloud infrastructure. This deployment offers the full flexibility and scalability of Ververica’s Unified Streaming Data Platform, while addressing the three key elements of the dilemma with a more balanced approach, ensuring an equitable distribution of flexibility, efficiency, and security.
Combining Strengths
Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC), is a fresh approach that enables customers to store their data in their own cloud while the vendor manages the metadata. BYOC frees companies from vendor lock-in and aligns seamlessly with strict cybersecurity strategies by leveraging cloud-native technologies and Zero Trust principles.
Figure 3: BYOC fills the gap between Fully Managed and Self-Managed deployments
Next, we’ll briefly discuss how the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) approach addresses the challenges of balancing flexibility, efficiency, and security, and solves the dilemma. We’ll also cover the fundamental architecture of this deployment model.
The Vendor Control Plane and User Data Plane: More Flexibility, More Security
BYOC operates by clearly separating the control plane (managed by the vendor, in this case, Ververica) from the distributed data plane (residing in the customer’s cloud or region of choice). In this model, Ververica manages only metadata, while customers retain complete control over their data (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Fully Managed and Self-Managed Deployments
This setup provides flexibility by allowing Ververica to handle management tasks, while customers maintain full control over their data ensuring compliance and privacy.
BYOC, Cloud-Native and Lightweight: More Efficiency, More Security
The beauty of a BYOC deployment lies in its cloud-native design, allowing it to work seamlessly with your existing infrastructure. This means that if you are already using cloud-native tools or resources, BYOC integrates smoothly, preserving your prior investments.
BYOC offers:
- Seamless Integration with Existing Infrastructure: BYOC fits naturally into your current setup, maximizing the use of existing infrastructure and investments.
- Kubernetes Compatibility for Portability: For customers using Kubernetes to manage containers, BYOC can easily integrate and co-locate alongside other workloads.
This approach enhances your data governance and control, extending your capability without disrupting your existing cloud environment.
As shown in Figure 5, Ververica’s cloud-native data plane microservices are designed to integrate with any existing compute, network, and storage infrastructure. In addition, it integrates with Kubernetes clusters, seamlessly co-locating with other workloads.
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Figure 5: Integrate with K8s and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Leverage Existing CAPEX and OPEX: More Efficiency, More Flexibility
Another key benefit of BYOC is the ability to leverage existing cost-saving agreements with existing cloud providers, including any prepaid or discounted services.
With BYOC, you can:
- Use Existing Discounts: Keep any pricing agreements with current cloud providers, applying them to Ververica’s Managed Service while maintaining in-house data control.
- Utilize Existing Investments: Reuse existing infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, third-party services, and other ecosystem tools without needing new setups.
- Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG): BYOC offers a flexible, usage-based model, so you pay only for the resources and services you actually use.
- Eliminate Network Bandwidth Costs: By bringing stream processing close to where the data resides, BYOC minimizes or removes inter-cloud connectivity charges.
Figure 6: BYOC allows utilization of existing investments, improving CAPEX and OPEX
BYOC + Zero Trust: Strengthening Security
Ververica designed BYOC from the ground up with Zero Trust principles, allowing customers to maintain full control over their cloud while future-proofing their security strategy. Zero Trust is a security model based on the principle of never trusting anyone or anything by default (whether inside or outside the network) and requiring verification for every user and system.
With Zero Trust principles intentionally built into the BYOC deployment option, you gain:
- Future-Ready Security: Aligning with a Zero Trust framework ensures that organizations are well-positioned for future security upgrades and standards.
- Reduced Security Risks: By adhering to Zero Trust principles, organizations lower the risk of unauthorized access. If a breach occurs, Zero Trust helps contain it, limiting potential damage.
Figure 7: BYOC is built to meet Zero Trust strategies
Take Control with Balanced Security, Flexibility, and Efficiency
Ververica’s Unified Streaming Data Platform Bring Your Own Cloud deployment option provides organizations with a data streaming solution that offers an ideal mix of flexibility, efficiency, and security.
BYOC bridges the gaps between fully-managed and self-managed solutions, giving you full control of your environment. Designed for seamless integration with your existing cloud infrastructure, it eliminates vendor lock-in and incorporates Zero Trust principles to support long-term cybersecurity objectives.
Stay tuned! In the upcoming posts of this blog series, we’ll explore each of these three challenges in greater detail.
Additional Resources
Read "Introducing Ververica's Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) Deployment Offering" Blog
Ready to get started? Explore the deployment options.
Not sure which deployment method is best for you? Contact us.
Want to learn more about Ververica’s Bring Your Own Cloud deployment offering of Ververica’s Unified Streaming Data Platform? Log into Ververica Academy to watch Ben Gamble and Igor Kersic onstage at Flink Forward Berlin 2024.
