Ruining a Christmas classic | Cloud Core 🎁

Table of Contents

⭐ The tragic tale of Flicker
🚀 Application development in 2030
🌎 SDC doing FinOps the right way
📢 Cloud quote of the month
📰 What we’ve been talking about this month
🗓️ Some dates for your diary

I’ll warn you. I’m not much of a songwriter. But here’s my take on a Christmas classic.

🎶 I don't want a lot for Christmas

There is just one thing I need…

I don't care about the presents

Self-service IT capabilities would be sweet.

I don't need to hang my stocking

There upon the fireplace

Santa Claus won't make me happy

But self-service capabilities would be ace.

Oh, I won't ask for much this Christmas

I won't even wish for snow,

I'm just gonna keep on waiting

For an automated workflow.

I just want developers to have their own,

More than you could ever know

Make my wish come true

All I want for Christmas is…

Self-service IT capabilities. Obviously. 🎁

(I did warn you, didn’t I?)

So, why am I ruining a Christmas classic like this?

Well, did you know 24% of tech leaders say they struggle to enable IT operations to support the needs of a product-focused organisation?

As we’re in the holiday spirit, why not give your teams the gift they deserve, and finally make IT work the way you’ve always wanted?

And that gift is this: A self-service experience they’ve been dreaming of.

We’ve been gathering insights from our finest Nordcloud brains, to better understand how you reimagine IT in this way. The aim? Being able to meet the demands of product teams, delivering support that’s not only efficient but also cost-effective.

In this whitepaper, we share how the best companies are getting it right. And how you can follow their lead and wrap up your IT challenges once and for all. You’ll find:

⭐ A target IT support model for platform engineering

⭐ What changes you need to make to get there

⭐ The tech capabilities that will bring your IT into the future

⭐ How to assess your current maturity and uncover the gaps that need filling

So, go ahead and give it a read.

Otherwise I’ve ruined a Christmas classic for no reason.

⭐ The tragic tale of Flicker

Time for a festive holiday story, with a sprinkling of Nordcloud customer magic…

Once, there was a little Christmas light named Flicker. He hung on a tree in the middle of Winterville, powered by the glowing might of RheinEnergie. His job was simple: shine, sparkle, and make people happy.

But Flicker was tired.

Every night, he blinked through the frost and biting wind, straining to keep up with the bigger, brighter lights on the string. They posed for selfies under the giant star at the top of the tree, and their photos flooded Naoo — an app Flicker would never appear on. No one noticed him.

Sometimes, Flicker imagined a different life. Maybe he could escape to a cozy apartment, managed by Sponda, where he’d light up a small tree for a family. Or maybe he could be placed on top of a tree made of small toy bricks. He even dreamed of flying far away on a Finnair flight, soaring over twinkling cities and endless, snowy fields.

But Flicker’s reality was different. His wire was old, his bulb dim. And when the town’s maintenance workers—contracted by Bravida—came to inspect the tree, they deemed Flicker unworthy.

They pulled him from the string and tossed him into a cold metal Veolia bin. There, he lay shattered, surrounded by broken ornaments and crumpled tinsel.

Days later, the bin was emptied into a massive truck, which navigated the dark streets using Atlas’ mapping software. Flicker was taken to a sorting facility. He held onto hope—maybe he could still be part of something meaningful, transformed into something new like a pair of spectacles sold at nexeye.

But fate had no such plans. Flicker’s components weren’t recyclable, and he was deemed waste. He was burned in an industrial incinerator, his faint glow extinguished forever.

Back in Winterville, the lights on the tree shone bright. Families laughed, unaware of the little light that once tried so hard to belong.

The End.

🚀 Application development in 2030

It’s almost 2025, but we’re getting a little impatient and thinking a little further ahead than that.

In this new blog, we’re imagining a world where anyone (not just seasoned developers) can build powerful applications. By 2030, self-service development platforms will make this vision a reality, transforming how businesses create software.

Low-code/no-code tools will empower teams with drag-and-drop tools to build apps faster, cheaper, and more flexibly. Want to integrate a database or add authentication? It’ll be as simple as click, click, done.

This development means business analysts, marketers, and product managers can become developers (well, “developers”), streamlining innovation without overloading IT.

Give it a read to see what we mean.

🌎 SDC doing FinOps the right way.

If there’s one thing SDC’s Christmas list didn’t include, it was soaring cloud costs. Luckily, they unwrapped some big savings:

🎁 16.2% cost savings across annual Azure spend
🎁 99.4% cost allocation accuracy (up from 74%)
🎁 40% reduction in cost per data transfer

As the leading platform provider for banking compliance in the Nordics, SDC needed more than just cost-cutting. They aimed to boost cloud visibility, improve ownership of cloud spend, and meet stringent security standards. All while delivering a great service to their banking customers.

The solution? A secure Green Field Landing Zone, tailored FinOps Assessment, and hands-on support with Managed FinOps.

See how they did it here.

📢 Cloud quote of the month

“Our business owners have also experienced how they can follow their own costs, and we’ve now started to make a lot more deliberate choices based on cost as well as added functionality than before.”

That sounds like a really good way of doing things.

📰 What we’ve been talking about this month

🤔 Forbes 7 Cloud Trends That Will Define Business Success In 2025

💵 CIOs to spend ambitiously on AI in 2025 — and beyond

😱 80% of businesses don’t have plans for an AI crisis

🤝 AWS director on how to win and maintain trust

🎯 IBM’s AI in Action report

🗓️ Some dates for your diary:

Events

On demand - Webinar: Modernisation strategies: From Infrastructure to AI.

Modernising can make a huge difference, especially in two main areas: Compute and storage. This webinar dives into real-world examples in both areas, so you’ll see exactly what’s possible when modernisation’s done right, and the practical benefits it can bring. Watch here.