Cloud Architecture Done Right

Cloud Architecture Done Right

Reducing Enterprise Complexity to One Clean Operating Model

After 20+ years in enterprise IT, I’ve seen every flavor of architecture:

• Monoliths pretending to be microservices

• “Cloud-native” apps running like on-prem

• Feature teams building their own networking

• Security bolted on at the end

• Observability as an afterthought

And then… you occasionally see it done right.

What follows is not theory. It’s not hype. It’s not vendor marketing.

It’s a clean cloud operating model that scales.

The Real Problem: Complexity

As organizations scale to:

• 50+ repositories

• 100+ microservices

• Multiple domains (marketing, finance, operations, support)

• Kubernetes clusters across environments

Complexity explodes.

The mistake most companies make?

They let every team solve everything.

Networking.

Security.

Observability.

CI/CD.

Orchestration.

Compliance.

That doesn’t scale.

What scales is separation of planes.

The Four-Plane Cloud Operating Model

When cloud is done right, it separates into four major planes:

1. Control Plane

2. Shared Services Plane

3. Network Plane

4. Application Plane

Each has clear ownership.

Each has a clear responsibility.

And most importantly — they do not bleed into each other.

1️⃣ Control Plane (Governance & Intelligence Layer)

This is the brain.

Owned by the Shared Services / Platform Team.

It includes:

• Orchestration & Automation (workflow engines, agent coordination)

• Policy & Governance (security controls, guardrails, FinOps)

• OpenTelemetry (central tracing & metrics backbone)

• Identity & Access Management (role-based IAM, federation, service identity)

This layer does not build features.

It governs how features are built and operated.

It ensures:

• Compliance is enforced

• Cost is visible

• Telemetry is standardized

• Automation is consistent

• Security is policy-driven

Without this plane, chaos creeps in.

2️⃣ Shared Services Plane (Reusable Platform Services)

This is where platform capability lives.

Managed by the Shared Services Team.

It includes:

• API Gateway & WAF

• Authentication / OIDC

• Observability & Monitoring

• Security & Compliance Tooling

• Centralized Logging

• Platform-level integrations

This plane provides capabilities.

It does not build business features.

It exposes standardized services to application teams so they don’t reinvent the wheel 50 times.

Think of this as the “Cloud Operating System.”

3️⃣ Network Plane (The Secure Fabric)

This is the connective tissue.

Often implemented using:

• Transit Gateway (hub-and-spoke model)

• Security VPC

• Networking VPC

• Controlled ingress/egress

• PrivateLink endpoints

• DNS governance

Application VPCs connect into this fabric.

They do not directly peer with each other in uncontrolled ways.

The network plane enforces:

• Isolation

• Traffic control

• Central inspection

• Secure north-south and east-west routing

Without this plane, you don’t have an enterprise. You have a lab experiment.

4️⃣ Application Plane (Where Innovation Lives)

This is owned by feature teams.

Each domain or product team typically has:

• Its own VPC

• Its own EKS cluster (or ECS/EC2 as needed)

• Its own microservices

• Its own repositories

• CI/CD pipelines

This is where the real work happens:

• Websites

• APIs

• Chatbots

• Backend services

• Domain logic

The application teams focus on business value.

They don’t manage platform plumbing.

That’s the key.

Why This Model Works

This architecture scales because it aligns:

Org structure with system structure.

Platform Team → Owns Control + Shared Services + Governance

Feature Teams → Own Application Domains

When those responsibilities are clean:

• Innovation accelerates

• Security strengthens

• Costs become visible

• Onboarding becomes faster

• Incident response becomes structured

• Architecture becomes repeatable

This is platform engineering done right.

What Most Companies Get Wrong

They skip the Control Plane.

They blur Shared Services and Application responsibilities.

They let every team:

• Pick their own observability stack

• Create their own networking

• Define their own identity strategy

• Build their own CI/CD patterns

That works at 5 services.

It fails at 50.

It collapses at 200.

The Missing Layer Most Forget: Identity & Telemetry

Two things make this model powerful:

1. Identity as a first-class plane

   
   

   • Service-to-service identity

   • Federated access

   • Role governance

2. 
   

3. OpenTelemetry as the backbone

   
   

   • Standardized tracing

   • Metrics consistency

   • Cross-domain visibility

4. 
   

Once telemetry and identity are centralized, everything becomes observable and governable.

That’s when enterprise cloud stops being guesswork.

This Is Not AWS-Specific

This pattern works in:

• AWS

• Azure

• GCP

• Hybrid

The provider doesn’t matter.

The separation of planes does.

The Result: A Cloud That Makes Sense

When you reduce the entire enterprise cloud into one page, you get:

Control

Platform

Network

Applications

Clean boundaries.

Clear ownership.

Repeatable patterns.

After all these years, this is what cloud complexity reduces to.

Not more tools.

Not more dashboards.

Not more YAML.

Just structure.

If you’re leading teams, building platforms, or scaling microservices —

this model will focus your conversations on what actually matters.

Because architecture isn’t about diagrams.

It’s about clarity.

And clarity scales.

This is a foundational piece. You’ll reuse it.