Why Do You Need to be Careful while Formulating Multi-cloud Strategies?
Questions about whether organizations should be utilizing cloud services are done and dusted and well answered. As technology is evolving and almost all companies have hopped on to become a digitally transformed organization, a concern has cropped up and that is determining the best type of cloud environment. It gets quite tricky when organizations are asked to choose between the security of a private cloud and the scalability and elasticity of a public cloud. This is where the concept of multi-cloud comes in. Multi-cloud is slightly different from hybrid cloud. In this model, the companies are free to choose cloud providers and avoid dependency on only one vendor for their cloud needs. Also, they have the flexibility of choosing a cloud as per their application or workload requirements. Furthermore, they can benefit from geographically dispersed clouds and deliver amicable client experiences, irrespective of their client’s location.
After explaining the meaning of multi-cloud and shedding some light on its advantages, let’s move on to understand its deployment in the organization. There are certain components of a multi-cloud strategy. The first one being the selection of the cloud mix. Organizations need to define their requirements and identify the best type of cloud and choose a vendor who will support their growing business needs. The second component is defining the equation between different types of cloud in business environments. Businesses need to decide how multi-cloud will communicate with their on-premises infrastructure if there is any. The third component is deciding the location of their data. Based on their data’s sensitivity, businesses will have to decide whether to keep it in a public or a private cloud. The last component is formulating data access rules for different cloud types.
A multi-cloud strategy is similar to any technology strategy and therefore to receive maximum output, businesses need to base it on their present and future requirements and their technology stance. Some of the requirements like minimization of costs and lower IT maintenance efforts might remain the same across different industry verticals. But the extent of data security, scalability, and flexibility are some of those which would largely differ across industries. For example, for some businesses, business continuity and disaster recovery might be of prime importance and not the scalability aspect of the cloud.
A multi-cloud strategy should be coined after considering certain typical factors and one of these is if businesses are interested in utilizing open-source software or proprietary ones. The organizations also need to decide whether they will use one platform for all their applications and workloads or will invest in a central platform that would then be integrated with third-party software.
Now let’s learn what are the benefits of building a multi-cloud strategy…
Improved client servicesWith multiple clouds and vendors providing the bandwidth for applications, there are minimal chances of downtime. The organizations can also engage with a cloud service broker who will orchestrate and manage workloads in multiple clouds and ensure optimized performance, 24*7 availability, and lower costs. A properly defined approach that defines the placement of workloads also guarantee speed and consistency.
Heightened security position Organizations that have a multi-cloud strategy in place have a strong security posture and are less susceptible to vulnerabilities or breaches when compared to their counterparts. With varied choices in terms of cloud types and vendors, IT teams have the flexibility of distributing the data appropriately. They can apply strict security controls such as single sign-on or multi-factor authentication to negate the possibilities of cybersecurity attacks.
Reduced costs A properly crafted multi-cloud strategy explains which workload should be placed in which type of cloud and enables an organization to save capital. On average, a business spends about 12% more in running workloads on an IaaS platform as compared to doing the same in them own data centers.
Create a successful and efficient multi-cloud strategy with E2E Cloud Building a multi-cloud strategy is not an easy feat and has some implications associated with it as the organizations prefer to formulate technology strategies for the long term and don’t prefer to modify for at least 5 years unless there is a major technological change. Therefore, the building blocks of the multi-cloud strategy must be placed correctly to yield the intended results.