The cloud has been a driving factor in the realm of digital transformation. Organizations migrate to cloud infrastructure and evolve in technical, operational, and cultural aspects. Several organizations today have chosen to migrate to the cloud or are devising cloud migration strategies.
Organizations across the globe are slowly migrating to multi-cloud models to make the most out of the new technological solutions and ensure they have the edge over their competition. Adopting such a strategy enables businesses to choose between the different services offered, mitigating risks and accessing the ideal solutions. Due to this scenario, embracing multi-cloud solutions will continue to increase in the next few years.
However, with the growing number of cloud service providers offering so many compelling and innovative technological solutions, choosing the right one that’s the right fit for your business takes time and effort. So, that begs the question, how do you choose the right technology? Should you opt for a cloud provider or choose a multi-cloud strategy instead? Let’s delve deeper into understanding multi-cloud strategies, common challenges, and the benefits of such an approach.
What is a Multi-cloud Strategy?
A multi-cloud combines two or more public, private clouds, and edge clouds to access applications and services. Multi-cloud service providers give businesses an edge over the competition, which relies on just one or two cloud service providers for digital transformation.
An organization’s various business units may have differing IT needs; for example, machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities of the google cloud may appeal to data scientists. On the other hand, cloud infrastructure services offered by Amazon Web Services have a more diverse and mature range of services that can be used to deploy complex applications.
Even though many businesses are currently interested in prioritizing and adopting a multi-cloud strategy, many organizations need more resources to execute a multi-cloud strategy seamlessly. Most organizations have gauged the need for a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to streamline most of their operations. At the same time, they also ensure that they maintain the necessary standard practices across various business units.
Multi-cloud approach challenges:
- Security: Having to work and manage applications on a single cloud platform is not at all challenging. Complexities emerge when running applications deployed on multiple clouds, leaving them vulnerable to malicious threats. Hence, there is a critical need to ensure that a comprehensive multi-cloud approach balances the workloads in virtual serves to help designated security teams discover any incoming threats in real-time.
- Cloud Integration: Resources must be exchanged among providers in a multi-cloud environment. Otherwise, data silos will occur. Organizations must adopt a robust data integration solution that works well with all cloud providers, as traditional data integration technology is time-consuming and complex.
- Overhead Cost: Transferring data between cloud services can incur additional overhead costs. Transferring data from one cloud to another from the same provider incurs higher costs than transferring data within a cloud from the same provider. It is essential to understand each provider’s pricing structure when it comes to keeping track of the cost of cloud services.
- Certified Professionals: There is a need for more accredited professionals knowledgeable about multiple-cloud platforms in many organizations. Most businesses need an in-house team that can implement and operate multiple cloud platforms. Network construction skills in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud and an understanding of use cases in multi-cloud architectures are essential for multi-cloud professionals.
Advantages of a Multi-Cloud Strategy:
Opting for the right multi-cloud management strategy will help businesses save money, significantly increase their agility, and improve business applications’ performances. However, we must remember that implementation, cloud systems visibility, and real-time performance updates of the deployed applications ultimately determine the success of a multi-cloud strategy. Below, we have included some of the advantages of embracing multi-cloud strategies:
- Vendor Lock-In: This occurs when a customer obtaining a cloud service from one provider cannot migrate to another. With the rising number of cloud service providers, most businesses do not need to rely on a single cloud provider, reducing vendor lock-in risk.
- 100% Uptime: When businesses depend on a single cloud provider, control over a server is relatively less. With multiple cloud providers, companies can prepare themselves by setting up a backup server, helping them prevent any IT-related risks.
- Cloud Agility: With this strategy, the data can be kept close to where it is needed and used. The multi-cloud approach may reduce latency and downtime significantly. Furthermore, it also results in increased agility, easy data recovery, and improved performance optimization.
- Better Customer Experience: With a multi-cloud strategy, businesses can leverage the best functionalities offered by the various service providers, enabling development teams across organizations to innovate efficiently. Additionally, it significantly improves the customer experience without compromising the quality of service provided.
Conclusion
Organizations will be prepared with the right arsenal to succeed by choosing the right multiple-cloud strategy. However, managing a multi-cloud infrastructure is more challenging than it seems and can burden the development, operational, and testing teams. Finding the right resources to introduce and implement a multiple-cloud strategy is also necessary and challenging.
We at Onpassive Digital are work towards making Data Analytics and Big Data available to all the businesses and help them in achieving their maximum reach and realizing goals.