Developing Multi-Cloud Strategy

Multi-cloud is the use of more than one cloud, from different cloud providers. You can use any combination of Software, Platform, or Infrastructure as a Service in your multi-cloud mix. Multi-cloud environments are popular among organizations and have been adopted by most successful businesses. With multi-cloud, you can customize each cloud according to the unique requirements of your workload. A mission-critical workload might have a different requirement of performance, scalability, or compliance and a certain vendor's cloud could be more suited for these factors than any other. Hence, having a multi-cloud solution helps you to address these instances. 

Multi-cloud vs Hybrid Cloud

There is a lot of confusion between the two models. Both of them are distinct and complementary. In a hybrid cloud, the focus is on the variety of cloud types. The environment uses a blend of public and private clouds, on or off-premises to cater to an organization's IT needs. The goal of the hybrid cloud is to have everything working in sync, along with good communication and data sharing for daily operations. 

 In multi-cloud, the focus lies in the variety of cloud providers. Each cloud might reside in a particular silo but it can interact with other services in a hybrid cloud environment. Multi-cloud can be a part of a hybrid cloud strategy. 

 Benefits of a multi-cloud solution:

•  Disaster recovery

Having one cloud for your organization needs a huge gamble. There is always a risk of cyber-attacks which could take down all your operations and leave end-users in a state of inaccessibility until the situation is resolved. If you have a multi-cloud architecture, you become more resilient to cyber-attacks as you have a distributed workload due to various cloud environments running in parallel. 

• Avoiding vendor lock-in

A multi-cloud setup allows you a level of customization which a single cloud provider can never provide. Instead of compromising on your needs to adapt to the vendor's specifications, you can have a curated experience that fits each part of your business operation through multi-cloud. 

• Data management

All the data in an organization is not treated the same way. Some data is kept for long-term storage whereas some data is needed to be accessed multiple times a day. Lumping all the data in one place is inefficient and uneconomical. Having a multi-cloud environment allows you to section data according to your needs. 

• Cost optimization

Before deciding on a multi-cloud strategy, a performance analysis of your workload to check the existing on-premise counterparts with multi-cloud abilities is crucial. This helps you identify the options which will give you the cheapest cost for your specific workload requirements. 

• Low latency

When users are distributed around the globe and data transfers are performed in a single data center, a lot of users will experience a slow response time. The delay is due to the data traffic which has to travel several nodes before reaching end users. In multi-cloud solutions, you can strategically choose data centers to optimize geographical distances based on user locations.  

Building an effective multi-cloud environment 

•  Carefully analyze your entire network. Identify services of a particular cloud provider which match the needs of your organization. This will help you avoid system complexity and the wrong utilization of resources. 
• When you choose a multi-cloud environment, there is an increase in the low-level maintenance tasks and other monitoring needs. Using automation is the best way to tackle them. 
• Focus on standardization of policies that are currently applicable to an individual cloud. Policies cover areas such as data storage, traffic flows, workload, virtual servers, security, reporting, and compliances. 
• Use data center management systems that are integrated with and designed for your virtual environments. It helps you achieve common goals of network, server, operation, storage, application, and security teams by building the right systems. 
• Choose apps for your organization that is best suited for a multi-cloud environment. Cloud-native applications are service-oriented and flexible and consist of containers and services in a scalable architecture. Hence, they are easy to scale, automate and move.  

Key multi-cloud solutions 

• Multi-cloud containers

The usage of software containers can solve issues of portability and application deployment. A container acts like a package that holds together the code, its required libraries, and other dependencies in one place. The container ensures that an application can run irrespective of the operating environment. 

• Multi-cloud storage

With a data storage strategy put in place, you can make the most out of your multi-cloud environment. Cloud storage adds flexibility and scalability to your data. Management solutions can help you keep data as close to users as possible without compromising on consistency and order in the cloud storage. 

• Multi-cloud automation

As cloud and on-premise locations are geographically dispersed, getting everything to work together has become essential. Automation in multi-cloud can eliminate manual tasks and along with them, reduce human errors. This improves the efficiency and operations consistency of the work. 

• Multi-cloud monitoring

Cloud monitoring is a common tool but is limited to a vendor's cloud. In a multi-cloud environment, a single cloud monitoring tool is not of much use. An introduction of multi-cloud monitoring tools gives you a comprehensive view of the multi-cloud environment. Managing a multi-cloud environment is much easier when you have full visibility. 

Hence, a multi-cloud environment provides you with a space to build powerful and secure cloud environments. To maximize the impact of multi-cloud, you will need to deal with its complexities too. The ultimate goal of any multi-cloud solution is to use as many clouds as your requirements demand. Toggling between different clouds is a constantly evolving field and it will become more and more efficient in the coming times. Having established a solid ground in a multi-cloud architecture, you can relish these benefits as they come. 

You can reach out to us on [email protected] for any help in this area.

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