Enterprises are continually seeking ways to optimize their workflows and enhance operational efficiency. The transformational journey often leads to a distributed environment, with data, applications, and teams spanning various platforms. This shift has given rise to the era of multi-cloud, a strategic approach that leverages the strengths of multiple cloud service providers to meet diverse business needs.
According to a collaborative study by Google and Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), 88% of organizations believe that employing multiple public cloud providers brings strategic advantages. The primary focus of these organizations is on flexibility and reliability, aligning with the notion that harnessing the unique capabilities of different providers adds substantial value to their operations. However, the study also sheds light on the unplanned nature of Multicloud adoption, with 32% attributing it to shadow IT and 23% to preferences tied to mergers and acquisitions.
Here’s What You Will Learn in This Blog
- Defining Multicloud Strategic
- What’s Driving Multicloud?
- Use Cases Highlighting the Capabilities of Multi-cloud Solutions
- Challenges in Multicloud Strategy: What to Consider
- Cost vs. Value: Evaluating Multicloud Investment
- Nsight Partnership: Leveraging Multicloud Services
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Defining Multicloud Strategic
Multicloud is not merely a buzzword; it is a strategic cloud computing approach designed to deploy solutions using the best services from multiple cloud providers. The driving forces behind Multicloud strategies are diverse, ranging from workload requirements to business and data governance. A well-designed Multicloud solution integrates Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) in a carefully orchestrated architecture that considers factors such as network, performance, security, operational management, and total cost of ownership.
In a Multicloud setup, an enterprise may optimize its data analytics with the computational agility of AWS, employ Microsoft Azure for productivity tools, and leverage Google Cloud Platform for machine learning capabilities.
Cloud providers are pivotal in facilitating Multicloud delivery by offering managed services and self-service tools. These tools abstract the complexity of implementing specific layers of technology, such as networking, making Multicloud solutions more accessible and manageable. Multicloud architecture can manifest in various forms, including applications utilizing the same service model across multiple cloud providers, on-premises data centers, and colocation facilities.
What’s Driving Multicloud?
Organizations adopt a Multicloud model for several reasons, including:
• Increased Resilience and Reliability: Organizations can reduce downtime and data loss risk by distributing workloads across multiple cloud providers. If one provider experiences an outage, other providers can seamlessly take over, ensuring uninterrupted operations. This redundancy is crucial for businesses that rely on continuous uptime, such as e-commerce platforms and financial institutions.
• Reduced Vendor lock-in: Multicloud eliminates the dependency on a single provider, providing greater negotiating power and flexibility in choosing cloud services that align with business objectives and cost-effectiveness. Organizations can avoid being locked into expensive or restrictive contracts and easily switch providers if their needs change.
• Enhanced Agility: Multicloud provides greater agility in responding to changing business needs and market trends by quickly adapting to new services and offerings. Organizations can easily add or remove cloud providers as their requirements evolve without being constrained by the limitations of a single provider’s platform.
• Best of Each Cloud: Multicloud empowers organizations to choose from a diverse array of cloud vendors, facilitating the optimization of workloads based on speed, performance, reliability, geographical location, and security and compliance requirements.
• Avoiding Vendor Lock-in: A Multicloud environment liberates organizations from the constraints of a single provider. This approach allows for agile decision-making, facilitating the choice of solutions that best align with business needs while mitigating data, interoperability, and cost issues.
• Cost Efficiency: Multicloud environments are a compelling option for minimizing IT spending. With reduced overhead, public cloud solutions offer scalability tailored to organizational needs, leading to a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This approach ensures the optimal combination of pricing and performance across different providers.
• Innovative Technology: The constant investment by cloud providers in developing new products and services becomes an asset for organizations adopting Multicloud strategies. This flexibility enables the seamless integration of emerging technologies, enhancing organizational offerings without being tethered to a single provider’s choices.
• Advanced Security and Regulatory Compliance: A Multicloud strategy is a robust foundation for deploying and scaling workloads while consistently implementing security policies and compliance technologies across all workloads. This consistency extends across services, vendors, and environments, ensuring a holistic and proactive approach to security. Multicloud can help organizations comply with data residency regulations by storing data in specific geographic regions, as local laws or industry standards require. This becomes all the more important for for businesses operating in a regulated environment inlcuding healthcare and finance industry. Multicloud can enhance security by distributing data and applications across multiple cloud providers, making it extremely difficult for attackers to eye a single point of failure. Organizations can also leverage different providers’ security expertise and tools to create a robust security posture.
Multicloud environments also emerge as a requirement for organizations striving to provide their DevOps teams with the tools and resources needed to operate efficiently. The benefits are multifaceted, ranging from cost-effectiveness to enhanced collaboration, making multicloud a strategic imperative.
• Cost-Effective, Self-Service Resources: Multicloud environments are a boon for DevOps by offering cost-effective and self-service resources. DevOps teams gain the flexibility to run and test workloads across various environments, optimizing resource utilization and streamlining development and testing processes. This flexibility is essential for agile development, ensuring teams are able to adapt quickly to evolving requirements and promptly deliver high-quality solutions.
• Supporting DataOps Collaboration: The evolving landscape of DataOps, which emphasizes the seamless collaboration between data engineers, data scientists, and other stakeholders, demands robust support from DevOps. Multicloud environments provide a highly accessible and integrated cloud infrastructure for effective DataOps collaboration. DevOps teams can leverage these environments to facilitate the smooth flow of data across various stages of the development pipeline, fostering collaboration and accelerating the delivery of data-driven insights.
Multicloud, with its diverse capabilities, opens opportunities for organizations striving to enhance customer service.
Use Cases Highlighting the Capabilities of Multi-Cloud Solutions
• Disaster Recovery: Multicloud allows organizations to safeguard critical applications by providing backup across multiple cloud providers. In the face of a disaster or a vendor-specific outage, organizations can seamlessly rely on alternative providers, ensuring business continuity.
• Better Latency Globally: For global organizations, Multicloud serves customers more efficiently. Multicloud minimizes latency by accessing servers in diverse locations, ensuring better connections and improved service delivery.
• Regional Requirements: Multicloud enables organizations to navigate and adhere to region-specific compliance rules. Organizations can effectively meet regulatory requirements across diverse geographies with the flexibility to switch between on-premises, private, and public landscapes from different vendors.
• Shadow IT Mitigation: Multicloud deployments are a robust solution to combat the usage of unsanctioned apps or services by employees. Organizations can effectively manage shadow IT challenges by providing approved cloud technologies that comply with security standards and policies.
Challenges in Multicloud Strategy: What to Consider
While the benefits of Multicloud are evident, it comes with its own set of challenges that organizations need to navigate carefully:
• Management Complexity: Navigating multiple platforms to manage and maintain heterogeneous environments adds complexity for IT operations and development teams. Challenges include acquiring new cloud-specific skills, working with diverse tools, and effectively monitoring costs across multiple services.
• Application Interoperability: Moving applications seamlessly between different cloud providers or between on-premises and public clouds can appear to be challenging due to the proprietary nature of each provider’s cloud platform.
• Security and Networking: Implementing and managing IT functions, such as security policies, user authentication, and networking protocols, across multiple cloud services from different providers can be a daunting task for organizations adopting a Multicloud model.
Cost vs. Value: Evaluating Multicloud Investment
Concerns about the overall cost of migrating to cloud environments and potential billing challenges are shared. Multicloud management tools or platforms can provide visibility and governance over cloud resources, addressing these concerns. It’s crucial to weigh short-term costs against the long-term value of adopting Multicloud, considering factors such as disaster recovery, increased reliability, and long-term financial and reputational damage prevention.
Deploying a Multicloud architecture requires careful consideration due to its inherent complexity. Key factors to assess include:
Needs Assessment:
Before opting for a Multicloud environment, articulate the business requirements driving this choice. Establish goals such as enhanced redundancy, flexibility, or compliance adherence.
Infrastructure Evaluation:
Examine the compatibility between your current IT setup and Multicloud requirements. Identify areas where your existing infrastructure aligns with Multicloud architecture and determine integration possibilities with cloud services and on-premises resources.
Technical Expertise:
Gauge your team’s proficiency in deploying Multicloud environments. Assess your cloud engineers’ familiarity with different Multicloud deployment tools. Decide whether additional training or hiring third-party expertise is necessary.
Workload Analysis:
Conduct a thorough analysis of your workloads, classifying them based on performance, security, and compliance requirements. Match each workload with the cloud provider that best suits its characteristics.
Nsight Partnership: Leveraging Multicloud Services
Nsight’s partnership with premium cloud providers, including Oracle, SAP, and AWS, positions it as a key player in the Multicloud landscape. This strategic alliance allows organizations to leverage Nsight’s Multicloud services to integrate and manage workloads seamlessly across these leading cloud platforms. By harnessing the strengths of multiple providers, Nsight empowers organizations to optimize performance, enhance reliability, and navigate the complexities of a Multicloud environment effectively.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Multi-cloud is a cloud computing strategy where organizations utilize services from multiple cloud providers to deploy a comprehensive solution. This approach is driven by workload, business, and data governance requirements.
A multi-cloud strategy is a deliberate approach that uses the best services from multiple cloud providers. This strategy is typically motivated by flexibility, reliability, and the desire to leverage the strengths of different providers.
Multi-cloud networking involves creating a seamless and efficient network architecture that spans multiple cloud providers. This ensures optimized communication and data flow between different cloud environments.
Examples of multi-cloud implementations include distributing workloads between providers for disaster recovery, leveraging the specific strengths of different providers, and complying with region-specific regulations using a combination of clouds.
Multi-cloud integration seamlessly connects and coordinates services and data across multiple cloud providers. This integration ensures that different components work together cohesively.
A hybrid multi-cloud strategy combines on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud resources from different vendors. This allows organizations to create a customized environment that meets their specific needs.
The benefits of a multi-cloud strategy include access to innovation, increased resilience, reduced risk of vendor lock-in, lower costs due to flexibility, and the ability to choose the best-of-breed solutions for specific business needs.
Multicloud facilitates disaster recovery by providing redundancy. Organizations can rely on alternative providers to ensure continuous operation and data recovery in an outage or disaster in one cloud provider.
Challenges include management complexity, application interoperability between different providers, and the difficulty of implementing and managing IT functions, such as security and networking, across multiple cloud services.
Implementing a hybrid multi-cloud strategy involves careful planning. Organizations should assess their workloads, consider compliance requirements, and choose cloud providers that offer seamless integration and compatibility.
Yes, multi-cloud networking is particularly beneficial for global organizations looking to reduce latency by accessing servers in diverse locations. It ensures better connections and improved service delivery for a geographically dispersed user base.
A multi-cloud strategy fosters innovation by allowing organizations to experiment with new technologies, scale operations seamlessly, and adapt swiftly to changing business requirements.
Multi-cloud networking allows organizations to abide by region-specific compliance rules by strategically distributing workloads across on-premise, private, and public landscapes from different vendors, ensuring compliance with diverse regulations.
Multi-Cloud Application Deployment and Delivery Decision Making
About the Author
Rakesh Nakka, a seasoned Practice Leader in Infrastructure, Security & Cloud, brings over 19 years of expertise in steering industry-leading operations. He adeptly leverages modern design patterns and next-gen technologies to ensure secure, seamless, and scalable system access.
With a strong advisory background, Rakesh excels in driving business innovation, workplace modernization, and long-term cost control through strategic cloud initiatives.
