Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. In this edition, we’ll learn about the multi-cloud strategy, why you should consider it and how to implement it in your organization.
Credits- Illustrator: Balaji K R
Businesses are emphasizing remote work options, and workers are now accessing more applications and data from their respective locations using the cloud. Even before opting for the current work-from-home mode, it was predicted that 83 percent of the workload will be on cloud for all enterprise activities. It was also predicted that 73 percent of workers from all the departments will be telecommuting by 2028. Looking at the on-going trend, these are highly likely to happen.
For over a decade, businesses have adopted the cloud for daily activities. Now, they have begun choosing multiple cloud service providers to prioritize and move various activities into different clouds, based on the capabilities, features, and services the providers offer. In a survey conducted by Forrester Consulting, a whopping 86 percent of businesses implemented a multi-cloud strategy two years ago. These survey responses imply that businesses are choosing a mix of cloud service providers to suit their needs instead of depending on a single vendor to take care of their operations.
But to enable smooth operations in multi-cloud environments, IT teams must take the necessary steps. For instance, DevOps processes could be automated to enable smooth workflows for developers. In addition, developers must also be involved in the decision-making process while selecting vendors, as they’ll be working with vendor-provided tools and features to enable transitions. Furthermore, research on cloud behavior, security and network capabilities, add-on features, and API integrations must be conducted prior to making any decision.
Besides the technical aspects, some business challenges also exist in moving to a multi-cloud environment. Geo-availability of service is a must for global businesses. It would be a waste of time, capital, and resources to determine in the last stage of extensive explorations that the service is available in limited locations. Cloud spending is vital to consider too, as pricing models vary with each provider. Management of multiple vendors in itself is a task, if not conducted properly. Furthermore, with regulatory mandates such as GDPR, CCPA, and others in the picture, a comprehensive cloud data management package must be devised so that the adopted multi-cloud strategy is compliant and efficient for your organization.
Based on this trend and the need to equip businesses to proceed in the right direction, we’ve selected some interesting blogs to help you with your journey or evaluation of multi-cloud adoption:
1. The multiple stages of adopting a multi-cloud strategy
As it offers flexible deployment models, and can help you avoid vendor lock-in and extended downtimes, multi-cloud adoption is sought after by many businesses. Although implementation is easier said than done, the multi-cloud strategy introduces challenges like diagnostic visibility and governance. By exercising due diligence, businesses can take complete advantage of the multi-cloud architecture.
2. 12 Tips for Managing Your Multi-Cloud Environment
Considering that there are wide range of aspects to oversee, here are some necessary tips for initiating your multi-cloud strategy. From agreements with vendors to application lifecycle and implementation plans, this article also addresses monitoring user activities across clouds to find the processes that are the biggest productivity boosters, efficiently automating tasks, and more.
3. Solving the Multicloud Integration Conundrum
Migrating to various clouds is a challenge as it involves the re-architecture of applications, and preservation of the integrations that connect data with such applications. There will be more issues without seamless data orchestration between on-premise and cloud applications. An integration layer using APIs would de-couple data and on-premise applications, allowing them to co-exist with the multi-cloud infrastructure.
4. Why enterprises need to adopt a multi-cloud strategy
Multi-cloud binding, which is one of the seven types of multi-cloud architectures available, allows users to be rerouted to the nearest available data center as a back-up when the primary source fails. Choosing a multi-cloud service management strategy for benefits like efficient data management and cost optimization, among others, will keep your cloud management struggles at bay.
5. Top 5 Drivers for Multicloud
As the demand for a multi-cloud adoption has increased multifold, with proper planning, businesses can achieve greater performance and reduce costs. Moreover, compliance mandates and scalability drive businesses to choose a multi-cloud strategy.
The whole IT landscape is changing rapidly as innovations are developed to solve the unique problems businesses face. For example, a multi-cloud environment has the potential to solve issues of platform availability, operational efficiency, data management, and much more. A multi-cloud strategy can deliver a seamless experience to the consumers of the service, as service providers compete to deliver the best features. In the current remote work mode, it would prevent downtime, and allow secured access to data as the applications and its data will be hosted on multiple clouds. Since the multi-cloud strategy is here to stay, let’s wait and observe how extensive it turns out to be.
