Choosing a multicloud strategy is becoming a practice adopted by a growing number of companies because it allows them to reap a whole series of benefits: among these, first and foremost, is the advantage, in conducting the business and developing the applications and services required by the market, of not remaining strictly dependent on, and therefore limited by, the specific technologies, features, and commercial offerings that characterize each individual cloud provider.
What is meant by multicloud
The term multicloud refers to the opportunity to adopt two or more cloud computing services, which can be acquired from various public cloud service providers. The latter, in more detail, can be made up of a set of IaaS (infrastructure as a service) services, or even different PaaS (platform as a service) or SaaS (software as as service) services, provided by different cloud providers.
Multicloud, because it’s an unavoidable trend
L’81% of respondents to a recent survey of public cloud users, conducted by research and consulting firm Gartner, say they are working with two or more vendors. Most organizations, according to Gartner, adopt a multicloud strategy with the goal of avoiding vendor lock-in, that is, the constraint of having to deal with only one vendor; but there is also the desire to benefit from using ‘best-of-breed’ solutions, therefore features and services that rank as the best in a specific industry or application niche. Larger organizations will continue to pursue the multicloud approach, Gartner adds, predicting that the ten largest public cloud providers will dominate, at least, half of the global public cloud market until at least 2023.
What multicloud strategy
The transition to a multicloud environment is motivated by the need, as mentioned, to eliminate, or reduce, the risk of vendor lock-in, thus increasing the degree of agility. Gaining agility means the ability to adopt different cloud services, capable of meeting different requirements in terms of, for example, performance, availability, compliance with industry regulations, and compliance with data sovereignty principles. In defining a multicloud strategy, the second important factor cited by Gartner is the need for companies to manage the modular architecture of modern applications, which tend to be deployed and deployed across multiple clouds. The third factor is governance, the ability to ensure operational control by unifying the administration and monitoring of IT systems. This helps companies control and optimize costs by appropriately modulating the correct mix of cloud services, acquired from different cloud providers.
Multicloud infrastructure, challenges and management tools
The additional benefits of adopting a multicloud strategy, cited by companies responding to Gartner’s survey, also include the opportunity to improve disaster recovery (DR) policies and facilitate the migration of some data and applications. However, especially with regard to the governance of multiple IT services in multicloud environments, significant complexity challenges must also be addressed, requiring the use of appropriate tools, platforms, and management methodologies.
Various organizations, the research firm clarifies, need to standardize policies, procedures, and processes, as well as share management tools, especially those that help control and optimize the costs of using different public cloud providers and services. In such contexts, however, it must be said, the problem is that the IT department, often, to achieve governance of disparate cloud services, is forced to use multiple multicloud management tools and platforms, which certainly do not simplify the administration of workloads or the implementation of incident management plans.
The tools and strategies that can be implemented to address the complexity of managing multicloud environments can range, for example, from the adoption of centralized administration platforms, tools, and consoles for various cloud services, to the acquisition of professional skills specialized in managing the different technological paradigms underlying the operation of each cloud.