A modern ICT infrastructure cannot ignore the cloud today. The related business model has proven to be the most suitable for ensuring the organization from the dynamics of ICT mapping onto the business. Several providers today have a powerful cloud service proposition.
Some strategic components from a business or regulatory perspective, however, do not find the right solution in the public cloud. Software, data, or more complex workloads, may require in-house processing, using both legacy and cloud approaches. This part of the work, that is, integration between systems, is usually the preserve of the internal staff.
The Thousand Faces of the Cloud
Also, always keep in mind that not all clouds are created equal. Technical, organizational or administrative differences in fact make the choice of provider not immediate. Much of the thought that goes into choosing one service over another is based precisely on the differences in price lists, with their associated computational complexities. And discounts on trial or when signing the contract can lead to error, although less so than asymmetries between different components of pricing plans.
This is why it has become necessary to question the possibility of exploiting more than one service, falling back into the so-called multicloud.
The first choice towards multicloud is of a technical type. In fact, the workload to be transferred to the cloud must be evaluated with the related considerations in availability, performance and prices. This is an operation that can also be carried out internally within the company, but with some risk. A better solution can be found through external advice, which – as we will also see later – must always be evaluated. The specialization of the external staff generally makes a more precise and more detailed choice possible even in the years to come, making explicit the information that was once condensed with other architectures into the TCO, total cost of ownership.
The Multicloud management tools
A second choice that supports multicloud could be the adoption of a specific tool. In fact, the information for the evaluation can also be obtained from a specific software, called MMT from the initials of Multicloud Management Tool or even UIM from Unified infrastructure Management platforms.
This category includes tools from many vendors, such as BMC, Flexera, Scalr and VMWare, but also many more flashy ones such as IBM or Cisco. These tools can differ greatly from each other, as they are not a highly standardized industry. Some features are therefore available in only one of these tools.
One of the main categories of unexpected increases in cloud costs is the misuse of both settings, which are not optimized, and the attention of technical but unskilled personnel. Taking into account automatic procedures and staff behavior to avoid this waste is already an important point.
A broader category of MMT/UIM that can be explored is Cloud Management Software. To get a very quick idea of the solutions on the market today, you can consult the relevant review page, constantly updated by Gartner.
A multicloud management consultation often leads to excellent results
The third choice recalls a point already seen previously: the identification of external consultancy. The expertise of an external consultant is generally advisable. The consultant knows some of these tools, knows how to choose them according to the client’s needs and provides the explanations that avoid unwanted costs. It is also often able to assess the cost-effectiveness of moving a workload from one public cloud to another, especially if the conditions of the supplier or client company have changed.
In conclusion, multicloud management requires a correct calculation of the cost/performance ratio spread over several years. A tool can be a solver or almost, and the importance of consulting that scans for computational and automation pitfalls must be correctly assessed.