Cloud adoption has become evident in the last few years. A recent study shows that most organizations intend to migrate more than half of their data to the cloud, while the rest want to migrate all of their data to the cloud. Gartner predicts that multi-cloud strategies will significantly reduce vendor dependencies for almost 66% of organizations by 2024.
Should organizations store all their data on a single cloud?
Will multi-cloud be an advantage or a disaster?
Cloud infrastructure offers many benefits for businesses, like scalability, collaboration, speed, security, continuity, and rapid ROI. But before opting for cloud solutions, organizations should strategically plan to utilize cloud storage efficiently. In 2021, many organizations experienced disruptions in their services due to outages from cloud service providers. Although the organizations haven’t taken a step back from moving to the cloud, it has forced them to give a second thought to storing all the data in one cloud. Organizations can avoid such outages and vendor lock-in by opting for a multi-cloud, and with robust master data management, multi-cloud becomes an excellent option.
Multi-cloud Vs. Hybrid cloud
Organizations use cloud services from multiple public cloud vendors in a multi-cloud environment. Organizations have the choice to mix and match the solutions with their requirements. Multi-cloud uses multiple cloud computing and storage resources and combines them into a single architecture.
In a Hybrid environment, organizations use a mix of private and public cloud infrastructure. In this case, organizations use a private cloud for sensitive data in on-premises or a data center on a private cloud while opting for a public cloud for other resources.
Strategic approach for multi-cloud
As cloud usage keeps exploding, one of the critical challenges many IT leaders face today is mapping cloud usage with their business goals. The cloud solutions must align with the organization’s policies regarding security, compliance, location, budget, etc. Gartner predicts that cloud revenue will reach $474 billion in 2022. The primary aspects an organization should consider while crafting a strategy include data security, cost, and service integration.
Organizations should take a strategic approach to where to store the data complying with all the company standards. This approach begins with
- Which service provider to choose?
- Which data to place on the cloud?
- On which platform should you manage the master data?
- How do we maintain better data governance and data management?
In multi-cloud, organizations have the flexibility to choose the best services that different vendors provide. For sensitive data, organizations can opt for a private cloud; for non-private data, organizations can opt for low-tier/class services from any vendor whose services align with the organization’s requirements.
A catalyst for digital transformation.
Every organization wants to optimize digitally because of its advantages like increased efficiency, lower operational costs, higher agility, transparency, faster decision-making, better resource management, and much more. The multi-cloud platform will help businesses to navigate easily toward digital transformation. The scalability and flexibility that multi-cloud provides increase the organizations’ computing power, where more data flows in and increases the business in many aspects. It also provides access to many analytical tools and services which organizations can leverage to create and test new products and services.
Containers for faster deployment – Organizations can find moving data from one cloud to another a tedious task. You can transfer data quickly with containers. The containers in cloud storage are an easy means to develop, store and deploy applications. Developers use containers to pack applications into portable, self-contained environments. This aids in clean separation when developers focus on the application dependencies and logic while the operations team focuses on deploying the applications without hindering any operational process. Before transferring the data, the organizations should check the moving cost and the vendor’s policies to avoid any outage or vendor lock-in.
Serverless computing – Multi-cloud provides an excellent option for serverless computing. The service provider takes care of the serverless architecture, physical hardware, virtual machine operating systems, web server management, capacity positioning, and patching. Organizations should take care of only the application code. With serverless architecture, developers can write code, set configuration parameters, and upload that to the cloud servers. Organizations pay only for the services they use, and they can quickly scale up or down automatically, avoiding the need to manage their cloud usage.
Benefits of Multiple Clouds Strategy
Multi-cloud options are highly appealing in the quest for suitable solutions. The multi-cloud provides many benefits like Avoiding Vendor lock-in, high scalability, cost-saving, leveraging the best services offered by different vendors, and much more.
Cost-saving – Managing cloud costs requires continuous monitoring of cloud usage and provider capabilities to ensure organizations benefit most from it. Businesses need more granular insight into their multi-cloud to make better decisions on their cloud usage.
Different services from different providers– One significant advantage of multi-cloud is that businesses can opt for any service they find suitable for their requirements from different service providers. The 2022 loud report shows that Microsoft Azure has an adoption rate of 77%, the highest among other cloud vendors. Microsoft says it spends around $1 billion annually on cybersecurity across its platforms and has employed 3500 security employees for its 24/7 operating Cyber Defense Operations Center (CDPC).
Data security – Increasing the number of cloud vendors for an organization can improve security by using the failover option. With this option, organizations can still operate without affecting the continuity of processes if the primary service provider suffers a security threat. Cloud vendors provide security tools that are built-in and native to the provider. Organizations can utilize the security features of the vendor if it aligns with the requirement and company standards.
Organizations that intend to be a cloud-first entity should leverage multi-cloud to help them utilize different service providers’ unique capabilities, whether a necessity or a design, a multi-cloud system offers benefits concerning compliance, security, efficiency, and performance. McKinsey reports that 70% of transformation fails because of poor planning. Organizations should craft a strategic plan before opting for cloud services to help them utilize cloud storage effectively and move towards digital transformation seamlessly.
Migration and modernization of cloud and data have redefined the organization’s success to a greater extent. An extra mile competitive advantage isn’t anything businesses want to miss. While the destination to migrate has its play in the entire act, data getting migrated also needs special attention.
If you aspire to be a cloud-first organization or planning to migrate and modernize, we can help.