Based on customer needs, multi-cloud infrastructures scale automatically and provide flexible pricing models.

Integration

Despite the fierce competition in the cloud market, the large hyperscalers enable compatibility, i.e. the easy integration of various services. 

 Optimized cost

The cloud service industry is becoming competitive every day with the emergence of new market players. Cloud service providers, today, are more careful in the quality and cost of their services. This gives enterprises an edge to opt for an affordable and better service provider rather than getting stuck with one vendor and paying them a hefty amount.

Enhanced security

Privacy and security of business-critical data are other major factors that contribute to the worries of a business decision-maker. You can be extremely concerned when it comes to storing sensitive information on the cloud. Companies often use cloud services but maintaining a hybrid cloud environment gives businesses security and financial advantages at the same time.

Now, let’s see how multi-cloud computing is done or tackled.

How to Tackle Multi-Cloud Computing?

Multi-cloud companies need to have a more specialized staff, let go of the total control of their IT infrastructure, and master other challenges. A capability-focused approach that accommodates the customer’s current situation (the scope of cloud computing, available skills of staff, regulatory environment, etc.) is key to overcoming the downsides when embarking on a multi-cloud journey. Generally, there are two ways to tackle multi-cloud computing:

1. Independence first credo with vendor lock-in

Some companies favor an Independence first credo with seemingly zero vendor lock-in and high integration efforts. This approach with a deliberate choice of solutions offered by the cloud providers and full participation in the evolution of the selected cloud providers.

2. Technology

Counting on technology is obvious. When embarking on a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud journey, it is imperative to apply a technical framework that not only reflects the customer’s current situation in terms of skills of staff, cloud maturity, and other factors but also provides a tool landscape to build, run and govern the complete environment.

At the end of the day, regardless of which basic approach a company uses, there must be clear multi-cloud guiding principles to make it work. Don’t have any clue about these? We will help you.

The Guiding Principles

Let’s get technical. A company can effectively practice multi-cloud computing only when they have a comprehensive list of guiding principles. These principles read like this:

Automation first

It is highly recommendable to have workload and resource provisioning fully automated for the building, running, and optimizing activities.

Book of Standards

The use of platform blueprints “from the catalog”, cloud architecture standards, cloud-native standards, etc. increase the standardization level.

Harmonization

Centrally managed service standards, policies, etc. improve continuity, availability, and performance.

Hyperscaler agnosticism

To ensure repeatability regardless of the chosen hyper scalers, core elements such as governance services, automation, monitoring, etc. should be created in an abstracted, hyperscaler-agnostic way.

Technology Stacks

Fundamental architectural standards (e.g., hardened OS images) in a central index simplify the migration in an exit scenario. Paradigms such as patch by replacement, auto-scale, etc. at the core help establish architectural patterns for create and run.

Depending on your company’s specific situation, some parts of the above-mentioned framework and guiding principles may be critical, while others are rather negligible - which may completely change over time. However, this does pose a plethora of challenges.

Read More: Cloud Storage in a Hybrid Environment: Features and Advantages

The challenges

Well, one has to formulate and execute an explicit multi-cloud strategy that positions your organization to best leverage and coordinate multiple cloud providers. Getting there from here, however, poses a new set of challenges. The grave ones include:

Skills

To successfully leverage and navigate a multi-cloud environment, IT needs to access expertise across a larger range of cloud technologies. In addition, IT teams must now manage multiple vendor relations and far more complex cost tracking. As if that weren’t challenging enough, most IT departments are already facing a shortage of personnel who are knowledgeable and proficient in deploying and managing cloud environments. For analysis and insights on the true impact of the expertise skills gap, download the 2017 Cost of Cloud Expertise Report.

Security

The good news is that the foundational level of security delivered by the best cloud providers is exceptional. Many CIOs who cited security as a top cloud concern several years ago have done a 180-degree turn and now look at the scope of cloud computing. The bad news is that the additional complexity of multi-cloud computing needs more than the foundational level of security most cloud companies now offer.

Complexity

Simply put, managing multiple clouds is more complex than managing a single cloud. The complexity is exacerbated by several issues, including the shortage of skills and the security challenges we’ve just discussed. Organizations have to put in place proper governance practices and processes and ensure compliance over their multi-cloud environments, particularly in dealing with many of the shadow IT initiatives that have sprung up over the years. In addition, IT must closely manage the cloud spending, which can be extremely difficult to control, and ensure business units are getting the performance they need (and are paying for) in the public cloud.

The multi-cloud future

Multi-cloud or hybrid systems can also be the only choice for companies with regulatory obligations about how and where they process data. Whether enterprises end up with a multi-cloud approach through necessity or by design, there’s no getting away from the additional time and resources needed to manage a more complex cloud environment. Multiple bespoke arrangements can deliver many benefits (compliance, security, efficiency, scale, performance) but they also take time and resources to research and maintain. When you put together all the pieces of the puzzle, the prospect of managing multi-cloud security, interoperability, and added complexity can be enough for some enterprises to stick to the one-vendor model. This might seem to be initially appealing but competing in a digital ecosystem means delivering new products and services at speed and at scale. These innovations reflect many values that resonate deeply with Google, including organizing information to its maximum possible utility, using the innovation velocity and freedom of open-source software, and giving customers maximum access and decision-making power to their most valuable technology asset: their data. From a pure business perspective, that means that the prudent decision-maker must consider every option available. And with the continued expansion of cloud capabilities and cloud providers’ service offerings, multi and hybrid cloud models are well on course to becoming the working reality of operating in a digital society.

Multi-cloud infrastructure is the next generation of enterprise IT. As the cloud becomes a more popular way of working, companies demand more than one cloud provider. This allows them to use multiple cloud providers depending on their needs. Well, cloud-based applications make it possible for multiple users to access information from any location, making them ideal for global organizations. Multi-cloud solutions allow you to work with different vendors, which helps you build relationships that open up new collaboration opportunities. You might even discover ways to combine your products or services to create new solutions that deliver better results than before. The cloud can help improve performance by offloading work from local servers onto high-speed internet connections (usually, fiber optic). In the case of Amazon Web Services, this means that you can use multiple AZs and multiple regions. You get additional levels of redundancy with your application by spreading across several different providers and faster speeds if you need to implement global content delivery networks (CDNs).