Enterprise organizations are increasingly taking a multi-cloud approach—using cloud services from more than one cloud service provider—to optimize performance, control costs, and avoid vendor lock-in. According to a recent Gartner forecast, global end-user spending on community cloud services is expected to grow 20.4% to $678.8 billion by 2024 from $563.6 billion by 2023 (link outside ibm.com). Multi-cloud architecture empowers enterprises to choose the best combination of cloud products and services to suit their business needs. Still, it also accelerates innovation by supporting game-changing technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML).
As enterprises use multiple cloud providers, multi-cloud environments become more complex. To overcome the various challenges associated with a multi-cloud environment, organizations need to develop a comprehensive multi-cloud management strategy for overall success.
What Is Multicloud Architecture?
Multicloud is a cloud computing model that combines multiple cloud services from various large cloud service providers (CSPs)—such as Amazon Web Facilities (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, or Microsoft Azure—within a single IT infrastructure.
A simple multi-cloud scenario might involve a company using two different cloud providers to implement software as a service (SaaS)—software applications (such as Webex or Slack) hosted on the public Internet.
However, in more complex enterprise business environments, a multi-cloud approach typically goes beyond delivering SaaS from different CSPs. For example, an organization might use Microsoft Azure for data storage, AWS for developing and testing new applications, and Google Cloud for backup and disaster recovery.
In addition to SaaS, many modern enterprise organizations rely on cloud service providers for the following cloud computing models:
- Platform as a facility (PaaS) offers the hardware, software, and infrastructure to build, run, and manage applications. The PaaS approach helps companies reduce the price, difficulty, and inflexibility of building and maintaining an on-premises stage.
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provides computing, networking, and storage resources to consumers on demand, over the Internet, and as a pay-as-you-go service. IaaS allows enterprises to scale and scale down workload resources as needed, thereby avoiding the significant costs associated with scaling traditional IT infrastructure.
The Hybrid Multicloud Environment
These days, multi-cloud is typically combined with hybrid cloud, an approach to cloud computing that combines public, private, and on-premises infrastructure. Hybrid cloud infrastructure creates a flexible IT infrastructure that supports interoperability and workload portability across multiple clouds. When combined, the hybrid and multi-cloud models provide a hybrid multi-cloud approach that offers enterprises the flexibility to create the best of both cloud worlds to migrate, build, and optimize applications across multiple clouds.
Modern hybrid multi-cloud ecosystems allow you to develop cloud-native applications (e.g., microservices or microservices architecture) and use open-source container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker Swarm) to automate application deployment to on-premises data centers, public cloud, and private cloud and customizations periphery. Microservices support DevOps practices by accelerating software development and deployment.
According to a study by the IBM Institute for Business Value, the value derived from a full hybrid multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale is two and a half times greater than that obtained from a vendor’s single-platform, single-cloud approach.
What Are The Challenges Of Multi-cloud?
While multi-cloud has become an essential part of enterprise digital transformation, the complexity of operating multiple clouds and services from different CSPs poses several challenges:
Expansion of clouds: One of the biggest challenges associated with multi-cloud is cloud sprawl—the uncontrolled growth of an organization’s cloud services. Cloud sprawl can lead to cost overruns and over-provisioning (allocating more computing resources to an application or system than necessary). In addition to paying for unnecessary or forgotten workloads, overprovisioning can also increase the multi-cloud attack surface, making them more vulnerable to data leaks or cyber-attacks.
Data storage: As data is distributed across multiple clouds and platforms, an organization runs the risk of creating data silos. Data silos cause visibility issues and can negatively impact data analytics, preventing teams from sharing a holistic view of aggregated data to collaborate and make business decisions.
Security risks: Maintaining strong security measures is integral to enterprise cloud adoption. A complex multi-cloud environment where data moves between private and public clouds presents apparent risks. For example, an organization may use the same set of security controls across the same cloud service provider. However, in a multi-cloud environment, organization-managed internal security tools combined with built-in platform security controls from different cloud providers can lead to fragmented security capabilities and an increased risk of human error or misconfiguration.
Uncontrollable costs: More clouds and cloud services mean more cloud bills. While the pay-as-you-go model associated with cloud services is designed to control cloud costs, unexpected costs may arise due to difficulty keeping track of different CSP pricing structures, lack of visible data release fees, and more.
5 Steps To Create A Successful Multi-Cloud Strategy
Technical and administrative complexities increase when working with multiple cloud environments and providers. While every multi-cloud journey is unique, here are eight critical steps to creating a successful multi-cloud strategy:
1. Define Your Goals
The journey to a multi-cloud environment begins by aligning your business goals with your strategic plan. Start by assessing your organization’s current infrastructure and applications. Determine workload requirements and objectives for business use cases.
Hybrid multi-cloud environments support integrated data exchange across multi-cloud environments, delivering low latency, zero downtime, and seamless data delivery to where it is needed. For example, a healthcare organization may look for a multi-cloud environment so teams in different geographic regions can share real-time data to provide optimal patient care.
2. Choose The Best Cloud Provider
While most CSPs offer similar basic features, each offers unique features and services. Whether it’s the high-performance computing capabilities of one cloud provider or the advanced data analytics of another, a multi-cloud approach allows you to choose the best cloud services available to meet your business needs.
Check service contracts carefully, as some cloud providers offer more flexible contracts and lower startup costs. Ensure that key stakeholders, such as IT teams, use their expertise to provide input into the CSP selection process.
3. Create A Single Pane Of Glass
In a multi-cloud environment, application platform interfaces (APIs) from different cloud platforms can create visibility issues. To take full advantage of a multi-cloud architecture, you need a central console or platform with a single window for centralized visibility across the enterprise. This dynamic and secure multi-cloud management solution, a centralized cloud management platform (CMP), enables IT teams to build and manage their multi-cloud ecosystems.
4. Use Automation Tools
Automation of IT infrastructure and processes plays an essential role in the multicloud enterprise business model. With automation tools, organizations can reduce the number of manual tasks traditionally assigned to IT teams. Cloud automation solutions create a software layer that runs on top of virtual machines (VMs) in public or private clouds.
By carefully selecting the best automation tools to integrate into your company’s cloud management platform, you can reduce your computing resource usage and save on cloud computing costs. In addition to containers and orchestration tools, multicloud automation solutions include infrastructure as code (IaC). IaC uses a high-level descriptive coding language to automate the delivery of IT infrastructure. IaC helps simplify infrastructure management, improve consistency, and reduce the need for manual configuration.
5. Develop A Zero Trust Security Approach.
According to a recent IBM IBV study, the average organization runs more than eight to nine cloud infrastructure environments simultaneously, increasing the risk of security threats from malicious actors and putting sensitive data at risk.
Managing multiple clouds requires zero trust security, a method that assumes that the security of a complex network is constantly under threat from external and internal threats. Zero trust requires a wide range of security capabilities. This includes policies to control access to all users and privileged accounts using single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication. Major CSPs and other cloud service providers offer multicloud security solutions to help you manage ongoing threats and ensure resilience.
Benefits Of Multicloud
Multicloud provides services and capabilities that a single platform cannot offer. Multicloud can help your business:
- Avoid vendor lock-in by choosing “best-in-class” cloud computing services without the costs or limitations of vendor lock-in.
- Gain flexibility based on the best combination of cloud services in price, performance, security, and compliance.
- Prevent failures and ensure reliability with backup and redundancy capabilities for data, workflows, and systems.
- Manage shadow IT with cross-cloud visibility.
