Building a Multi-Cloud Strategy

With a multi-cloud strategy, businesses may more efficiently store, compute, and analyze data utilizing the optimal cloud for each operation. Using various cloud providers to host data, operate apps, create infrastructure, and provide IT services is known as a multi-cloud approach. Utilizing many instances of the major cloud service providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud), as well as additional, smaller providers, is known as multi-cloud. A successful multi-cloud strategy depends on a thorough understanding of each cloud platform's operational features and how they interact to support your desired business goals.

Consider whether a multi-cloud approach is appropriate for you

While there are many commercial advantages to cloud computing, it's crucial to identify your requirements when developing a multi-cloud strategy. Following are the requirements of any business −

The team wishes to hasten the distribution of applications. With the cloud, IT teams have almost immediate access to computational resources, accelerating the delivery of apps.

Increasing the IT efficiency of the team is your objective. Cloud technology helps your IT team run more efficiently by lowering infrastructure expenses and raising team productivity.

The crew wishes to lower the costs associated with your company's infrastructure. The infrastructure cost considerably decreases when your resources have access to more affordable computing resources, and capacity sized appropriately for demand.

IT personnel are much more productive because of automation and self-service features when we aim to control the automation process. Automation is possible with cloud management solutions.

Building a Multi-Cloud Strategy in Four Steps

Utilizing several public cloud platforms is known as multi-cloud. Some companies have different departments that use cloud services without consulting information technology professionals; some firms may have unintentionally adopted multi-cloud at first. IT teams probably included these installations into a general enterprise cloud strategy as they became crucial to operations. The industry's fit for certain business requirements allows for the deliberate deployment of multi-cloud methods.

Evaluate overall multi-cloud demands

Creating a multi-cloud strategy begins with determining your multi-cloud requirements. Applications, service layers, and storage layers that make up the cloud have been created for certain purposes. They are specified at specific periods due to client requests and pre-existing architectural frameworks. Real-time demands, on-premises settings, and architectural advancements are all ongoing. The system will be able to adapt thanks to the flexibility and portability provided by the cloud providers delivering the applications, service layers, and storage layers. No matter how your infrastructures alter, the system's multi-cloud architecture must be able to provide recoverability, failover, disaster recovery, and portability.

Selecting the appropriate cloud suppliers

An extension of assessing the multi-cloud requirements is selecting suitable providers to meet the short-term needs and architectures based on the providers' specialties, security, cost, and other criteria. As systems grow increasingly linked, as we have seen, finding providers who offer API frameworks is becoming more and more important in multi-cloud designs. API frameworks make it easier to integrate several applications into your multi-cloud system.

Since the requirements for multi-cloud will vary regularly, as will the mix of cloud providers. It is essential that recovery, failover, disaster recovery, and mobility are independent of the cloud providers.

Making use of data recovery

Businesses tend to think that cloud service providers would also secure their data. However, since these providers might argue that they are not in charge of its protection, the opposite may be true. To put it another way, you should protect your data against ransomware and other online dangers.

Several nations, including the European Union, have passed laws that control where and how data can be held. Businesses adhering to these data residency regulations might use a multi-cloud strategy to ensure their data complies with legal obligations. They employ several public cloud providers with various geographic reach in places where data storage is necessary.

Employing Specialized Servers to Manage the Cloud

Organizations may use different cloud service providers to get specialized or complementary services. For instance, a business may access computational resources or bare metal servers through a public cloud but store its data with a second compatible public cloud that focuses on storage. A business may also employ a cloud storage service and CDN to send material to consumers more quickly.

Advantages of a Multi-Cloud Strategy

• Security boost − A company that adopts a multi-cloud approach may also increase the standard for security. IT can lessen the likelihood of data loss and leakage, shoddy authentication, and lateral platform breaches by introducing new services into the broader corporate portfolio with explicit instructions on how users may authenticate data, how it can flow, and where it can dwell.

• Increased Service Delivery − Organizations using multi-cloud can reduce downtime for vital services with the help of a strategy and design. Consistency and speed are achieved by implementing a deliberate approach to deploying and utilizing numerous clouds.

• Additional freedom and flexibility − With a multi-cloud system, businesses have more power to influence changes and the option to quit if another vendor provides better features or more reasonable pricing. This is especially true if something isn't functioning or expenses become unmanageable.

• Reduced Latency and Improved Reliability − Businesses with a multi-cloud strategy may fall back on others if one cloud fails in a failover situation. Because their clouds are situated closer to end users, businesses that employ several clouds for data sovereignty or in conjunction with a CDN see lower latency.

Conclusion

The foundation of enterprise IT infrastructure will be cloud computing. Enterprise IT teams must know that 60 percent of their apps will soon be hosted in the cloud. There will be several cloud providers; therefore, developing expertise for each is necessary. Technical proficiency and a structured training program are required to prepare for a future with several clouds.