The world is at an uncertain yet exciting phase right now. The COVID pandemic has hit us massively. Technology has helped businesses cope with the unexpected necessity to remain connected remotely by relying on the internet and a distributed cloud computing infrastructure.
As a business leader, there’s a lot that can keep you up at night, especially at these uncertain times. Businesses must invest in new technology to keep up with their competition. Whether it’s technology, people, or budget, you don’t want to chance a gap in security or lose out on current investments.
What is Multi-Cloud and why should you consider Multi-Cloud?
Before we even think of considering Multi-Cloud, let us first understand what exactly a Multi-Cloud is.
It is the use of multiple cloud computing services from various vendors. It could either be public, private, or a combination of both.
Enterprises use multi-cloud environments to allocate computing resources and reduce the risk of downtime and data loss. They enable companies to enhance their computing power and storage. In recent years, innovations in the cloud sphere have resulted in a move from private clouds to hybrid clouds.
Since certain cloud service vendors are better for specific tasks, a multi-cloud strategy allows companies the luxury to choose the best of both worlds.
Companies execute a multi-cloud environment for the following reasons:
- Avoid Downtime: It provides you with all the data storage and resources required to avoid downtime.
- Visibility: It gives them a clear line of the site across environments and quickly diagnoses and triage issues.
- Automation: Enables them to drive cost savings and improved productivity.
- Avoid vendor Lock-in: It enables them with the required tools and expertise to avoid vendor lock-in.
- Compliance: They help enterprises accomplish their goals for governance, risk management, and compliance regulations.
Multi-Cloud Management and its benefits
Multi-cloud management involves workload management in multi-cloud computing as data moves from one cloud platform to another. It requires companies to have expertise in multiple cloud providers and complex cloud management.
With Multi-cloud, there is a specific challenge in protecting data in a consistent way across various cloud providers. When a company practices a multi-cloud strategy, third-party partners manage different aspects of security. That is why it is crucial to define and distribute security responsibilities among the parties in the cloud deployment.
- A multi-cloud platform allows companies to customize an infrastructure that is distinct to their business goals.
- A multi-cloud architecture also offers a lower risk. If one web service host fails, a business can continue to operate with other platforms in a multi-cloud environment instead of storing all data in one place.
- Multi-Cloud offers complete agility and workload mobility between cloud platforms, storage, and hypervisors.
- A multi-cloud protects a company’s critical business applications and data by offering backup and recovery capabilities that enable business continuity when an emergency strike.
- Multi-cloud interconnection enables you to build a high-speed, low-latency infrastructure while decreasing the cost of integrating clouds with your current IT system.
Deployment
Moving to a multi-cloud deployment cannot be an overnight decision. While the proliferation of open-source software has dramatically decreased vendor lock-in issues, the potential for interoperability problems to occur still exists.
Cloud management platforms can avoid potential problems with standard configurations, though some corner cases can hamper successful deployment. Notably, as vendor-specific APIs are somewhat opaque and not static, the ability to launch a multi-cloud deployment can be compounded by mutual incompatibilities.
These are the best public Cloud providers in the market today:
- AWS
- Google Cloud Platform
- Microsoft Azure
- IBM Cloud
- VMware Cloud
- Openstack (private cloud)
- Rackspace
Microsoft Azure- The Next-Gen Cloud
Although AWS is the leader in the Multi-Cloud management space by a distance, Microsoft Azure is fast catching up. Azure Arc, their latest offering, enables enterprises to bring Azure services and management to any infrastructure, including Google Cloud and AWS.
Late last year, Microsoft had pipped Amazon Web Services in a closely contested 10$ billion defense contract.
It was an elusive deal to offer public cloud resources for the U.S. Defense Department. The win caused a 3% surge in Microsoft’s stock while Amazon saw a 1% slump.
With Azure Arc, any server, even when it is running behind a firewall or proxy, becomes just another resource. It makes Azure a compelling option for multi-cloud deployments.
Azure Arc has an advantage over other Cloud service providers when it comes to hosting applications based on Linux. The tools and apps that it offers are invaluable to cloud engineers. They are tailor-made to streamline processes and design effective solutions.
Azure offers unmatched speed and comparatively much more comfortable to utilize, enabling quick completion of projects. Also, human resources for project development, management, and fulfillment are easy to deploy with Azure Arc.
Process-exclusivity offered by Azure works seamlessly for larger environments, where multiple processes are running at the same time.
Azure offers an online storage unit that can not only categorize information and sort it according to assigned roles, but also allows a better security framework.
To many who already love Azure, Azure Arc offers plenty of capabilities that can ease cloud migration.
Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning Studio enables specialized developers to write, test, deploy algorithms, and a marketplace for standard APIs. Also, Azure released its Kubernetes service at the end of the year, enabling serverless architecture.
Conclusion
Deploying a multi-cloud efficiently in the enterprise demands a holistic view and control of the cloud services and IT infrastructure.
Companies prefer to rely on external service providers to implement their multi-cloud strategy to ensure that all systems, integrations, and interfaces run optimally.
Whether hybrid or multi-cloud, cloud innovation can only come from companies that uniquely consolidate the leading public cloud providers and connect them with specific services.
Every organization should individually evaluate which IT strategy or which cloud strategy, in particular, makes sense for them.
