Multi-Cloud Use Cases
To accelerate the next phase of digital transformation, enterprises are taking advantage of multiple cloud platforms and services to:- Accelerate app transformation and the delivery of new apps: Companies are choosing to deploy apps on public, private and edge clouds as it best suits their business objectives and application needs. Cloud First has been replaced by Cloud Smart.
- Avoid vendor lock-in and ensure enterprise sovereignty: Total cloud spend, data sovereignty, vendor dependencies and lock-in are increasing concerns. As a result, enterprises will continue to spread their estate across multiple environments.
- Distribute applications and services to the edge: In industries such as logistics, retail and manufacturing, the next generation of gains in automation, efficiency and improved customer experiences require applications to be distributed to the edge, closer to physical devices and users.
- Support the rise of the distributed workforce: Distributed workforces are the new reality for enterprises. Securing and managing users and their devices as well as enabling them to be productive from anywhere is the new hybrid workforce challenge.
Multi-Cloud Challenges
In the multi-cloud era, IT organizations face the challenge of supporting both existing and new application architectures and workloads across all major clouds, at the edge, in co-location facilities, in sovereign environments and in their private data center. Each cloud provider, with its own operating stack, services and toolsets, delivers a unique set of capabilities that do not extend functionality to other cloud platforms. This inconsistency in cloud infrastructure and operating models places a strain on technology personnel, decentralizes IT services, and introduces complexity and risk into the environment.
Both IT and Developers cite numerous pain points in the successful operationalization of multi-cloud:
- Inconsistent infrastructure: Without a consistent multi-cloud infrastructure that spans all environments, cloud operational teams work in silos, with little flexibility to change strategies quickly or easily in response to changing business needs.
- An ever-changing application landscape: To support the faster release of new apps or features that deliver digital business value, organizations need to support the growing complexity of both existing and new application architectures, ensuring they can support DevSecOps, performance and availability across multiple cloud environments.
- Inefficient management: Lack of efficient and consistent multi-cloud infrastructure and management tools across diverse cloud environments significantly increases costs while exposing major security gaps.
- Networking and security: Networking and securing applications and data across clouds is complex, contributing to holes in security, risk exposure and an increased attack surface.
- A distributed workforce: With more data and people outside of the network, enterprises struggle to enable choice, flexibility, and a streamlined user experience without jeopardizing security.
Benefits of Multi-Cloud Services
Organizations see many benefits when leveraging multi-cloud services to abstract core services offered by cloud providers. These include:
- Reduced operational overhead by managing applications and infrastructure with the same toolsets across clouds. This includes the creation of “skill portability” where developers and operators can use the same skills across multiple cloud platforms
- Improved observability at all layers consistently across clouds, which in turn can improve application performance and security
- Enhanced security posture by leveraging a Zero Trust architecture and secure software supply chains
- Increased application portability opportunities via consistent services and APIs
- Choice of best of breed cloud native services