As we steer through the digital revolution, the cloud has emerged as a transformative force driving innovation, productivity, and efficiency. Among the numerous options available, multi-cloud stands out as the new frontier in the cloud landscape. However, as more businesses find themselves enveloped in the multi-cloud adoption, the complexity of managing multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) often becomes daunting.
Era of Multi-cloud adoption
According to Infosys’ Cloud Radar 2021, 93% of companies use at least two CSPs, and 82% use at least three. As surprising as these figures may seem, businesses that engage with multiple CSPs often achieve superior cloud performance. The flexibility enabled by the multi-cloud model drives this success.
Different CSPs, such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, have unique strengths, making them ideal for specific requirements. One CSP might excel in advanced data analytics, while another might provide better support for geographic expansion.
Additionally, having relationships with multiple CSPs offers resilience against outages and promotes competition among vendors, leading to better service quality and pricing.
Unraveling Multi-cloud complexities
However, the journey towards efficient multi-cloud operations is riddled with challenges. Companies must address the needs of various stakeholders, including business, IT, security, customers, and regulators. Striking the right balance between these needs, the capabilities of the cloud, and cost is key.
This balancing act brings several challenges to light: the complexity of managing diverse applications and infrastructures, data security, specialized talent needs, compliance with stringent regulations, and cost management. Technoidentity offers a decision framework based on three adoption models — orchestration, interoperability, and portability — that enterprises can leverage to cut through these complexities.
The right multi-cloud adoption model
Businesses should collaboratively build a framework for optimal multi-cloud arrangements. This framework can facilitate the selection of the best strategy based on size, industry, geography, and business-IT objectives. Here’s how each model can be utilized:
Let’s delve into three key strategies integral to successful multi-cloud adoption: Orchestration, Interoperability, and Portability.
Orchestration
This involves the effective placement of workloads on the appropriate public or private clouds and automating lifecycle management to reduce operational complexities. It empowers organizations to consistently enforce security, technical, and operational policies on workloads, thereby ensuring compliance and cost transparency.
Orchestration is an optimal strategy where workloads deployed across different clouds can operate independently and are cost-effective.
For instance, a company may choose to deploy support functions like HR, payroll, and finance on one CSP while situating manufacturing and supply chain operations on another. Such a multi-cloud setup typically requires minimal integration, making orchestration an adequate strategy.
Interoperability
This strategy allows workloads to be deployed across multiple clouds, thereby reducing management complexities and ensuring a seamless user experience. The system needs capabilities for standards-based process/data exchanges between applications, along with a unified toolset for developers and system operators.
Interoperability is a necessity when delivering business outcomes requires interdependent workloads across clouds.
To illustrate, a retailer might deploy product management and sourcing on one cloud, and e-commerce and order management on another due to compatibility considerations. To ensure a flawless customer journey, from browsing products to ordering and delivery, these systems need to interoperate seamlessly.
Portability
This refers to the ability to move workloads from one cloud to another without affecting the expected business outcomes. Establishing portability requires significant upfront investments to allow enterprises to continue their innovative pursuits using various CSP capabilities. This strategy is crucial when businesses need total control over the technology stack to support needs such as cross-border growth, business continuity, and regulatory compliance.
For example, a global financial firm using advanced technology to develop innovative products leveraged multi-cloud to support its worldwide operations and scalability needs. The company invested in cloud platform engineering to build capabilities for the seamless deployment of its application portfolio across multiple clouds using a “develop once and deploy globally” approach.
Determining the right strategy for multi-cloud adoption
Let’s delve into these four critical aspects that shape your multi-cloud strategy:
Organizational size
The scale of an organization fundamentally influences its IT budget, personnel strength, and knowledge capacity to implement intricate multi-cloud tactics. Due to significant cost and time investments, multi-cloud may seem daunting for small to medium-sized firms with restricted resources. They might find solace in leveraging a single Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and optimizing their operations through orchestration.
On the contrary, medium to large enterprises, seeking competitive advantage through IT, could necessitate services from multiple CSPs to fulfill their varied needs. For them, interoperability among various clouds should be a strategic priority. Lastly, large corporations with substantial IT budgets and adept teams can contemplate portability across numerous clouds, if it aligns with their strategic requirements.
Geographic reach
A company’s operational regions have a direct impact on the choice of its CSPs, given the regional variations in service availability and data-security regulations. For firms operating within a single region, a solitary CSP might be optimal, enabling them to concentrate on orchestration for operational efficiency and avoid the intricacies of multi-cloud management. However, multinational firms might encounter situations where their primary CSP lacks certain services in specific regions.
In such scenarios, these companies might need to rely on additional CSPs to meet all their requirements. Companies operating across geographies may find it beneficial to distribute region-specific workloads across different clouds, for performance optimization and regulatory compliance. Yet, these distributed workloads might need to interoperate for collective business results. Firms with CSPs limited to single regional locations might need to develop portability to a different CSP in anticipation of potential data residency restrictions, ensuring business continuity.
Industry specifics
Each industry has unique IT needs and regulatory obligations. In industries like utilities and materials, where IT primarily serves as a cost center, the focus lies on operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In such industries, a single CSP with an orchestration strategy might be most suitable.
In contrast, industries such as healthcare, retail, and CPG have leveraged IT for increased business value through improved product offerings, supply chain optimization, and cost reductions. These sectors might gain more by maximizing services across multiple CSPs and integrating business operations through interoperability. Regulations in some sectors, such as financial services, even necessitate having an exit strategy from the primary CSP, driving these organizations towards implementing portability. Similar regulations could be on the horizon for other industries as well.
Business objectives
The most influential driver for adopting a multi-cloud strategy is your business goals. The autonomy your business objectives demand will guide your move towards complex multi-cloud strategies. If cost reduction through IT is your target, you might suffice with services from a single CSP and maximize efficiency through orchestration.
If growth and optimization through IT are your business goals, you might choose services from multiple CSPs and align your business operations through interoperability. However, if you are aiming for business transformation through IT, then you will need to invest in developing portability across a multi-cloud environment.
Looking ahead: A balanced cloud mode for the future
As we leap into the future, it is essential to remember that not all businesses require multi-cloud. However, for those that do, it can be a potent tool for risk mitigation, value creation, and growth.
Adopting a multi-cloud approach is a multi-year journey, and businesses should establish an ongoing governance mechanism to ensure a forward-looking and result-oriented multi-cloud decision framework.
With the right approach, businesses can navigate the complexities of the multi-cloud landscape and harness the power of the cloud to fuel their digital transformation journeys.
