Effective Cloud Strategy for your Business

A decade ago, cloud computing was for enterprises what AI and IOT are these days. Exciting meaningful but still not a part of their world. Today however, we can safely say that cloud computing has become a part of the mainstream enterprise technology world. Gartner predicts that by end of this year, 75 percent of organizations will have deployed a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud model. The discussions have now moved from does cloud make sense to our business to what kind of cloud environment is best for us. Cloud is no longer a buzzword but a need for most businesses, and at the same time transitioning to cloud is an expensive affair. In this article, I will highlight few of the things that as a business you should consider before making the move.

Different cloud environments 

There is no one size fits all in Cloud computing. Every cloud provider has a different setup in terms of physical infrastructure, technology infrastructure, functionality, pricing and policies and others. Private, where computing services are offered via dedicated resources over a computing infrastructure hosted on-premise or at service providers cloud but in the dedicated model. Public, where computing services offered by third-party providers over the public internet and hybrid where a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services are used.

Multi-cloud v. Hybrid-cloud environment

While public and private clouds are simple, there are multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architectures. Although they sound similar, there is a major difference between them. In a multi-cloud setup, enterprises may use multiple public cloud from multiple cloud providers, whereas hybrid cloud solutions combine the advantages of public, private and multi-cloud to deliver the agility, elasticity, and cost-effectiveness to your organization.

It basically means that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket and hence, distributing the risk and getting the best environment for your application as per business and users need. For instance, a business that is spread across geographies and is using cloud services, finding one cloud infrastructure provider to meet all its demands and needs, is a big challenge. For such organizations, a multi-cloud architecture is best suited.

Drivers for a Multi-cloud environment

Another major reason for enterprises to adopt multi-cloud is avoiding vendor lock-in. This means that you will be working with more than one vendor in a multi-cloud setup. When a multi-cloud strategy is adopted by organizations, it provides them with more leverage than the cloud provider. The organization now has the option of transferring workloads between providers basis pricing or differing capabilities.

Other factors like cost savings, performance optimization, a lowered risk of DDoS attacks, as well as improved reliability, make hybrid-cloud a very attractive option for many businesses. Multi-cloud environment is one of the most flexible environments one can go in for.

Challenges of a Multi-cloud architecture

While multi-clouds seem extremely attractive there are some pitfalls to it as well. One of the biggest is the possibility of difficult integration across multiple cloud servers and vendors. Keeping track of all the stakeholders, applications and deployments with multiple vendors and platforms can be a thing of IT management nightmare.

Then there is the entire security angle to it. While the multi-cloud does limit the DDoS attack, it may leave an enterprise vulnerable to other attacks, if don’t plan the organization level security policies as per the individual cloud operators’ measures. So now an enterprise has to be not just aware of knowing each of its many cloud service providers’ security measures and then has to identify the steps needed to secure the gaps.

Strategize your way to a successful multi-cloud, the Yotta way

Before you jump into the multi-cloud bandwagon, it is a good idea to form a strategy. Solid strategies that will help you understand why exactly your business needs a multi-cloud setup. Is it because you want to reduce vendor dependency or is the focus risk mitigation? Questions about functionality, procurement or application portability on this kind of environment need to be addressed clearly before embarking upon this journey.

A clearly defined multi-cloud strategy will automatically lead itself into a successful venture. While there are challenges, there are solutions to overcome them as well, for instance, instead of learning and using new tools, with Yotta’s orchestration layer one can manage and deploy any cloud as per security posture/polices of the organization. Besides, Yotta can also help to move your workloads across clouds by taking the entire responsibility of the migration. If your enterprise is looking to shift to cloud computing or moving to a multi-cloud environment, schedule a free consultation with our cloud experts.