More and more companies are finding themselves using more than one cloud vendor. Using multiple cloud vendors reduces risk by adding redundancy and reducing vendor lock-in. Companies may also need multiple clouds to satisfy data sovereignty regulations that require keeping data in the country where it was collected.
Multiple clouds add to the challenges of managing cloud successfully. Take these steps to make sure your multicloud environment offers multiple benefits:
1. Plan for Multicloud
Make sure your multicloud architecture is the result of a deliberate, strategic choice. Review your complete network and all the software you use to understand where and how cloud makes sense. Then you can review each application or each line of business to identify the cloud provider and specific services that match their needs. These needs can be either in terms of performance, such as size or volume of data transfers, or functionality, such as specialized machine learning offerings.
2. Take Advantage of Cloud Management Tools
Make sure your IT team learns the cloud management tools from each provider you use thoroughly. You’ll need to be able to manage each environment effectively individually. Once you’ve mastered treating environments separately, you can start looking for ways to consolidate management into a single console. You may need to build your own tools to provide a consolidated view that allows you to track resources and make sure they continue to serve the business goals.
3. Gain Efficiency and Consistency Through Automation
Once you understand the ins and outs of managing your cloud environments individually and manually, start using automation. Not only will you gain efficiency, you’ll also increase the ability to make environments and configurations consistent across the different cloud platforms. With the same policies enforced on the multiple platforms, you’ll have a much easier time achieving compliance and tracking updates.
4. Use Tools Designed to Work With All Your Environments
When you bring in a third-party tool, choose a tool that can handle all your on-premises and cloud environments. For example, Veeam provides data protection capability that handles cloud environments, hyperconverged infrastructure from Nutanix, and virtual machines and physical servers in your own data center. When a tool supports that many environments, you can reduce the number of tools you need and the amount of training your staff requires.
5. Make Vendors Partners for Success
The complexity of mixed cloud environments means it’s difficult to succeed on your own. Select tools from vendors who will partner with you to make sure you deploy and use their products effectively. Get help making complicated decisions by bringing in expert professional services from a firm that’s experienced working with the technologies you’re considering.
dcVAST offers a wide range of services to help enterprises succeed with cloud. From offering advice to providing managed services for Nutanix, Amazon Web Services, and other tools, our team has knowledge and experience that provides true insight into how to use cloud effectively. Contact us to discuss how we can help you gain control over your multiple cloud environments.
