Many, if not most businesses, will end up with multiple cloud providers. In order to make the multicloud environment successful, businesses should investigate three key questions.
1. Why do you need a multicloud environment?
There’s more than one justification for using more than one cloud provider. Understanding your motivation allows you to make better choices for how you implement your multicloud architecture. Common reasons include:
• Enable disaster recovery. A cloud provider is used as a fail over site in case the other cloud provider has an outage. This requires keeping both sites in sync with regards to infrastructure and the version of deployed applications. It also requires a way to easily switch from one provider to another. In order to keep workloads deployable across clouds, you may not be able to take advantage of cloud-native benefits.
• Access best-in-class features. Not all cloud offerings are the same. This architecture deploys workloads or services on the provider with the best technology for its specific needs. It requires a deep understanding of workloads and each cloud. If services, rather than workloads, are deployed on different clouds, it requires strong emphasis on integration.
• Avoid vendor lock-in. Multiple vendors provide assurance that the business isn’t tied to a single vendor and can easily change providers if technology, cost, or other considerations make it beneficial. Like the disaster recovery motivation, enabling the switch to another cloud means not leveraging cloud-native features.
• Manage costs. In some cases, analyzing costs will find it’s beneficial to use one provider for some services and a different provider for others. Similar to the best-in-class scenario, this can mean integration is critical to delivering services.
2. How will you manage your multicloud environment?
Managing multiple clouds can be more difficult than managing a single cloud. Some of the challenges businesses face include:
• Controlling costs. With multiple cloud providers, there are multiple usage rates and multiple bills. The bills may not be received on the same cycle, and it may not be easy to associate them back to the department generating the usage. Tools such as VAST View can help with cost optimization.
• Security. Each cloud platform will have its own approach to security; solutions that work on one platform may not be applicable.
• Visibility. Cloud providers don’t always provide good visibility into their own environment, let alone provide a consolidated view across all your clouds. Businesses need a third-party tool such as VAST View to gain insight into their overall status.
• Backup and recovery. Businesses need to create a backup and recovery platform that works across all their clouds. Look for a backup solution such as Veritas, Veeam, or Cohesity that works on multiple cloud platforms.
• Change management. Using multiple clouds multiplies the frequency of changes in the cloud services used.
• Policy enforcement. Businesses need tools to help deploy policies, such as end of day shutdowns, across all platforms.
3. How will you support your multicloud?
IT teams need expertise across multiple cloud platforms to effectively support a multicloud architecture. Businesses should plan to meet the need with increased training. Businesses can also obtain cloud management services from an experienced provider such as VAST IT Services. With expertise spanning Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud, VAST IT Services helps businesses implement and manage their clouds wherever they reside.
Need help answering your multicloud questions? Contact VAST IT Services to learn more.
