Abstract

In the past most companies went to a single cloud strategy to lower in-house IT costs which is now giving way to a multi-cloud approach, with companies embracing the benefits of utilizing multiple Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers. About 94% of large enterprises have adopted a multi-cloud strategy, about 84% for mid-sized companies, and about 79% for small businesses. The multi-cloud landscape is brimming with potential, offering businesses a wealth of flexibility, enhanced security including disaster recovery (DR), and significant cost-saving opportunities. However, venturing into this domain without a well-defined plan is like setting sail in the Pacific Ocean without a compass. So let us regress a little bit and look at the basics of the different kinds of clouds that are available.

Cloud Strategy

A public cloud is a third-party provider that offers resources over the internet that anyone can access and subscribe to. This is usually a budget-friendly option that can scale. They may be free or sold on demand, allowing customers to pay only for usage of the CPU cycles, storage, or bandwidth they consume.

A private cloud is a computing environment that’s dedicated to a single organization, with all resources isolated and under their control. This is a good choice for organizations with strict regulatory requirements that need high security and performance. Private clouds are also known as internal or corporate clouds.

The hybrid cloud is a combination of public and private clouds that allow organizations to take advantage of both while maintaining control over their data and applications. This offers flexibility and scalability, as well as cost optimization and strengthened security. A hybrid cloud is really a mixed computing environment where applications are run using a combination of computing, storage, and services in different environments.

Multi-Cloud Strategy

A multi-cloud strategy uses multiple cloud providers for cloud services. A single cloud is easier to manage because there’s no need to migrate workloads between providers but poses a risk of vendor lock-in. A muti-cloud strategy offers more flexibility (i.e., layered security measures and scalability of workloads). Also, it’s a good way to hedge against risks of obsolescence, as it allows you to rely on multiple vendors and open standards, which can prolong the life of your systems. In some cases, a hybrid cloud can be deemed a multi-cloud when it combines more than one public cloud service with private cloud services.

Selecting Cloud Services Providers

Before sending out any request to cloud service providers, you need to have an agreed-upon rating/ranking system that is fair and objective to help remove any bias or politics during the selection process. Using the worksheet below (Table 1) can help you identify which cloud provider offers the best solution for your enterprise by comparing its strengths and weaknesses by specified criteria. Keep in mind that your main objective in choosing a cloud provider is to select the best overall solution based on the criteria that are most important to your organization.

Instructions

The weighted total of cloud services providers shows 8 key criteria’s, their assigned requirements ranking (0 – 3), and weighted total scores for vendors A, B and C. Since vendor B has the highest-weight proposal score (20), it is the best vendor or provider to select. Your organization may decide overtime to update the criteria depending on their requirements.

Before you sign up with a big multi-cloud supplier like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform GCP), you should develop exit plans in case you decide to change vendors in the future. The exit plans should include abstraction of application program interfaces (API) and addressing portability for the application, platform, and data. Also, when you are moving to the cloud, you’ve replaced your data center, servers, storage, networking, and all the software that makes all that work. But you haven’t replaced IT operations management! Somebody still must make sure that it’s working, monitor it, and do the capacity planning. This includes understanding what you are spending and what you should spend next, plus application architecture and security. BMW, Walmart, and BP are examples of traditional industries leveraging multi-cloud strategies to drive innovation and operational efficiency.

Advantages and Challenges

Adopting a multi-cloud strategy offers another significant advantage: enhanced risk management. In the event of infrastructure issues or security breaches from one cloud provider, multi-cloud users have the flexibility to swiftly transition to another provider or backup to a private cloud.

There are many downsides to going to cloud computing that you should be aware of. Common cloud computing issues and challenges are configuration errors, lack of security patches, data governance and no granularity. The biggest problem is the potential for external data breaches like leaking financial or customer data which threatens customer’s trust.

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