Multicloud Strategy: 10 Bizarre Facts You Need to Know

Multicloud environments can be highly beneficial for your business when used and managed correctly. An effective multiple cloud strategy will result in elasticity, flexibility, optimized workload, efficiency, and cost reduction. But only if the multi-cloud strategy is implemented correctly.

How do you keep up with the ever-growing multi-cloud environment while making the best choices for your business? To begin with, we will go over how the multicloud works and its challenges and benefits.

What is the multicloud approach?

The multicloud is a model where a company uses a combination of several cloud providers. Today, it is the case for 89% of companies. It can be two or more public clouds, two or more private clouds, or a combination of public, private, and edge clouds. The multicloud approach aims to distribute the workload among different clouds to improve performance and avoid the risks caused by using a single cloud.

Why opt for a multicloud strategy?

By adopting a multi-cloud strategy, companies can meet their own needs, as well as those of their end users.

It is a customer-centric choice, which guarantees their clients’ data is stored and managed locally, in Europe, and is immune to extraterritorial legislation like the CLOUD Act.

It is also a reliable choice, which enables companies to implement resilient, highly available services, thanks to Multi-AZ, multi-region and multi-provider approaches.

It is a growth-focused choice, as it means businesses can recruit developers based on their versatility, rather than their expertise on specific cloud providers. It also ensures the best possible developer experience.

It is a sustainable choice, as using carbon-neutral data centers, with the freedom to scale as their company grows, means long-term durability for your business.

Multicloud is continually growing and evolving, bringing you the benefits of innovation and new features. The wide choice of providers and the permanent growth can feel overwhelming and challenging, especially for young businesses. While each company has its own multicloud approach, customized according to their unique goals and requirements, there are best practices that work perfectly for all companies when adopting a multicloud strategy.

10 best practices to make your multicloud strategy a success

1. Standardization

Make sure you use standard protocols and formats for storage, computing, and networking. Go for solutions that work with any cloud provider and don’t rely on an architecture that is only compatible with a specific CSP.

Even if you start your business using a single cloud, we recommend you design the infrastructure so that it can be plugged into other clouds in the future. Decide on the common ground and build your solution around it.

2. Third-party monitoring

Independent monitoring tools are crucial in a multi-cloud landscape. While each cloud will provide you with the tools necessary to monitor the processes and results in its specific environment, you will need a third-party monitoring strategy to oversee the multi-cloud infrastructure.

Monitoring the multi cloud from a single dashboard allows you to see how the whole system is functioning and to notice potential breaches, gaps, and outages.

3. Modularization

A module is a collection of files in a dedicated directory. Typically, you don’t need to rewrite the code to use these files in a similar infrastructure.

As soon as you step out of one cloud environment, you need to edit your modules to make them work with other providers. However, if you deploy the components to a module from the start, you won’t need to rewrite them.

Modularization allows you to shift modules from cloud to cloud without needing any modification, which massively speeds up the whole process.

4. Containerization

Migrating workloads between different cloud environments is much easier when using containers. Having applications packaged into containers allows a better portability of sub-components and considerably simplifies app management. You can move the application from one cloud to another without interfering with the application’s performance and components.

5. Implementing proper security protocols

Security is one of the biggest challenges when managing a multi-cloud environment. On the one hand, a comprehensive, unified security protocol is necessary. On the other, each organization needs to be careful regarding security when sharing sensitive information between different clouds.

A security protocol is vital to establish who has control over what type of information in a multi-cloud environment and fix the roles when it comes to handling sensitive data. In addition, it allows complete visibility and control over your application.

6. Strategies for intelligent workload distribution

Mapping workloads to the appropriate cloud services based on business needs makes it possible for you to improve business performance and overall functioning. Together with your team, you will need to define which cloud is best for a specific workload to ensure that the data is well distributed.

7. Integration

As your business grows, you may encounter obstacles in terms of cost, security, and performance. To ensure processes run as smoothly as possible, you will need integration in six key areas: business, tools, information, organization, governance, and operations. By having an integrated resource system, you can easily monitor separate clouds, schedule application maintenance, and pinpoint possible threats.

8. Governance tools

A solid cloud governance program is a must for a successful multicloud strategy. It ensures the standardization of processes and compliance across multiple cloud providers and onsite platforms. By using a cloud governance model, businesses can automate standardization and improve operational efficiencies.

9. Automation

The multicloud can be overwhelming, so having automated processes whenever possible will allow you to make your process smoother. Make the best of all the automation tools — create policies that alert you about cost increase, resource utilization, and asset configuration. This will not only reduce your tasks, as you won’t have to do them manually, but it will also mean you are more aware of the processes happening all over the multi-cloud landscape.

10. Picking the right management tools and cloud providers

The market for cloud management tools is huge, and its growth is not expected to slow down anytime soon. This gives you an exceptional opportunity to pick what is best for your business without stopping at a single vendor. However, all these options can also be overwhelming. To make the most of what the multi cloud has to offer, you will need the best set of tools and the most skilled providers out there.

A multi-cloud environment implies that every cloud provider you are using comes with its own set of tools, practices, and standards. Transitioning to a multi-cloud strategy is not a sprint. It is a marathon. It is also a work in progress.

By adopting best practices and approaches to simplify deploying a multi-cloud strategy, you can make the best of the multi cloud and add immense value to your business, improve the performance of your solution, and scale it for future growth.

source:

https://blog.scaleway.com/10-best-practices-for-a-successful-multi-cloud-strategy/