In 2018, Gartner published research on multi-cloud computing which predicted that in the shift to the cloud, no enterprise would select a single cloud provider. Today, Gartner reports that more than 75% of organizations use multiple public cloud services.
A multi-cloud strategy can solve many of the challenges facing customers today, such as avoiding vendor lock-in, reducing costs, and optimizing performance. Here’s an overview of the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy and what to look for when selecting multi-cloud providers.
What is a multi-cloud strategy and what are the benefits?
A multi-cloud strategy enables an organization to make use of cloud computing services from two or more cloud service providers. Typically, multi-cloud refers to running enterprise applications on software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) from multiple cloud service providers.
But when it comes to supporting specific applications, workloads, and business processes, not all cloud services are created equal. Multi-cloud solutions give organizations the flexibility they need to build and run applications across multiple clouds and computing environments. This allows organizations to take advantage of the innovations that best meet their business needs and operate with the best computing environment for each workload.
Additionally, a multi-cloud infrastructure allows an organization’s cloud environment to be private, public, or hybrid, so you gain the flexibility to choose the deployment option that works best for your organization.
What challenges can a multi-cloud strategy solve?
Reduce downtime
Organizations cannot afford to be without critical business applications. Whether it’s financial information, lab notebooks, or information related to manufacturing processes, operational information and applications are critical to keeping the business running.
A multi-cloud strategy allows you to build redundancy into your IT strategy by orchestrating across multiple workloads and reducing the risk of a single point of failure. In other words, if you experience an outage in one cloud, your computing needs can be routed to another cloud.
Increase security
Security is a top priority for most organizations, especially when moving to the cloud. But managing security for an application is an expensive endeavour, so being able to outsource application security is critical.
When an organization works with a cloud vendor, the vendor is responsible for managing security for the application—whether at the infrastructure level (e.g., hyperscalers) or the application itself. A good multi-cloud strategy will also include a centralized monitoring dashboard that works across multiple cloud service providers and solutions, allowing you to monitor any security incidents across your multi-cloud environment.
Improve governance
Applying governance and compliance policies across the organization can be a daunting task, and especially in a multi-cloud environment. With a multi-cloud management platform or tools, organizations can gain visibility and governance over cloud resources across cloud environments, while reducing complexity.
By centralizing governance policies across a multi-cloud environment, organizations can ensure the correct governance policies are in place no matter which cloud environment is in use.
Key considerations for selecting multi-cloud providers
There are several important factors organizations should consider when selecting multi-cloud providers:
- Consider business needs and requirements. What are your organization’s business needs? What level of coverage does your organization need—regional coverage, hot failover, recovery? What are the legislative or regulatory requirements your organization needs to meet? What are the storage requirements? What are the access or response requirements? When evaluating a multi-cloud provider, organizations should look at both how the provider handles their needs and requirements today, and what the provider’s strategy is for handling future requirements.
- Understand data rights. It’s common today for organizations to talk about the democratization of data. For example, SAP and Google recently announced a new partnership that includes an open data offering. Although these kinds of offerings present many benefits, organizations need to have a clear understanding of how their telemetry and system data is being used by their cloud service providers—and, most importantly, consent to this use of data.
- Build elasticity into multi-cloud agreements. This ensures that organizations are only paying for what they use—not for what they’re entitled to use. Elasticity also allows for organizations to ramp up or ramp down their cloud use as required.
- Have access to a centralized monitoring dashboard that works across multiple cloud service providers and solutions. A centralized monitoring dashboard will reduce complexity while ensuring cyber resilience.
A multi-cloud strategy with OpenText
OpenText is building the most secure and elastic information cloud for evolving content types that will increase productivity for IT, operations, developers, and more.
The latest release of OpenText Cloud Editions enables customers to connect, manage, govern, and secure information from end to end in a multi-cloud environment. The OpenText Cloud delivers information management solutions in a world-class cloud built for every customer’s journey, with continued expansion of the geographies and compliance requirements supported:
- Private cloud – software delivered as a single instance, combined with infrastructure and managed services
- Public cloud SaaS – solutions delivered as multi-tenant SaaS, built for purpose and deployed quickly
- APIs – to easily extend or build custom applications with ready-to-use solutions
- Off-cloud – software that customers deploy in their infrastructure of choice
OpenText can support you on your cloud journey, regardless of your choice of cloud delivery model or cloud service providers.
Start your multi-cloud journey with a partner, not just a vendor!
