As cloud adoption continues to grow, it is becoming increasingly risky for organizations to host all their applications and data on a single cloud provider. Risks can be mitigated through multicloud deployment, where resources are spread across multiple cloud providers.
Jump to:
What is multicloud deployment?
Multicloud refers to an implementation that relies on cloud services provided by two or more cloud providers. It’s about having workloads across multiple cloud providers.
Multicloud deployments also include a calculated approach to the design and deployment of resources to ensure that the application architecture and strengths of future infrastructure providers are complementary.
TO SEE: Multicloud explained: a cheat sheet (TechRepublic)
Benefits of multicloud deployment
Resistance
A key benefit of a multicloud deployment approach is that it ensures that mission-critical services do not experience outages when a cloud provider goes down. Such resilience is crucial for systems and applications that need to serve end users 24 hours a day.
Flexibility
Today’s business needs are constantly changing. Multicloud deployments enable organizations to remain flexible and agile in the face of constant and rapid change. It also enables organizations to meet various data needs and ensure that data is available.
Compliance
The organization’s IT compliance requirements for data privacy and data sovereignty often vary. When dealing with data that involves strict data security measures, multicloud deployments allow organizations to store sensitive data in a hardened private cloud and control how public cloud environments access it.
Preventing vendor lock-in
Multicloud deployments provide a way for companies to not be tied to a single provider, as the alignment between a provider and an enterprise can change over time. Misalignment can lead to higher costs and ineffective services. In addition, switching providers as a result of this mismatch can be expensive and time-consuming. Multicloud environments limit organizations’ exposure to vendor lock-in.
Cost optimization
Multicloud deployments can provide an organization with the tools to optimize the cost of cloud technologies and the reliability of workloads. Because cloud providers vary in offerings and costs, organizations can choose which providers cost-effectively align with their strategic initiatives.
Disadvantages of multicloud deployment
Complexity
A single cloud provider can introduce teams to a sharp learning curve due to the processes and systems IT teams must learn, in addition to familiarity with the services these providers are introducing. Now consider the impact of adopting more providers. Ensuring that teams remain competent in all environments can be challenging.
Cost
Overall, cost proves to be a challenge for multicloud deployments. An additional cost is generated from the extra traffic and management layer between cloud environments. Unnecessary costs can arise when organizations fail to understand the cost differences between cloud providers.
Also, the cost of hiring and training staff for all cloud environments and the cost of unused resources that can go undetected in complex cloud environments show that costs can easily spiral out of control without proper management and supervision.
Multicloud Deployment Considerations
There are a number of considerations to make for a successful multicloud deployment. These include infrastructure, operations and applications.
Infrastructure
A multicloud deployment plan should be specific about the target infrastructure based on the current and future needs of different stakeholders. The plan should also consider the impact of advanced technologies such as software-defined infrastructure, virtualization, and more.
The deployment plan should consider a multicloud deployment that supports these advanced infrastructure technologies in complex hybrid and multicloud environments. It is also critical to determine how the required data format conversions will be performed as data moves across public cloud and on-premises environments. This consideration still applies to the transit of data between different cloud providers.
It is also important to determine whether a future multicloud deployment will support infrastructure self-sufficiency as much as possible. These include infrastructure-as-code (IAC) templates, especially since cloud provider IAC tools are vendor-specific and often difficult to manage in multi-cloud environments.
Finally, the data stored in containerized environments must be properly managed and secured. Containerized environments benefit from multicloud environments because they run code the same way regardless of the deployment infrastructure.
Activities
A multicloud deployment plan should address a number of operational issues. There should be an understanding of the impact of the implementation on the IT landscape and new roles should be identified where possible.
For example, it may be necessary to introduce business relationship management roles to ensure that business needs and IT services are aligned. These roles should also be created with access control and multicloud security in mind.
One of the biggest challenges for multicloud deployments is cost management. As a result, the implementation plan must include a cost management process to handle both the current and future appropriate size.
It should also be easy to move data from one cloud to another when needed. Users should consider multicloud deployment tools that cost-effectively approach data replication and synchronization and multicloud data transfer.
Organizations should also consider multicloud deployment tools that manage and deploy the entire data fabric from a unified dashboard to provide transparency to the entire spectrum of multicloud end users. Such transparency should also apply to the billing and pricing models for these end users.
Applications
Effective implementation of multicloud applications requires teams to evaluate which applications and workloads are best suited for specific cloud platforms. This can be determined by the availability of specialized computing power, how easy it is to integrate a cloud provider’s services and resources with other cloud environments, and the geographic locations of the provider’s data centers.
Securing and protecting data should be a priority as data security is one of the biggest challenges for multicloud deployments. The implementation of multicloud applications must be complemented by effective authorization and authentication features to secure data.
Encryption of data at rest and data in transit is one of the approaches that can be taken to secure data. In addition, this data must be protected from corruption and loss and must be a consideration in a multicloud deployment plan.
In addition, standardization and coordination of development stacks across clouds should be considered to ensure consistent and interchangeable deployments across multiple clouds. Considering continuous integration and delivery solutions for multicloud environments can facilitate the shift to multicloud environments and make multicloud application deployment more consistent and manageable.
TO SEE: iCloud vs. OneDrive: Which is Best for Mac, iPad, and iPhone Users? (free pdf) (TechRepublic)
Flexera Cloud Management Platform
Bow is a cloud management tool with a rich array of discovery, operational monitoring, management, governance, template-based provisioning, orchestration and automation, and cost optimization in multicloud environments and virtual and bare metal servers. It is suitable, but not limited to, small and medium-sized businesses in need of a powerful orchestration engine and workflow automation capabilities.
VMware
VMwares multicloud solutions allow organizations to seamlessly migrate to the cloud without having to recode their applications. They enable them to modernize their infrastructure and operate consistently across multicloud environments, data centers and the edge. VMware offers numerous multicloud products, including VMware Cloud Foundation, Tanzu, Cloud on AWS, vRealize Cloud Management, CloudHealth by VMware Suite, and more.
Azure Arc
Azure Arc extends the Azure platform to enable users to create applications and services that run flexibly in multicloud environments, on the edge, and in data centers. Arc runs on new and legacy hardware, integrated systems, IoT devices, and Kubernetes and virtualization platforms.
Nutanix Cloud Manager cost management
Formerly known as Nutanix Beam, Nutanix Cloud Manager cost management is a cloud management platform that provides organizations with insights into cloud consumption patterns and solutions for cost management and security optimization. Nutanix Cloud Manager Cost Governance also simplifies and drives multicloud governance. Cloud teams seeking insight into their spend will find great value in this tool.
The mist
The mist is an open-source multicloud management platform aimed at simplifying multicloud and providing a unified interface for multicloud management. Mist supports all relevant infrastructure technologies such as private and public clouds, containers, bare metal servers and hypervisors.
Deciding whether to move to multicloud
Organizations should keep an eye out for multicloud when looking for options that some providers don’t offer. If flexibility, resiliency, and control over applications and data appeal to you, consider multicloud deployment. However, since multicloud deployments are large-scale transformative efforts for any enterprise, the implementation plan must be executed in a flexible manner.
