Shane Quinlan, Product Management Director at Kion, explains what it takes to effectively manage multi-cloud environments.
As organizations continue their digital transformation, many are now discovering why they should take advantage of the flexibility of multi-cloud environments. In multi-cloud environments, great flexibility comes with great challenges. The difficulty of deploying a multi-cloud environment can lead organizations to avoid multi-cloud entirely – to their detriment.
Organizations can leverage the strengths of each cloud provider in a multi-cloud environment, with coverage and unique capabilities. Resilient cloud-native applications need to look beyond the lock-in of a single cloud provider to reduce the risk of infrastructure changes or issues. In general, relying on just one cloud provider not only limits the benefits of the cloud, but also creates more challenges down the road.
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As someone who has delivered dozens of apps to various cloud domains, the lack of visibility with cloud providers and complicated compliance frameworks are always paramount, but I learned the hard way that identity and access management is bold in multi-cloud. It’s not just managing disparate security policies, but the skills gap that makes management—much less improvement—challenging. About 78% of IT leaders in a recent Forrester study said managing user identities in the multi-cloud environment was their biggest challenge. The same survey also found that 62% of IT decision makers felt the lack of skills made it more difficult to support cloud-based IAM. Do these challenges sound familiar to you?
Before going into detail about how best to solve these issues, it may be helpful to first explain why so many organizations see the value of multi-cloud environments.
Benefits of multi-cloud environments
It is important to note that just as an engineer has a favorite programming language, technology teams usually have their preferred cloud provider. Whether it’s AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, they understand how to make the best use of their platform of choice. That said, relying solely on one solution for all instances is probably not the best choice. One size doesn’t always fit all.
Choosing the best cloud for you should be based on the problem to be solved. Different clouds are tailored for specific use cases. Need to migrate an entire application architecture using .NET to the cloud? Chances are, Azure is your best choice. Does your team rely on open source with previous AWS experience? Try AWS.
The point is that different clouds are useful based on specific usage scenarios. That’s the real benefit of multi-cloud environments. In fact, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is looking at its own multi-cloud solution to take advantage of the best aspects of any cloud infrastructure, and this is part of a broader trend in the intelligence community.
However, what is important to keep in mind is that there will always be gaps that need to be filled when it comes to building multi-cloud environments.
How to bridge the multi-cloud gap?
By closing any gaps within cloud-centric or cloud-native technology teams, they can realize the full potential of their organization’s investment in their multi-cloud environments. Bridging this gap should always start with getting a holistic and comprehensive view of your multi-cloud infrastructure by integrating governance and management principles. This often seems like a daunting, time-consuming task. However, with the right focus, organizations can streamline this process.
It is essentially impossible to find technical talent that is adept at every cloud provider, nor is it difficult to find a solution that works for all cloud providers. This is where organizations need to remember the key components of a successful multi-cloud approach: visibility, automation and management. Organizations that leverage these aspects can reap the full value and benefits of a multi-cloud environment while avoiding vendor lock-in, achieving better cost control, and leveraging the best-in-class solutions from each provider.
With regard to IAM concerns, a robust governance plan can help an organization navigate these often tricky waters and mitigate the security risks inherent in mismanaged identities, along with reducing the manual labor associated with granting permissions. It’s important for organizations to take control of their identity by restricting services based on the specific terms and conditions and compliance standards your organization requires, as well as requesting exemptions so that only specific roles can access certain services. These ensure that your organization adheres to the principle of least authority, whereby identities in your organizations only have access to what they need, when they need it.
Why you should adjust your cloud management
Organizations that want to get the most out of their multi-cloud environment need to rethink how they approach their cloud management strategies and how they can better deploy themselves in a multi-cloud environment.
Some organizations rely on difficult-to-navigate approval chains, help desk tickets, and manual processes that can negate the benefits of a multi-cloud infrastructure. Look for a solution that can automate many of these processes to free up your and your user population’s time. This enables your organization to reap the benefits of your multi-cloud, without the burnout.
In addition, ensure that your multi-cloud infrastructure does not bankrupt your organization. It is often difficult enough to manage spending with one cloud provider, let alone several. A solution that sets guardrails to help you control spending and understand your cloud costs will be more important than ever in 2022, especially in an age of limited resources.
While there are other steps to consider when it comes to successfully using a multi-cloud environment, having a window in your cloud infrastructure keeps it running smoothly, often without cumbersome manual processes. It’s important to understand how best to maintain a multi-cloud environment so that it improves, not controls, your life.
Shane Quinlan is the Product Management Director at: Kion — building the only single platform approach to enable cloud. Prior to Kion, Shane was the Product Portfolio Director at Rise8 for the USAF Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) and the Chief Product Officer at Certilytics, Inc. He has over 8 years of experience in product management and digital consulting, with a special talent for communicating complex ideas. He previously worked for Washington, DC-based cybersecurity firms CBV Cyber and Ntrepid LLC.
