6 Signs You Need A Multi-Cloud Strategy
Enterprises adopt more than one type of cloud for a number of reasons, including security, shadow IT, and the varying degrees of support from providers. Here are 6 signs that your organization may need to jump into multi-cloud computing.
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Public, private, or hybrid? Organizations don't have to -- and, often, don't want to -- choose only one. Not all clouds are the same. The strengths of one might fit a particular enterprise task better than another. Perhaps more important, the security attributes of one may come closer to what the IT manager is looking for.
In addition, IT often ends up with responsibility for managing the cloud service, but users in one of the lines of business are frequently the initiator of the sign-up. Was that most recent sign-up with a compatible provider, and if not, what should IT do about it?
"In most enterprises multi-cloud infrastructure emerges as a result of organic adoption. One business unit, department or team uses AWS and another uses Azure and there you go: a multi-cloud organization," according to a summary of an interview with Scalr CEO Sebastian Stadil posted on his firm's website. Scalr is another front-end for managing multiple clouds.
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The cloud providers also vary in the degree of platform-as-a-service support they can offer once you've enlisted in using their infrastructure. Microsoft offers a rich assortment of Windows tools, combined with some choices on open source. Amazon, on the other hand, hosts Heroku and other PaaS providers. Nearly any open source option can be made available, including some of those sought by Windows programmers.
RightScale, a provider of front-end management to multiple clouds, says the typical public cloud user adopts 1.5 service providers for running apps and another 1.5 for experimentation. In addition, the same user is likely to run applications on 1.7 private clouds and experiment with 1.3 private clouds.
That makes a total of 6 clouds in use by the average user, according to RightScale's 2016 State of the Cloud Report. The findings are based on a Jan. 2016 survey of 1,060 respondents that ranged from technical executives to managers and practitioners, and represent organizations of varying sizes among many industries.
Here are six ways to assess whether you need to be a participant in multi-cloud computing.
Who's your closest, high-speed cloud service provider? Once an application is running in the cloud, it will experience the latencies imposed by distance between the cloud server and end-users of that application. If you're relying on the internet for your connection, the number of internet segments may each add a bit more latency as messages make their multiple hops over the network. Cloud providers are not able to build data centers close to every metropolitan area, and for the most part, they don't need to. But if you have a latency-sensitive application, then you may want to put it in a cloud center that's close to you or one associated with your existing telecom provider who can provide a high speed direct link.
Or you may seek one who's available through a high speed data center hub near your location, such as Equinix Cloud Exchange or Digital Realty Trust's Service Exchange.
Even if all cloud providers were equidistant from your headquarters, not all of them will supply an equal number of facilities around the world in the locations that you are interested in. The multinational corporation is a leading customer of multiple cloud data centers. You can try to find the vendor that covers all the locations you're interested in checking out their locations pages, such as AWS , IBM SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure, Google. Or you can mix a primary provider with a second tier provider, such as BlueLock or Centrilogic, that may have facilities in places you'd like to be.
The needs of developers differ markedly from the needs of the back office production systems and other parts of the organization. Some clouds, such as DigitalOcean, cater to developers, giving them fast start times for their virtual servers and low rates for small instances. But according to the summary of Stadil's interview on the Scalr site, "each group will attempt to optimize (its own use of cloud) to make their job easier," a move that can negatively impact other groups. Developers want to deliver code quickly, but that might mean they skip a security and compliance review in their cloud setting. If necessary, developers should be required to use a cloud provider who matches existing security requirements. IT should try to "solve 80% of everyone's problems instead of zero percent of multiple problems," Stadil said in a webinar titled "The 5 Pillars of Enterprise-Grade Cloud Management."
Developers tend to add a cloud provider to the enterprise mix because not all cloud providers can supply the same developer environments and support services. RightScale's 2016 State of the Cloud Report, for example, found use of AWS by RightScale customers was flat at 57%, while use of Microsoft Azure platform-as-a-service had grown to from 9% to 13% of customers and Azure infrastructure-as-a-service had grown from 12% to 17%. There's overlap in use of both services by some customers, but total customer use of Azure stands at 20%, according to survey respondents. That's up from 12% in 2015. If your organization needs tools, such as Visual Studio Team Services or Service Fabric, then your next generation of applications may demand adding Azure as another cloud vendor.
A big data job that ran successfully on AWS Spot cluster one time might find those low cost servers aren't available the next time it needs to run. If a blueprint for the job was constructed on the CSC Agility Platform, then it could be delivered to a different cloud service, such as IBM SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure, or an OpenStack cloud. Rackspace, VMware, Scalr and RightScale likewise can deliver a workload to a variety of cloud services. Pursuing the right server cluster at the right price through a front-end service that can invoke different providers is likely to result in more multi-cloud use in the future.
If you want to use more than one public cloud service, you may still have limited IT staff and time to invest in such an effort. In that case, you may need to figure out how all your cloud workloads can be configured and deployed from a single management console, using the same procedures each time. Rackspace, VMware, Scalr, RightScale, and CSC Agility Platform have enabled access to different clouds through a single pane of glass, a move that designed to make multi-cloud use more practical and manageable.
If you want to use more than one public cloud service, you may still have limited IT staff and time to invest in such an effort. In that case, you may need to figure out how all your cloud workloads can be configured and deployed from a single management console, using the same procedures each time. Rackspace, VMware, Scalr, RightScale, and CSC Agility Platform have enabled access to different clouds through a single pane of glass, a move that designed to make multi-cloud use more practical and manageable.
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