In recent years, multi-cloud infrastructure has emerged as the solution of choice for over 90% of companies, with 58% working with at least 4 and 15% working with over 10. Avoiding vendor lock-in, risks around single cloud reliability, and the need for price-sensitive deployments has boosted the desire for a multi-cloud strategy.
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What is multi-cloud?
Multi-cloud is the next step from the hybrid-cloud. It refers to an approach in which several public cloud providers and/or private cloud resources are used simultaneously. For example, an organisation may use separate cloud providers for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, or multiple IaaS providers. They may use different infrastructure providers to meet the needs of a particular workload, deploy a single workload on one provider, with a backup on another (active-passive) or deploy a single workload load balanced across multiple providers (active-active).
Multi-cloud improves the mobility of data. Organisations achieve improved data availability with data sets distributed across multiple cloud platforms and can recognise cost savings by using the best fit model for each application.
Benefits of multi-cloud
The three primary benefits of multi-cloud are:
Improved service delivery
By utilising a multi-cloud strategy, an organisation can achieve lower downtime for critical services. Taking a strategic approach to how and where multiple clouds are used results in speed and consistency.
Better Security
Multi-cloud enables organisations to improve their security. The IT team can reduce the chances of data leakage, loss, and weak authentication by using a solution that controls where data lives and flows, as well as improved user authentication.
Reduced Costs
By using the workload placement process, organisations can consider architecture as a factor when choosing where to move an application. Organisations can spend 40% less on IaaS than in-house.
Challenges of multi-cloud (and how to eliminate them)
Managing multiple public clouds and privately hosted applications brings with it more challenges.
- Reduced application performance
- Increased latency can affect the performance of the application and the user experience.
- Network costs
- Transfer of data between public clouds will incur a cost, as will the deployment of high-speed private MPLS circuits between private clouds and data centres.
- Security and Risk
Multiple cloud-specific portals do not allow a single pane of glass view. When an attack occurs, it is complicated to mount a coordinated response to mitigate the risk.
Cloud Connect and why your multi-cloud strategy needs it
Connectivity is often overlooked when developing a multi-cloud strategy. But it is a crucial component that should be considered as much as any other element. An organisation’s multi-cloud strategy should be built on a highly efficient network – secure, private and direct.
Cloud Connect offers private network connectivity for direct access to multiple clouds. Providing a scalable, flexible and rapid way to connect. It gives an organisation the ability to align network consumption with its cloud consumption.
Eliminating the complexity associated with provisioning, allows a company to scale and achieve cost savings, leaving them to focus on business results. And while setting up a point-to-point with a chosen provider may appear simple, but it rarely is, and some like Microsoft do not support dedicated connections.
The flexible approach makes it easy to connect to a new provider or location and gives them the freedom to flex bandwidth up and down to suit consumption.
For many companies now born in the cloud or all in the cloud, there is the added challenge when deploying a multi-cloud strategy – there is no existing private network in a physical location to connect back to. Cloud Connect’s virtual routing overcomes this by enabling the connectivity of cloud platforms so that workloads can be moved between them without having to route back to legacy infrastructure.
A Multi-Cloud strategy can transform an organisation – improving service delivery, providing better security and reducing costs.
And cloud connect should form the foundation of the multi-cloud network architecture.