eHDF's Blog

Sunday, 29 September 2019 Blog tomsadmin

Multi-Cloud Migration is the Game Changer for Businesses

In a recent Gartner survey, 81% of respondents said that they are working with two or more Cloud Service Providers. There are a host of drivers for the adoption of multi-cloud. Some of them include avoiding vendor lock in situations, multiple geographical spread where a single provider may not have the reach, or the need to remain agile with best-of-breed solutions. With data being at the core of running businesses, Public Cloud has been gaining momentum as a result the increasing focus on Big Data, Business Intelligence, AI and Machine Learning and Analysis.

What is also clearly evident is that the trend is not just relevant within the enterprise sector but is seeing a greater shift into the small and medium business segment as well. At the forefront of multi-cloud adoption lies the fact that organizations are migrating to the cloud to be able to garner the benefits of automation of operations, and integrating technologies such as IoT, blockchain, BYOD, etc.

While earlier, organizations ventured into a multi-cloud situation accidently, in recent times it is becoming a more intentional and strategic decision where they are developing and designing applications that are meant for the Cloud. Multi- cloud is being used to be able to circumvent the dependency on specific enterprise IT architectures and broadening the use of multiple Cloud Service Providers’ offerings.

It allows organizations to the select specific solutions that are in synch with their needs while also giving them the option to spread their workloads in different surroundings for increased productivity and efficiency. It creates a business environment that is able to achieve defined goals yet remain flexible. The pricing structures offered by Cloud Service Providers allows companies to take advantage of varied pricing models to suit their individual workloads. And lastly, multi-cloud deployments help reduce downtime by being able to shift between different cloud environments to enable failovers and Disaster Recovery much quicker and efficiently.

While moving into a multi-cloud environment has many benefits, the biggest challenges involve the area of security and compliance. This is true for data and information security, network security and the ever-increasing governmental regulations and compliance requirements. Multi-cloud also brings in the aspect of data being stored in different locations; jurisdiction compliance must not be overlooked. Organizations must assess their current security systems and processes, carefully develop security objectives that address Cloud specific threats and vulnerabilities and develop a framework and timeline to achieve their security goals.

Another challenge is the monitoring and management tools while migrating into a multi-cloud scenario. These tools are not just expensive but are also complex. It involves a great amount of effort in selecting the appropriate tools and evaluating them for the organizations’ needs. What is important is that the monitoring tools are combined by putting in place the best tools that provide real-time visibility. This in turn creates the needs for highly qualified and professional staff. As we are aware, IT skill sets are some of the most difficult to come by, for their knowledge, as well as being able to be up to date with the changing technology environment. Multi-cloud therefore calls for investments in developing these skills or on-boarding staff with multi-cloud expertise.

The process of migrating to the multi-cloud environment may seem daunting to many organizations. There are options to utilize the services of consultancies or hire third party implementation skills that help organizations maximize migration successfully. Starting with assessing requirements, and how to optimize the multi-cloud investments. Once the migration process is completed, service providers are in a strong position to help monitor and manage the workloads. And last but not the least they are equipped to protect the multi-cloud environment with advanced security solutions and services while enabling the organization to reap the benefits of being flexible and increasing network agility.