Demystifying the multi-cloud strategy: The key steps organisations need to take today

The cloud industry is moving at lightning speed, with enterprise adoption of multi-cloud becoming increasingly mainstream due to the need for faster digital transformation. Gartner predicts that 90% of organisations will adopt hybrid infrastructure management capabilities by 2020.

There are, of course, many benefits to deploying a multi-cloud strategy, including mitigating the risk of disaster through a single point of failure, business agility and cost saving. Having said this, multi-cloud should not be used as a silver bullet to save on costs – cloud pricings fluctuate on a daily basis between vendors. For me, the main benefit of using multi-cloud is agility – IT managers are able to get the best possible cost whilst also avoiding vendor lock-in.

Today, many organisations employ at least three cloud providers in order to have to the agility to move their workloads around as and when they please. In fact, a 2018/2019 survey by Pierre Audoin Consultants found that organisations now typically run services from up to nine cloud providers.

This approach can certainly pay off, if done correctly. Unfortunately, all too often businesses succumb to common pitfalls. In a multi-cloud environment, challenges of scale and complexity only increase. Below, I’ve demystified the process so you can get the most out of a multi-cloud strategy for your business.

There are several steps that organisations should undertake when it comes to taking on multi-cloud.

Firstly, employing a cloud management solution that enables your business to have full visibility of your environment and direct line of sight into costs. Quite often multi-cloud strategies fall at this first hurdle and don’t select a partner with the right credentials, leading to disappointment later on as cost spikes unexpectedly and teams struggle for data on things like cloud usage, performance and security.

The second step is to embrace automation. Why spend time doing manual work when there’s a simpler, more efficient way? The right platform will uncover efficiencies by automating certain business processes  as well as offering the option of granularly detailing your bill – identifying areas of highest spend and enabling lights on/lights off policies.