The multicloud selling points for industry holdouts

In our experience multi-cloud isn’t always something you choose: often it chooses you. We see this across every industry. In pursuit of “digital transformation”, a team finds that a project can benefit from some of the multitude of services on AWS. Or maybe they see the benefit of building a machine learning application on Google Cloud. Or maybe their long-standing relationship with Microsoft means they are given access to Azure for a project and that application quickly becomes critical. Or maybe an acquisition brings in all three. Each cloud provider has a unique value proposition and so application teams find themselves making choices based on the capabilities that they need for a particular application — and the end result is that the rest of the organization is then left grappling with the challenges of multi-cloud. Regardless of how they get there, the reality today is that even slow-to-transition companies inevitably end up with a portfolio of cloud vendors pretty quickly. The discussion then shifts from “how did I get here?” to “how do I adopt a common operating model across this fleet?” How to enforce a zero trust model for security in a consistent manner? Or a consistent way to do infrastructure provisioning? Or service-based networking? The good news is that the blueprint for this operating model is in fact well understood: it has been defined by the cloud-native companies, most of whom found themselves with this challenge years ago. This blueprint is now making its way into every organization.

The reality is, multicloud will be the digital business model for the next 20 years. Across industries, organizations want to remain competitive, and leveraging the cloud is key to fast-track innovation. It’s helping physicians provide telehealth services and better patient care. Retailers can now provide customized omnichannel shopping experiences. And it’s helping banks deliver convenient, real-time services for customers. However, industries must prioritize cloud adoption within their risk management framework. It’s no longer about a “cloud first” approach — it’s about being “cloud smart.” There is going to continue to be a balance between on-prem, private and public cloud as organizations choose the right set of cloud capabilities to meet business needs. The focus must be on harnessing the power of the cloud to get to where they want to go faster — but within their risk comfort level. Some industries are further along on their multicloud journeys than others; our goal is to meet customers where they are. Multicloud infrastructure provides the foundation for organizations to build, run, manage and secure apps — no matter the app type and no matter the cloud. We’re helping our customers accelerate innovation by giving them a powerful combination of freedom, flexibility and security for their businesses across any cloud. Even with slow-to-transition industries, we will see a surge in cloud adoption as all organizations look to build resilience. Now is the time to embrace digital transformation journeys and build a multicloud strategy that will drive business forward for the next 20 years.

There are three things that come to mind: adaptability, cost effectiveness and compliance. Adaptability: Organizations will find that leveraging a multicloud solution does not force them to update important existing systems. For example, if you have an inventory control system that runs on a specific technology stack on premises, and it only supports a specific public cloud provider for disaster recovery operations, then you won’t be forced to update or replace your existing inventory system, since multicloud is adaptable to most existing systems.