The Rise of Multicloud Provides Challenges for IT Operations, Networking
Enterprise customers are weighing the best options for taking advantage of cloud computing models.
Monolithic, single-cloud and hybrid approaches are beginning to be replaced by multicloud strategies. A new report from Cisco has found that they are becoming much more common, with 29% of IT leaders believing they will have networking capabilities across on-premise, hybrid and multicloud environments within the next two years.
Other recent reports concur. According to the 2020 State of the Cloud report, 93% of enterprises now use a multicloud strategy, and new research from IDC has shown that they are driving massive adoption of software-defined WAN (SD-WAN).
A multicloud strategy can provide serious benefits for businesses, but is much harder to manage than single-cloud or hybrid strategies. Here’s how IT managers can work to address the challenges of multicloud management and networking at their workplace.
The multicloud is a broad term used to describe networks that distribute their use of cloud resources across multiple platforms. A business in need of multicloud management may have several apps running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) communicating with an on-premise network via hybrid connectivity. It may also be interacting with other cloud platforms, like Microsoft’s Azure or Google’s Cloud Platform.
The strategy has a few different benefits. It effectively allows businesses to distribute their workload, potentially improving up-time. If one web service goes down, you’ll have redundant resources available to handle some of that workload. A multicloud strategy also allows businesses to take advantage of the strengths of different cloud platforms.
As an example, AWS offers serverless computing, Google Cloud has a strong reputation for AI and machine learning functionality, and Microsoft Azure works well with hardware running on Microsoft’s widely deployed business software. It’s theoretically possible to distribute your business workloads across these cloud services to take advantage of the unique strengths and features of each.
Despite available tools, multicloud management is still often a mess for many businesses. In any multicloud situation, a company is managing multiple applications and transferring data across different platforms with various infrastructure and compatibilities — creating major room for conflict.
With a multicloud strategy, businesses are often trying to achieve portability across platforms while taking advantage of the unique features they offer. They use certain cloud services for specific workloads, based on the strengths and weaknesses of each one. However, if you want to keep management consistent across clouds, it gets harder to take advantage of those unique features.
A multicloud strategy can also create significant networking challenges. With a single-cloud approach, you may only need to manage the connection between the on-site network and one cloud platform. With a multicloud system, you’re coordinating connections between multiple platforms and your on-site network, and potentially between the cloud platforms themselves.
There are serious advantages to a multicloud strategy.
