Benefits of a Multicloud Strategy

You may be surprised that a recent survey by RightScale found that 85% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy.   Also, interesting is that applications run on an average of 1.8 public clouds and 2.3 private clouds.  Utilizing a multicloud approach is more of a consideration than ever before for a number and combination of reasons:

  • Different business needs may require a different set of cloud skills and specialties
  • A company may want to reduce its dependence on just one cloud vendor
  • The enterprise may be looking for a strategy to reduce down-time and data loss
  • Or, all of the above

Similar to the decision making process behind running some systems on traditional IT and some on cloud, a multicloud strategy takes into consideration what cloud offering will perform best given the need.  Multicloud strategies are about giving the enterprise more choice and even more control. As Meenagi Venkat of IBM Cloud  writes, “it [multicloud] is a way to avoid putting all your IT eggs in one cloud provider’s basket.”

Silicon Angle further reports that enterprises that use multicloud environments that leverage new technology trends such as DevOps and application containers have greater agility and faster time to market.   According to the reported study these same organizations or “dynamic cloud users” tend to see a 26% improvement in application uptime versus 19% for static cloud users and dynamic cloud users also see a great improvement in costs.

Here are two everyday use cases for a multicloud strategy:

Providing better customer experiences.  Customer demand for information and applications can be at any time and from any device. A multicloud approach allows you to utilize the cloud technology best suited for the workload while also allowing you to overlay cognitive capabilities that can provide more real-time analysis for better customer interactions.

Managing risk. Just as Mr. Venkat above advises it is important not to put all your IT eggs in one basket.  Using a multicloud approach can help minimize the risk of downtime or even poor performance by creating redundancy and also the ability to move applications to better performing clouds.

Having a multicloud strategy does require the right tools to help manage the added complexity.  A trusted IT partner can help you determine what benefits would come from a multicloud approach and how to get ready to implement and manage long term.

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