Multi-cloud model: Firms avoid keeping all eggs in one basket

By Bikram Singh Bedi

Cloud computing has enabled organisations to reduce storage and processing costs, integrate siloed datasets and analyse them, and unveil more profound insights. Cloud has been a vital catalyst in digital transformation, particularly during the worldwide pandemic, enabling firms to optimise assets and uncover unused resources. This has resulted in cost savings, as well as enabled workforces to pivot and stay operational in the thick of lockdowns.

The migration from traditional infrastructure solutions to a multicloud setup is becoming more prevalent, and the changes unleashed by the pandemic will speed up the process even more. Businesses can choose a combination of clouds and open source software, rather than relying on a single cloud provider. The open-source-based platform further unifies the management of infrastructure and applications across on-premises, edge, and in multiple public clouds, all while offering consistent operation at scale. In a survey of public cloud users by Gartner, 81% of respondents said they are working with two or more providers.

The underlying advantage of multicloud to the organisation is that it eliminates ‘vendor lock-in’. It empowers businesses to future-proof their investment by modernising existing services, increasing agility and improving business outcomes. The multi-cloud infrastructure solutions offer a mix of cost, performance, security and compliance needs, and geographical location that best fit the company and better serve all stakeholders.

This approach allows users to embrace the most advanced technologies from any vendor swiftly, rather than confining them to a single vendor. Additionally, multicloud enhances business resilience and provides less exposure to service disruptions.

It is, however, critical to hire the right personnel for the task. A multicloud system is more complex and would require people who are familiar with the various frameworks. While most cloud interfaces differ, it’s uncommon for one professional to be familiar with all of them. In such situations, choosing a platform like Anthos is beneficial. One of the key tenets of Anthos is the ability to build, deploy and manage applications wherever there is a compute footprint. Anthos enables developers to “write once and run anywhere” (WORA) with “the freedom to choose the right cloud partner for the job”.

It is not as challenging as it may seem to choose the best cloud for each job. When a corporation understands its technological needs, it can make more informed decisions. Businesses must consider what programmes and data need high availability and which require the most severe security and the areas where significant scaling up or down is anticipated, while seeking productivity and optimising costs.

It would be apt to say that the key idea behind adopting a multi-cloud strategy is to add to the working capital by cutting costs and making the business more efficient. Enterprises are gradually utilising the multi-cloud model to bring flexibility to their cloud strategies. In simple terms, I would say that companies don’t want to keep all their eggs in one basket. A diverse infrastructure is more efficient, cost-effective and agile; and this strategy helps future-proof organisations.

The writer is MD, Google Cloud India Region


Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz

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