What is Multi-cloud and why it is getting so much attention?
It’s been a long time I’ve written a story on Medium. Here I am back again.
Today we will discuss about a new cloud adoption approach (not that new by the way) I would say not much experienced.
The Multi-Cloud!
What is Multi-Cloud?
As name suggests the Multi-cloud is a strategy where we use two or more cloud computing services from any number of different cloud vendors in a single unified network architecture.
It’s different then hybrid cloud where we integrate public and private clouds in order to achieve optimal performance, security and flexibility.
Multi-cloud is when an organizations selects different cloud providers for their various infrastructure and application needs.
Why it is getting so much attention?
There are multiple reasons to this.
- Cost effectiveness / Competitive Pricing
- Eliminate the reliance on any single cloud provider (avoid lock-ins)
- Ensures high availability!
- Enhanced Risk Management (in case of an attack on one vendor we can always switch to another vendor without any disruption)
- Global compliance can be achieved
- Improved user experience
- Optimal Performance
- Lower Latency
What challenges it brings in?
Not everything is green here. This strategy comes up with a unique set of challenges which organizations have to face.
- Security
We can have additional security concerns here as we know the traditional security tools aren’t that mature to protect you from all potential threats. Considering the type of attacks we are seeing these days are very sophisticated in nature. The multi-cloud approach increases the risk with having complex application deployed over multiple cloud vendors. It opens up a larger attack surface. To counter this one should have a multi-layered security approach and a mix set of vendor experts. - Management Overhead
It’s obvious that when you use services from more than one cloud vendors it will increase your management complexity.
few such examples are like: OS patching, Application and service monitoring, Log management spread across multiple environments, backups etc.. - Competent Staffing
Finding people having expertise in multi-cloud is very very difficult as of today. There has to be mix of people experts in development on multiple cloud platforms, the security specialists and one who can manage and operate across multiple clouds. - Migration takes time!
- Complex Cost estimation process
There again you need to have proper talent who can plan and strategize the costing part of your project. Though multi-cloud approach can save you money but it becomes complex at times.
What it takes to move to Multi-Cloud?
If your company has decided to adopt Multi-cloud approach for your heterogeneous infrastructure following are the things which you need to take care of.
- Bring in individual cloud experts together
- Plan the whole infrastructure in advance
- Do cost estimations in prior
- Build DevOps pipelines
- Cloud Performance Monitoring
As far I understand Multi-Cloud has a huge market scope given we together overcome the disadvantages and make most out of this approach.
That’s all for this small article.
Thank you All!
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