I’ll start by answering a question that immediately comes to mind: What, exactly, does multi-cloud mean? When we reference a multi-cloud environment, we’re talking about an organization that utilizes some combination of one or more public and/or private clouds to power their critical applications and workloads. For example, an organization may utilize Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its mainstream applications, Google Cloud for machine learning (ML)-centric workloads, and a private on-premises cloud for compliance-governed applications. Sound complicated? It is.
As the move to cloud infrastructure strengthened over the past several years, it was expected that operational challenges would be simplified, streamlined, and solved and money would be saved. We also expected most organizations to choose a single cloud and migrate everything to it. However, what happened was quite different than most expected. Most organizations realized they would need to consume multiple cloud services. Why? Namely because not all clouds are the same. Each leading cloud service has its own set of strengths and compelling features – so why choose just one? This has been enumerated across myriad industry-respected surveys and reports that all state that the supermajority of organizations will operate in a multi-cloud world as they move forward.There are a couple of really important points to note here. First, organizations are choosing to operate in a multi-cloud model. They are not being forced into it. Large organizations often operate multiple public clouds if only to avoid vendor lock-in, and many are able to extract the maximum value of each cloud to further their digital initiatives. Many organizations also still benefit from a robust private cloud environment, whether on their own premises or the premises of a trusted partner (like ConvergeOne). Private clouds are still extremely relevant and worthy considerations.
Not long ago, the common digital infrastructure was fairly straightforward. Organizations would operate geo-redundant data centers in their own locations or out of co-location facilities. IT teams managed that infrastructure with a common set of tools, information security teams could apply one set of policies, and major changes or upgrades could generally be well planned out.
In today’s world, IT teams are using a wide variety of toolsets to support those same applications in multiple clouds. Information security teams are trying to translate policies from on-premises to multiple cloud environments. New web-scale environments can be spun up in a day. Costs have to constantly be monitored, as consumption can now be charged down to the minute. Bottom line: All organizations, regardless of size, are facing major challenges in keeping up—and these challenges have only really come to fruition in the past few years. I would argue that the vast majority of organizations are still just trying to figure it out, and they need help.
Need help navigating a multi-cloud world?
ConvergeOne is one of the few multi-cloud IT services providers that has leading skillsets across private cloud, public cloud, and cybersecurity, with the ability and focus to help architect the entire cloud journey. Take the first step by registering for our complimentary multi-cloud assessment.
Topics: Cloud
