Multi-cloud strategy: battle of the clouds or the strongest alliance ever?
We all live in the digital era where social media, internet-connected devices, and cloud computing are fast becoming vital elements in our lives. Just think that only a few years ago backing up data was not a difficult task. But nowadays, as we create so much data with all of the transactions from all of our systems, big data volumes are becoming larger by the second and becoming difficult to control. Our solution might be multi-cloud.
Are you familiar with the “multi-cloud” concept?
A multi-cloud strategy uses cloud computing and storage services from two or more public cloud vendors in a single network architecture. As we have shown in our infographic on multi-cloud architectures, 84% of all enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy already laid out or in the works. So why all the interest in this type of cloud architecture? Let’s explore.
Have you heard of vendor lock-in?
I am sure you are familiar with the risks of committing to only one cloud service provider and “putting all our eggs into one basket”. We do not want to take that chance, especially if we consider that by relying on a single hosting provider, your business will most likely experience downtime.
If you need further evidence of how downtime could hurt your business and its profitability, take a look at what happened to Google, in early June 2019 their services were disrupted for 4.5 hours. This situation was triggered by a configuration mishap, which caused a 30% fall in Google Cloud Storage traffic. Imagine now that your business relied only on Google as the cloud services provider: can you even picture the negative impact this unfortunate incident would have had on your business during the 4.5 hours of downtime? Such situations are isolated and don’t happen that often but when they do, wouldn’t it be great if you had a fully redundant provider.
Multi-clouds: strongest allies or worst enemies?
Statistics show that the top 3 most widely used cloud services providers on the market are: Amazon Web Services (AWS) with 67%, closely followed by Microsoft Azure with 60% and far down the line we have Google Cloud with only 26%. So is this a battle for supremacy between the clouds? Definitely not, quite the opposite actually.
By implementing a multi-cloud architecture, businesses are able to leverage the best parts of each cloud provider for maximum benefits. This allows businesses to reduce their overall costs but it also helps them find the most suitable services according to their needs.
With cyber-attacks becoming more frequent than ever, more businesses are starting to move their data to a cloud because it generally offers more robust security than the on-premises solutions. The problem is that if you rely on a single cloud, in case of a data breach, there’s a greater chance you could temporarily lose access to your applications. Alternatively, by choosing a multi-cloud strategy and spreading your workloads, applications, and data across several cloud environments, you may get better protection against potential cyber-attacks. You will also be able to leverage the security tools and redundancies of several vendors to protect your data.
Additionally, a multi-cloud strategy will allow the company more operational independence because if one cloud service provider has issues and experiences some downtime, that will not impact the company’s data stored on another provider.
Are you ready to go multi-cloud?
Cloud computing is here to stay and especially the multi-cloud architecture, whose maximum potential is still to be harnessed. Truth be told, managing a multi-cloud strategy can be more complex than a single-cloud approach but if implemented correctly, its benefits can significantly outweigh any challenges. Going multi-cloud is very likely to become a game-changer within the next couple of years, so you should keep that in mind if you want to remain competitive on the market.
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