The world is still getting used to operating within the cloud. Moving to the cloud is challenging for many organizations. So why do we see a rise in the adoption of multicloud strategies? In this blog, we will explore why this trend is worth considering for your organization, as well as look at the challenges that it brings.
Multicloud strategies emerge when a combination of private or public cloud providers (Azure, AWS, Google, etc.) is used in conjunction within an organization's IT solutions. In the past, consumers had questions like "Should we move to the cloud?" and "To which cloud should we move?". A shift has now occurred, where they ask "How can we take advantage of the solutions provided by multiple cloud vendors?"
As cloud adoption matures, we see core functionalities being relatively alike across major players. However, individual vendors do each offer unique services as well as vary in their ability to deliver them. For instance:
Multicloud solutions offer flexibility in choosing desired services. These are the 5 key concerns one should consider before opting for multicloud model.
Let’s look at some examples to clarify these differences.
With current cost considerations, Simform¹ highlights serverless costs across the three major cloud service providers (AWS, Azure, & GCP). Users are charged for using serverless functions based on the time taken to execute the code. In this hypothetical scenario, we have a serverless function that executes in a second and has 0.5 GB of RAM available. It runs 3 million times per month.
With extreme volatility in cloud computing costs, this number is bound to fluctuate sooner than later, but it does highlight the potential for incredible cost savings possible with the utilization of multicloud strategies.
Another variable for differentiation is the time needed to spin up certain services. A few minutes can make a significant difference, be it troubleshooting or running iterative POCs. Let us consider the same three service providers,
In the above case, ironically, Google Cloud is about twice as fast.
So what does it look like to run a multicloud strategy? Let us look at a high-level overview of multicloud system architecture shown in the sample diagram below. Later we will dive deeper to understand what such a design could mean to an organization.
As per the diagram, you can extend your on-premise AD to the Azure AD. With that, you can authenticate and authorize the Kubernetes cluster running in the Google cloud. On the backend side, you can forward the logs from GKE and Azure to Splunk. Similarly, you can also forward the on-premise workloads to Splunk Enterprise in an AWS environment.
Cloud architecture is an ever-evolving process. The migration of associated services and solutions, also adapts to meet the changing market needs. Implementation of multicloud solutions can be daunting. In the long run, it can help organizations save significantly. You can easily re-deploy to alternate locations, provided you have flexible tooling and knowledge of diverse environments.
Legislations for privacy and data protection, like the GDPR legislation in the EU, could pose challenges for organizations that are still migrating.
Going back to the example from the sample diagram discussed in the previous bit,
In the near future, we will see numerous organizations opting for multi-cloud strategies. Hence, incorporating it in the early stages will help many organizations to edge ahead in the cloud-native future that awaits. We hope you have enjoyed reading this blog on multi-cloud environments.
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