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The benefits of a successful multi-cloud strategy

A recent Gartner study found that of the public cloud users surveyed, 81% had two or three cloud providers on hand. These stats are enlightening into how companies value a multi-cloud strategy.

Whether an enterprise has just begun navigating the cloud journey or if they are considered experts at cloud use, there's little doubt that this approach is a valuable investment.

Take start-ups, these type of business models are often looking to scale up fast and establish good infrastructure to support their growth. By using a multi-cloud strategy they can develop faster and with the added benefit of advanced technology.

By accessing multiple clouds, you can employ the strength of each cloud provider and enjoy a 'best of both worlds’ strategy. That way, the company experiences a boost in agility and takes away vendor lock-in. Another great motivator for multi-cloud use is that it boosts security and ensures easier migration for certain data and applications. For instance, cybersecurity is heightened as having applications spread across multiple providers means an attack isn't likely to bring down your infrastructure as a whole. In addition, using one provider can put an enterprise at risk of losing control of a mission-critical application if load-shedding or a black out happens. All this can add to the resilience of your company’s technological infrastructure.

At times, some have confused hybrid cloud with multi-cloud – the former typically refers to having both an on premise private cloud with certain workloads and solutions hosted in a public cloud environment. Multi-cloud refers to utilising two or more cloud providers to host workloads and provide cloud computing services such as IaaS, PaaS or SaaS.

Before you take the route of a multi-cloud strategy, tick of all your boxes by being clear in the strategic approach and your intent. Select the services best suited to be hosted in the cloud, evaluate cloud providers based on services, features, technical requirements, performance and costs. 

Enterprises that utilise multi-cloud will generally use IaaS in their initial approach, with hosting production applications on one cloud and disaster recovery on another cloud. Most enterprises with a multi-cloud strategy will choose to run each application in a single cloud, thereby splitting workloads based on specific requirements for cost, performance and features.

Currently many companies in South Africa have gone with the single cloud strategy, this is effectively putting “all eggs in one basket”, and they may need to review their approach to a multi-cloud strategy. As with everything, there can be a downside to the multi-cloud strategy. Consequently, you need to understand and analyse not only what your company needs are but also assess how your business objectives align with the capabilities of your cloud strategy. Take a careful look at what you might need in the future that your current cloud provider doesn’t offer.

Being able to avoid vendor lock-in and having access to several, unique features at hand is certainly one of the major highlights of using a multi-cloud strategy. Bear in mind that ultimately, proper planning, analysis of your enterprise’s short and long term technological requirements is what will unlock your foray into this beneficial cloud approach.