Determining business and technical requirements and considering technology options may be the first two steps to launching a multi-cloud architecture, but step three, understanding your challenges, often proves to be one of the most critical. In the third entry of our five-part blog series, we’ll explore why that is and highlight three specific challenges that shackle many multi-cloud deployments.
How to Approach Multi-Cloud Challenges
The reality is creating a successful hybrid or multi-cloud environment is significantly easier than it once was. Not only have technology advancements, including the advent of software-defined IT solutions, helped make cloud deployments less resource-intensive to spin up and manage, but also service providers have continued to innovate, arming businesses with greater, more sophisticated support for their cloud environments. According to a report from Frost & Sullivan, colocation providers are at the forefront of this trend.
Despite these improvements to the process, designing a multi-cloud architecture is still not easy, which is why taking a methodical, proactive approach is so important. For your multi-cloud environment to be successful, you must first define your IT goals and identify the existing and potential challenges preventing your organization from achieving them. Often, paying sufficient attention to steps one and two of our blog series is the best way to identify and overcome the challenges facing your multi-cloud deployment.
Three of the most prevalent challenges to successful multi-cloud deployments are as follows:
Compliance and Security Requirements
Security and compliance are two of the primary factors driving “cloud repatriation,” or the process of pulling cloud-based workloads back down to private, on-premises environments. Many public cloud environments are incompatible with businesses’ security and compliance requirements, which means private environments must at least match or exceed the public cloud’s capabilities. Otherwise, the entire IT architecture may break down.
Before advancing too far in the multi-cloud design process, companies must clearly define their security and compliance requirements and understand what measures need to be present throughout their architecture.
Cost, Time and Resource Limitations
Many companies find that scaling up in a public cloud environment, especially when used for every step of the SDLC and production, is financially unsustainable. On the other hand, many businesses also lack the in-house resources and bandwidth to manage private cloud environments in a cost-efficient manner.
Deploying a successful multi-cloud environment means knitting together the right resources in the most timely, cost-effective way. Maybe that requires you to keep your workloads primarily in the public cloud, or perhaps it involves leveraging a specialized partner like a colocation provider. Regardless of your solution, proactively addressing your budget, time and resource limitations sets your hybrid or multi-cloud deployment up for success.
Integration Demands
One of the primary challenges to multi-cloud success is not setting up or maintaining your disparate environments, but connecting them in an efficient, effective, scalable way. This is why integrations are crucial. You need the ability to easily connect to your physical and virtual infrastructure, especially public cloud, to guarantee ongoing agility and flexibility. Effective integrations are one of the best ways to reap long-term ROI from your multi-cloud spend.
You’ve Identified Your Multi-Cloud Challenges — What’s Next?
Knowing what factors may prevent you from achieving your multi-cloud goals is only half the battle. The other half is meeting those challenges head on with the proper solutions, a process that can be a challenge in and of itself.
In the fourth entry of our five-part blog series, we’ll explore considerations and best practices for evaluating multi-cloud options for service providers and solution offerings.
In case you missed them, check out the previous entries of our blog series:
- How to Determine Your Needs for Multi-Cloud Architecture
- Considering Next-Gen Technologies for a Multi-Cloud Architecture
