What Is Multi-Cloud?
Multi-cloud refers to the use of multiple cloud computing services from different providers within a single architecture. Instead of relying on a single cloud provider, organizations use a combination of public, private, and sometimes community clouds to meet their operational needs.
The primary goal of a multi-cloud strategy is to optimize the use of cloud services for performance, cost, and flexibility. For instance, a company might use one provider for storage due to cost advantages and another for analytics due to its specialized tools. Multi-cloud strategies are also gaining popularity for avoiding cloud provider lock-in and ensuring business continuity by leveraging redundancy across multiple platforms.
We’ll dive deeper into the benefits of multi-cloud environments and the challenges, including the complexity of cloud cost management when organizations are leveraging multiple cloud providers with different pricing and service structures.
Single Cloud vs. Multicloud
Single Cloud
Pros:
- A single cloud is easy to orchestrate and manage
- Understanding and executing cost optimization strategies is clear
- Reduced cost for system management and maintenance
Cons:
- May result in a long-term lock-in relationship
- Limits the effectiveness of fail-safe measures
- May be difficult to quickly scale resources for fast-growing businesses
- Limits flexibility due to the constraints of the service provider
Multicloud
Pros:
- Prevents vendor lock-in as each service provider can take over from the other
- Makes scalability processes seamless and hassle-free
- Improves an organization’s operational flexibility
- Provides a backup and a contingency plan in case of a disaster or a cyber-attack
Cons:
- Higher cost of management and maintenance.
- Increased resources requirements.
- More complexity in understanding and optimizing costs across multiple vendors
While it seems that multi-cloud deployments have many advantages over the single cloud model, the increased cost and complexity make it a more difficult decision to make. Fortunately, advances in AI-based solutions can reduce these costs and simplify operations, making the transition to a multi-cloud model more manageable and cost-effective.
Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud
Multi-cloud involves the use of multiple cloud services from different providers, often tailored to specific tasks or goals. These clouds may all be public or private, but they operate independently without significant integration between them. Organizations adopt multi-cloud for flexibility and to avoid dependence on a single provider.
Hybrid cloud, on the other hand, combines private cloud infrastructure with public cloud services, allowing for seamless integration between the two. Hybrid setups often use orchestration tools to create a unified environment, enabling workloads to move between private and public clouds based on demand or compliance requirements.
Key distinctions:
- Integration: Hybrid clouds emphasize interoperability between environments, while multi-clouds often lack deep integration.
- Purpose: Hybrid clouds aim to balance privacy with scalability, whereas multi-cloud strategies focus on leveraging the strengths of different providers.
- Complexity: Hybrid clouds often require advanced orchestration but may simplify compliance, while multi-cloud environments can be more complex to manage due to the lack of unified management tools.
Both models address different organizational needs. Hybrid clouds are ideal for companies needing to maintain strict data security while accessing scalable public cloud resources. Multi-clouds, on the other hand, suit organizations that prioritize flexibility, redundancy, and the ability to use best-in-class services from multiple providers.
Strategic Benefits: Why Next-Gen Businesses Are Adopting the Multi-Cloud Model
Here are a few reasons why multi-cloud is increasingly favored as a strategy that provides businesses with significant competitive advantages in today’s market.
1. Getting the Most From Each Cloud Provider
No matter how good a cloud provider is, they may not be able to provide all the features your particular business needs, especially when considering the changing requirements of any business due to seasonal demand or changes in its size and operation.
As computing requirements change at different times of the year or at various points in a company’s growth, a particular service provider may have a solution that worked well a few years ago but is no longer effective. Likewise, specific operations or departments may have completely different requirements that best be addressed by a multi-cloud deployment.
2. Improved Infrastructure Security
The multi-cloud model provides a mechanism for backing up and transferring resources from one cloud provider to another, in case one of the other cloud providers shuts down.
From a security perspective, it’s a well-accepted premise that relying on a single centralized computing environment significantly increases vulnerability to attacks as opposed to distributed systems.
3. Reduced Costs
Although companies may require more resources to manage multi-cloud deployments, it can also be an opportunity for cost savings. For example, if an IT department is looking to add cloud services, they can check with a number of cloud providers to determine who has the most cost-effective offering.
Challenges of Multi-cloud Management
While multi-cloud is highly beneficial, it also creates new challenges for organizations.
Performance Monitoring
Even if there are enough resources to track all operations, monitoring performance is a massive task that can be quite complicated. Since operations are distributed across providers, gaining insight into so many simultaneous transactions and coordinating them into an optimization program is nearly impossible for even the most seasoned cloud administrators.
Manual Monitoring
Requiring human intervention on a 24/7 basis makes this type of management solution tedious and unsustainable. Manual monitoring and remediation can only be efficient to a limited extent. IT resources must constantly be stretched beyond their capacity or expanded at a constant rate – neither of which is a viable long-term solution.
Difficulty in Optimizing Costs
Considering the multi-cloud system is inherently vast and complex, monitoring the costs, identifying waste, and defining an optimization strategy is very difficult. This is further limited by the lack of visibility into detailed operations.
Although these challenges are significant, fortunately, automated management solutions are avhttps://www.anodot.com/learning-center/cloud-cost-optimization/ailable that do not require significant manual intervention and can simplify the complexities of cloud-cost monitoring.
