Multi-Cloud Computing

Choosing the right cloud environment for your business might not be that easy. That’s also the reason why many companies are still thinking about moving to the cloud but not actually doing it. However, as I always try to highlight in my articles, this challenge shouldn’t hinder someone from making forward progress. Cloud computing is a very flexible environment, and there are multiple models to choose from, that will match your needs and your business model. Public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, all are designed with particular features and benefits to cover a broad range of business objectives.

For the past few years, this challenge has led to the multi-cloud environment, which is a combination of all three cloud models within a single heterogeneous architecture. Of course, this doesn’t mean that if you choose to go for the multi-cloud environment, you are bound to use different types of cloud. You could connect, for example, to several public cloud platforms from different providers if that suits your business model. A recent study revealed that 77% of businesses are thinking of implementing multi-cloud architectures, this tells us it is gaining more popularity.

The three major benefits of multi-cloud  

• Flexibility – The multi-cloud approach gives you the freedom of choosing what applications you want to keep on-premises and what applications you want to migrate to one or several cloud providers. You can evaluate performance, costs, or security and decide what and where you want your storage.
• Autonomy – Deploying your applications on more than one cloud provider gives you the leverage of reducing dependency on just a single vendor. You will not be limited to just a single provider and his infrastructure requirements.
• Augmented cloud capabilities – Not all cloud providers support the same solutions, but multi-cloud allows you to pick whatever data services your business needs and create your own personalized solution.

Multi-cloud computing is a much more permissive approach to take into consideration especially in the following situations:

• Your business relies on the internet

Many businesses, actually most of them, are relying on the internet for their connection. For example, in case if you have an application which needs a high speed connection, you must choose a cloud centre that is closer to your location. As we know, cloud service providers don’t have data centres everywhere in the world. Using a multi-cloud strategy will allow you to choose the cloud provider that offers the highest speed direct link, for certain application that requires such directives, and other providers for the rest of your applications.

• Positioning

Most of the cloud services providers have headquarters in multiple locations across the world, but not necessarily where your business is. So finding the provider that can supply the services in the precise location that you need, might be difficult. Multi-cloud, again, offers you the possibility to choose the cloud providers that have Data Centers in the places you need to be.

Multi-cloud computing is a smart strategy and provides flexibility, autonomy and extended cloud capabilities. If that’s what your business needs, then my advice is to look at Multi-Cloud solutions.

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