Multi-cloud: last year's buzzword becomes this years strategic reality

Managing more than one cloud provider is a challenge, but more companies are adopting the approach

If, like Oxford Dictionaries, enterprise computing had a word of the year, ‘multi-cloud' would have certainly been a contender for 2017. Coined by Gartner, multi-cloud, which roughly translates into ‘best-of-breed', or picking cloud services from different vendors to best suit requirements, is certainly an attractive idea, as it promises an escape route from lock-in, enabling companies to take advantage of better performance or keener prices as they become available.

With the advent of microservices and containers, moving applications from platform to platform is certainly more feasible than it used to be, but shifting large volumes of data is always going to be problematic and more suppliers can equal more complexity. Nevertheless the number of enterprises adopting the approach appears to be growing. Recent research by Computing found that 26 per cent of enterprises surveyed were using a multi-cloud approach compared with 22 per cent last year.

We asked a number of industry players what their customers are saying about multi-cloud.

Mukesh Sharma, vice president EMEA at machine data analytics firm Sumo Logic is in no doubt that it is catching on, but says the increased complexity can be a formidable hurdle.

"The challenge here is that most companies don't have the skills to manage and orchestrate infrastructure across clouds in general, let alone across implementations of container-based applications that are running across multiple cloud providers," he said.

The viability of exiting one vendor's service and moving to another is very much a factor of the task at hand, Sharma added.

"It depends on the number of services that you use and how they are connected. You may think that you can move an application across as it runs in containers, and containers can run anywhere. That's fine, if those services aren't tied into specific public cloud tools or API services. You may be able to replace some of that functionality, but it means a lot more work than a 'lift and drop' from one cloud to another."

Curtis Preston, chief technical architect at cloud backup specialist Druva, said many firms looking at multi-cloud should consider a phased approach, particularly when it comes to migrating data: "Cloud lock-in is a potential issue when you come to large volumes of data. However, you can plan ahead and migrate data from one cloud to another over time."

Data migrations aside, multi-cloud is not a simple matter of shifting between cloud providers, he went on, because cloud deployments are often multi-layered.

"It is not just a case of running both AWS and Azure. Companies today have multiple cloud services in place - they may have Office 365 and Salesforce as cloud apps, they may have internal VMware deployments that can be moved to AWS or remain in their own data centres, and they may have apps on AWS to support as well. Each of these islands of IT is a cloud deployment in its own right, but it is often isolated from a data management perspective."

Sumo Logic's Sharma sees multi-cloud becoming 'business as usual' for enterprises in the next five years, a viewpoint shared by Chris Alton, business sector manager cloud division at reseller Arrow.

"Within the industry, multi-cloud is becoming more and more prevalent for channel players and solution providers who have just been on-boarded. The service providers that aren't using multi-cloud in the next five years will probably be compromising in some way, and be left behind by those that can provide more value through best-of-breed cloud," Alton said.

"Each of the platforms are going to be known for something, they're all going to have to do something to differentiate themselves from competitors to attract customers. Within the industry there will always be competition. However, with the use of multi-cloud, the industry can expect to see collaboration as well, as there are multiple reasons why customers will use multiple providers."

The increased complexity inherent in having multiple providers will be solved by new servers coming to market, Alton believes.

"There are challenges that go with this as it is becoming increasingly more difficult to manage platforms. However, solutions are starting to emerge which enable multi-cloud environments to be managed much more effectively."

While many organisations will find it simpler to stick with one main supplier for the time being, there is little doubt that portability of applications and data is becoming increasingly feasible. In line with the views expressed here, we expect the number of mixers and matchers to grow over the coming years.

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