By Chetana Chaudhari , Chief Technical Officer, Shivaami
In recent times cloud computing has become an integral part of enterprise IT infrastructure resource planning as companies seek increased business agility and operational efficiency from their technology deployments. But choosing between the many cloud offerings in the market can be challenging as every enterprise has to keep in mind its unique requirements, workloads and processes while deciding on the right cloud computing strategy.
This article talks about the differences between Hybrid and Multi-Cloud infrastructure to discuss which is the better strategy to adopt in 2023.
Multi-Cloud Computing Environments
Multi-cloud refers to the practice of using multiple cloud computing services from different cloud providers. According to a recent research study commissioned by Oracle, 98% of enterprises out of 1500+ firms surveyed in the US are using or plan to use at least two cloud infrastructure providers and 31 percent are using four or more.
A one-stop-shop approach has become less popular in recent years as organizations seek to get the right mix of solutions and capabilities to meet new business needs, with remote-work support and collaboration with new partners and suppliers becoming more popular post Covid-19.
The strategic reason companies prefer multi-cloud architecture is to avoid single vendor lock-in and leverage the strength and flexibility offered by different cloud providers to optimize performance, cost and security.
Advantages of Multi-Cloud Solutions
- Business Agility and Innovation: A multi-cloud approach allows organizations to meet the needs of different teams across the company while ensuring high availability of mission-critical applications.
- Data Sovereignty: This approach also gives companies more control over where and how their data is stored and used, while making sure that they can control the costs of their cloud operations by adjusting which services they use from different providers.
- No Vendor Lock-ins: More and more companies are choosing to go down this route because they avoid single vendor lock-ins.
- Access to best-in-class technology and Cost Optimisation: Companies get the best of many worlds by leveraging the technical competence of various providers while comparing pricing offered by different competitors.
Challenges of The Multi-Cloud Approach:
Deploying a multi-cloud model can be challenging because it requires increased management and navigation complexity. Maintaining consistent security protocols is also a key consideration to keep in mind while adopting this approach.
Let us look at how hybrid cloud approaches differ from the multi-cloud model and consider the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
Hybrid Cloud Computing Environments
Hybrid cloud refers to a cloud computing architecture that combines on-premises infrastructure (private cloud) with one or more public cloud providers. In a hybrid cloud environment organizations can run some workloads on their own servers and some on public cloud services. Adapting this architecture allows organizations to utilize existing on-premises infrastructure and rely in part on the public cloud so they can take advantage of the scalability and flexibility offered by the public cloud while still maintaining greater control over certain sensitive data and applications.
Advantages of Hybrid Cloud Solutions
A hybrid cloud platform gives organizations many advantages — such as greater flexibility, a range of deployment options, optimum security, improved compliance, and value for money.
Grow at your own pace: Organizations can extend the computing capabilities on-demand without compromise. A hybrid cloud approach gives companies the comfort of knowing that they can improve and modernize applications at their own pace to keep up with their changing needs.
- Improved visibility and compliance: This combination of public and private cloud infrastructure helps companies improve regulatory compliance, monitor performance and govern usage more effectively.
- Flexibility and Business-Agility: This leads to other downstream benefits by helping companies better meet changing operational demands in a flexible and agile manner to improve ROI
- More innovation on-demand: All of these factors help companies stay competitive, innovate and go to market in an accelerated fashion as they are able to optimize cloud technology for more efficient development cycles.
Challenges of a hybrid cloud approach:
As a hybrid cloud approach is a more mature and advanced choice companies make later in their lifecycle, companies may need to invest in new resources and add to the technical expertise offered within their IT departments.
What’s more, maintaining visibility of multiple systems, processes and applications involved in hybrid cloud architectures without compromising on data security can demand greater vigilance.
Enterprises today need to carefully assess and review one’s own business goals while considering all the advantages and challenges of various cloud offerings before formulating the right strategy to suit their stage of growth, and seek expert advice by certified cloud partner organizations before embarking on this journey.
