The Benefits and Challenges of a Multi-Cloud Strategy

The Benefits and Challenges of a Multi-Cloud Strategy

As more organizations adopt multiple clouds, they should take steps to address complexity and cost overruns.

Today’s hypercompetitive business climate is driving more organizations to adopt new operational models and develop innovative new services. As a result, they are moving more workloads to the cloud and deploying cloud-native applications. Most are taking a “best of breed” approach, adopting multiple cloud platforms and services to meet specific application and workload requirements.

As the name implies, a multi-cloud model involves the use of more than one cloud service. It’s not the same as a hybrid cloud, in which public and private clouds are integrated into a common management framework. Multi-cloud simply means that organizations are implementing multiple public or private clouds.

According to the Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report, 89 percent of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy, with 73 percent also using one or more private clouds. Almost three-quarters (71 percent) consider themselves heavy cloud users. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and disaster recovery remain the top two multi-cloud implementations.

Strength in Numbers

There are sound business and IT reasons for implementing a multi-cloud strategy. Although the major cloud providers offer similar solutions and services, each has strengths and weaknesses. There is also a growing number of SaaS applications that meet specific needs.

By using multiple clouds, organizations can select the best cloud service based on cost, performance and other requirements. Organizations can also leverage cloud services in multiple geographies, which can reduce latency by placing applications, services and content nearer to users. Geographic diversity also helps organizations meet increasingly stringent data sovereignty requirements of government and industry regulations.

In addition, the multi-cloud model can reduce the risk of downtime through redundancy. Although service provider outages are not as common as they once were, the potential risk to customers is much greater than in the past. Today, organizations are migrating more mission-critical workloads to the cloud, and an outage or performance problem can have a severe impact on their operations.

Despite these advantages, a multi-cloud strategy creates management and operational challenges. In the Flexera report, spending, security and a lack of expertise were the top concerns, each cited by more than 75 percent of respondents.

Multiple Concerns

Although the cloud masks some IT complexity, it does not eliminate the operational burden. In-house IT staff must learn the various administrative interfaces of multiple clouds and manage all the cloud platforms in use. This requires a different approach than traditional on-premises IT operations. It’s ineffective to have specialists in servers, storage, security and other disciplines. Organizations must build a cross-functional team capable of monitoring, optimizing and securing multiple platforms and SaaS applications.

At a more functional level, a multi-cloud strategy increases the difficulty of integrating cloud services with existing IT infrastructure. Organizations that rely upon the open Internet for cloud connectivity may also lack secure, reliable and scalable access to a multi-cloud environment.

However, spending was cited as the top cloud concern in the Flexera report, ahead of security for the first time. Organizations reported that their cloud spend exceeded their budgets by 15 percent on average. Nevertheless, 31 percent of organizations expect their cloud spend to increase over the next year.

Keeping Costs in Check

Survey respondents estimate that 27 percent of their cloud spend is wasted, and more organizations are taking action to reduce expenditures. Strategies include taking advantage of cloud provider discounts, shutting down unused workloads, and selecting lower-cost clouds or regions.

A managed services provider (MSP) can help organizations identify waste and unused or redundant services, and improve monitoring and management of the cloud environment. Qualified MSPs have cloud specialists on staff with the expertise to close skills gaps, improve connectivity and help develop an overarching multi-cloud strategy.

It’s not clear whether organizations consciously adopt a multi-cloud strategy, or simply wind up there by implementing multiple cloud platforms and SaaS applications. Either way, the multi-cloud model can deliver a number of business benefits, even if it forces organizations to rethink many aspects of their IT environment and operations. The key is to have the right skills and strategy in place to minimize the challenges and maximize the benefits of multiple clouds.


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