In a landscape where digital transformation is more than just a buzzword, businesses across the globe are steering towards sophisticated cloud environments that are both scalable and resilient. At the forefront of this revolution is the multi-cloud strategy – an approach that leverages the strengths of various cloud service platforms to foster innovation, agility, and cost-efficiency.
In this article, we unfold the blueprint for a successful multi-cloud strategy, delineating the best practices that promise to shield your enterprise from vendor lock-ins, while amplifying operational excellence. Whether you are an established enterprise or a burgeoning start-up, a well-articulated multi-cloud strategy could be the linchpin to achieving a robust and futuristic IT infrastructure.
Evaluating Your Cloud Needs
This is something that will be different for every organization or business. Your cloud needs will depend on your business needs as well as the needs of your customers.
It is better to use the cloud to help you with recoverability, failover, disaster recovery, and portability than day-to-day operations. But this is something you have to decide as you balance the needs of your business with the needs of your customers.
Your use of the cloud has to be beneficial for both entities.
Identifying Business Objectives
To do this, you would need to establish business objectives that provide you with a way to measure your success through measurable data. This is a data-driven approach using KPIs to help you find measurable criteria to see if your business is meeting its goals.
These metrics or KPIs need to be written as business objectives and should help you answer the questions ‘Why is this problem worth solving?’ and ‘Who benefits from solving this problem?’
Once identified, you will need to prioritize these objectives so your supervisors can prioritize resource allocations.
Creating A Multi-Cloud Strategy Roadmap
To start this off, the best first step would be to find the right cloud providers. By knowing your multi-cloud needs, you can find these top providers. Doing the one helps solve the other.
The second step is to develop a top security system that will protect your data. Many cloud providers do not offer this service. This is a vital step if you want to protect your data from ransomware, hackers, and other cyber threats.
It has to be done while ensuring the data is easily accessed by your employees.
Choosing Cloud Providers
The purpose of using the cloud is your most important factor. Knowing why you want to use the cloud helps you eliminate many cloud service providers who do not offer what you need.
When looking at the remaining potential options, the next thing to do is to see if they have enough storage volume. Finally, you need to look at those cloud providers and how they distribute the stored data.
There are different methods and they all have their own individual costs. You have to be careful with some of these providers as you may end up paying for storage you will never use.
Selecting The Right Mix Of Cloud Services
There are 6 basic steps to this process:
- Hire a good cloud consultant to analyze your needs and get their recommendations.
- Watch the costs and stay within the company budget.
- Determine your multi-cloud deployment choices and this is not a step to skip.
- Select the individual tools that will benefit the company and work in those areas the company uses.
- Consider using a hybrid cloud accelerator and your cloud consultant can help you make this determination.
- Identify possible failure and bottleneck points. You will want all aspects of your multi-cloud system to work together and smoothly.
Best Practices For Securing Multi-Cloud Environments
One of the most important aspects to look at will be whether the cloud provider provides any security or not. If they use a shared responsibility model, then you will only need security for the infrastructure and application layers.
Whether it is shared or not, you should develop and install a top firewall that will prevent attacks. This firewall should be on your perimeter and you can use either the cloud-native or advanced third-party firewalls.
Controlling Multi-Cloud Costs
This will depend on the type of cloud service your company has accepted. If it uses the pay-for-what-you-use method, this is a double-edged sword. If managed properly your company can see great savings. But if not, then your company will be paying more than it is getting in return.
With the ever-changing and very different cloud use charges, it is difficult to control multi-cloud use costs. There are companies that provide software to help you manage your cloud costs and organize them in an understandable way.
Managing Data Across Multiple Clouds
There are about 4 steps you can follow to manage your multi-cloud data.
- Do Data Migration Between Clouds– This helps data integrity and minimizes downtime.
- Data Synchronization– This allows all departments to have access to the same up-to-date information.
- Data Back-Up And Restoration– This helps protect your data allowing you to restore in case of trouble, i.e. data loss or system failure.
- Data Security And Privacy– This is where you implement data protection against unauthorized use.
Summarizing Key Takeaways
- Multi-cloud strategies help define your cloud use purpose
- Knowing your cloud use purpose helps you pick top cloud providers
- Picking a top provider is easy once you know the right steps
- Deciding the right security measures to take
- Managing the costs of a multi-cloud strategy
Some Additional Words
It is okay if you do not understand every step involved in utilizing a multi-cloud strategy. At esynergy, we can help you navigate this new way of storing and accessing vital company data.
The key to using this system is to make sure you have a top security system designed and installed to protect your data at all times. Without this, your information is going to be vulnerable to ransomware and other internet attacks.
Then when you make your multi-cloud decision, find a way to track and manage those costs. You will want to remain under budget to maximize any ROI and make this strategy a success.
At esynergy, we are committed to being your steadfast partner in this journey, bringing to you tailored solutions that resonate with your business goals. Get in touch with us for more information.