It’s been more than a decade since Amazon launched AWS and jump-started the move to the cloud. And in that time, we’ve seen a lot of new competitors spring up and we’ve learned a lot of lessons about what makes a cloud architecture successful. One of the latest strategies to emerge that takes those lessons into account is the multi-cloud architecture, which splits up a cloud deployment across multiple vendors.

Today, we’re focusing on the financial services industry and looking at the benefits a multi-cloud strategy can provide for big and small players in the financial world. As we’ll see, multi-cloud is especially well-suited for financial services companies, because it offers the ability to combine the strengths of multiple cloud providers to benefit the security and reliability of your infrastructure.

What is Multi-cloud?

While the concept is rather simple, multi-cloud deployments do have some nuance. At its core, multi-cloud means working with multiple cloud vendors, rather than just putting everything in Amazon (or Microsoft’s Azure, or Google Cloud). Of course, that could mean anything from evenly splitting your servers between two providers to assigning particular components to particular companies, putting your database in Oracle’s cloud and having your file storage in IBM’s.

Multi-cloud deployments can develop organically, when an enterprise has a longstanding relationship with one cloud provider, but reaches for another platform for a new feature or because one cloud service is cheaper. This is what happened when Netflix branched out from Amazon. More often these days, a company can also opt for a multi-cloud approach from the start, in order to promote best practices and avoid vendor lock-in from the beginning.

What are the benefits of multi-cloud strategy within Financial Services?

For companies that use a multi-cloud strategy from the start, the most-cited reason is typically reliability. Combining resources from multiple clouds means that if one provider has an outage, your entire backend won’t fail as a result. You simply compensate by shifting resources from one provider to the next. In an industry where transaction processing uptime is essential, you don’t want to have an AWS outage turn into customer-facing downtime.

Of course, the benefits aren’t only in terms of reliability. The financial services sector faces significantly higher regulatory burden than other industries making the move to the cloud. PCI compliance, additional GDPR requirements, and data governance rules all make moving to the cloud more fraught than it has to be. But multi-cloud can help here too. By making your cloud architecture more adaptable, multi-cloud allows you to take advantage of different security and compliance offerings from different vendors.

And it’s not just compliance. A multi-cloud strategy lets you pick and choose what you want from different vendors, as they compete to offer you better services. Interested in the newest machine-learning-as-a-service offerings from Google? You can add them to your cloud strategy. Enticed by the cheap pricing for compute resources from Amazon’s spot auctions? You can move some of your compute demand there while the price is cheap.

Consider the example of HSBC, which has pioneered a multi-cloud approach in the financial world. They leverage cloud services from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. They’re able to draw on AWS for reliable deployments, Google for security, and database teams from all over. That way they can play to the advantages of multiple providers, taking advantage of the specialisation many of these providers offer to help their overall cloud strategy.

What is a multi-cloud strategy?

A multi-cloud strategy is a type of cloud computing strategy that uses different cloud strategy services from various service providers rather than putting everything on Amazon or Google Cloud etc. This type of strategy makes it possible for organizations to take advantage of a lot of features and multi-cloud capabilities offered by different cloud providers. This is done in sync with data security, scalability, and cost efficiency. Multi-cloud strategies also help organizations reduce vendor lock-in, as they are not dependent on a single cloud provider for their computing needs. With these strategies, organizations can manage their workloads, optimize performance and availability, and take advantage of the latest technologies in a more effective manner. Adding on, using multiple cloud services can help organizations protect against service outages, as there is always another provider to fall back on in the event of an issue.

How to choose a multi-cloud strategy?

While not everyone has the resources of HSBC to plan and execute a multi-cloud strategy, the good news is it’s easy to get started. Transitioning to a multi-cloud strategy starts by simple evaluating multiple cloud providers when planning build-outs of new functionality. Once you break free from the vendor lock-in of only reaching for your current cloud provider, everything gets easier. As your infrastructure grows, you’ll benefit from having an adaptable, reliable multi-cloud foundation.

If you’re looking to take advantage of a multi-cloud approach to improve your organisation’s infrastructure reliability, let our financial software consultancy know. We’ve helped industry-leading financial services companies as well as public sector partners handle large multi-cloud deployments, and we can do the same for you.

Benefits and advantages of multi-cloud management systems

A multi-cloud strategy service offers several benefits, including increased flexibility, improved reliability, and better cost management. With a growing demand for cloud apps, businesses are turning to cloud management solutions that enable them to use more services from multiple service providers. Multi-cloud management systems provide a robust risk management and security approach that allows businesses to exploit the unique features of public clouds while keeping their management centralized.

Multi-cloud management systems offer a resilient multi-cloud deployment (that occurs when one looks for another platform because of cheaper prices or added features) that require cloud services from top-tier providers. It is ideal for businesses that process confidential data and require component services in a specific region.

What is multi-cloud architecture?

Multi-cloud architecture refers to the use of multiple cloud computing services from different providers in a single network architecture. Architecting multi-cloud allows organizations to avoid vendor lock-in, improve redundancy and disaster recovery, and optimise costs by selecting the best services from each provider.

Architecting multi-cloud also allows organizations to move their data and operated applications into different environments, such as hybrid cloud, to meet their specific needs.

This strategy offers key benefits such as redundancy and flexibility, as an organization is not limited to the experiences of one cloud provider. With multi-cloud, if one cloud experiences a system outage or security breaches, the other clouds can still provide secure data storage and managed services.

What are multi-cloud best practices?

Multi-cloud best practices refer to the strategies and tools used to manage multiple cloud environments effectively. This involves connecting various cloud vendors and adopting a distributed cloud strategy that provides public cloud services. Cloud management plays a very important role, so the providers must offer multiple layers of protection. They should also give some resources to vendors to have a smooth operation. A single interface should be provided for data centres, providing a complete overview of all clouds in one place.

Multi-Cloud Best Practices refer to the use of cloud computing services from a minimum of two cloud providers to run an organization’s applications. It enables an organization’s security from multiple providers and also takes advantage of different clouds which results in a multi-cloud environment.

Is the multi-cloud safe to use?

As many companies are operating multiple cloud vendors, the question of whether multi-cloud is safe to use arises. Multi-cloud security architecture ensures that the data stored by companies is safe from any threats. However, you may be prone to risk if you are using multiple clouds as it can expose company assets and data. To avoid this, companies can manage orchestration and workloads across providers.

The multi-cloud has become increasingly popular among businesses due to its ability to provide diverse services and solutions. However, concerns about cloud security have raised questions about whether it’s safe to use.

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