A multi-cloud network utilizes the services of more than one cloud service provider. This presents a unique set of advantages, primary among which is the availability of various services and features that any one service provider may not be able to provide. For the enterprise looking to adopt the cloud and expand their services on a cloud environment, a single cloud service provider may be sufficient, albeit limiting. A multi-cloud environment seeks to eliminate this problem, and organizations can adopt cloud services according to their own specific needs.
Multi-cloud is proving to be a very popular environment model as well. According to the 2018 State of the Cloud report by RightScale, the number of enterprises who are looking to adopt a multi-cloud strategy is 81 percent, which is a major number and the vast majority of cloud service adopters worldwide. Attracted by the flexible placement of workloads, as well as the streamlined process functionality, 77 percent of the organization adopt a multi-cloud model, according to a report by Velostrata.
If your enterprise is investing in a multi-cloud environment, chances are that it wants the service diversity that such an environment provides. However, along with the diversity comes a list of challenges and complexity increases that the enterprise may not be ready to handle. In such a case, investing in a multi-cloud environment can become problematic when we consider the return on investment, which is bound to become difficult to conclusively quantify.
Despite the difficulties associated with multi-cloud adoption and operation, getting a good return on investment with the multi-cloud platform investment is very much doable, with the right training and instruction. This is especially true if the enterprise hopes to utilize MS Azure as the primary cloud platform, and the host for the majority of the development and deployment-related operations.
Assuming that the organization hopes to use Azure as the primary platform, there are a few necessary steps that need to be taken, to make sure that all operational practices are processes are in line with that is ideal towards ROI maximization. To that end, in this article, we will discuss the various steps that can be taken to increase the return on investment for a multi-cloud environment, with MS Azure set as a foundation.
Attaining Maximum Service-specific Information
A number of vendors and their specific services come with the territory of multi-cloud adoption. An enterprise looking to make up a multi-cloud setup consisting of three or more cloud service providers will need to make sure that they know all the service specifics of each vendor, and that they have all the tools required to manage said vendors. The teams who will be running the IT ops and application development and management will need to know about all the involved platforms in order to develop working solutions that are optimized to all the said platforms.
This information can be attained from a variety of sources such as the vendors themselves, the internet and online forums related to such services and vendors, as well as training courses on the cloud platforms. MS Azure training can help deliver vital knowledge as well as functional learning, enabling teams to know all there is to know about operating on the Azure platform.
Prepare for Challenges Beforehand
If you are adopting a multi-cloud environment, preparation for the associated challenges is a must. This is because of the increasing number of cloud service vendors nowadays, and the tendency of each to develop a set of proprietary features which are often not compatible with other features from other vendors. Alongside this issue, is the one of applications failing to deploy properly due to different deployment metrics of the cloud platforms.
Also important is to consider the security challenges that will arise, particularly related to information security. Since a multi-cloud environment is bound to have different security protocols (some of which may be uniform in nature while some will have different integral structures).It is important to have contingency plans in case of information security breaches.
Internal Coordination and Collaboration
DevOps principles will need to be adhered to when speaking of a multi-cloud adoption on the enterprise level. Collaboration and coordination between the internal teams and managers will allow all involved parties to be on the same page while transferring the concerned processes and applications to the cloud. While the teams, such as operations and development, have their own set of priorities, and collaboration is usually limited to the processes of developing and deploying applications and products; the collaboration will have to be scaled up once multiple cloud environments come into the picture.
Additionally, the coordination and collaboration will need to extend throughout the enterprise, to make sure that the teams know what the management and executives have in mind for the future, in terms of cloud functionality and migration.
All of the above, and more, makes part of a multi-cloud return on investment maximizing strategy that functions to not only bring back bigger profits, but also make sure that the adoption strategy is iron-clad, and future-proof.