admin In recent years, companies have been increasingly adopting cloud solutions as a way to modernize their IT infrastructure and improve agility. However, while the trend towards cloud adoption is growing, it is unlikely that we will see a complete shift to the cloud or a move to a single cloud solution in the near future. This is because companies are using an average of 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds in 2021, indicating that they are taking a multi-cloud approach to their IT needs.
This approach allows companies to leverage the strengths of different cloud providers and architectures, creating a more flexible and resilient IT infrastructure. For example, a company may use a public cloud provider for its customer-facing applications to take advantage of their global reach and scalability, while using a private cloud for its sensitive data to ensure security and compliance.
While this multi-cloud approach can bring many benefits, it also creates complexity and challenges for IT teams who need to manage multiple clouds, ensuring interoperability, security, and cost optimization. Thus, companies need to adopt strategies and tools that enable them to effectively manage and monitor their multi-cloud environments while maintaining agility and flexibility.
The current trend in IT infrastructure is towards a hybrid and multi-cloud approach, which combines different cloud solutions to achieve specific business objectives. However, while this approach has many benefits, it can also create complexity and challenges for Ops teams who need to manage and monitor multiple cloud environments.
Gain a Comprehensive View of Multi-Cloud Environment
A recent survey by SolarWinds revealed that more than half of tech professionals have limited visibility into their organization’s applications and infrastructure. This lack of visibility can hinder the ability of IT teams to identify and resolve issues quickly and efficiently. Without a comprehensive view of their IT estate, teams may struggle to conduct root-cause analysis and implement effective remediation strategies.
The increasing complexity of multi-cloud environments has led to a growing demand for observability solutions that provide organizations with a comprehensive view of their IT infrastructure. With a multi-cloud approach, companies need a single-pane-of-glass solution that offers intelligent observability capabilities to optimize performance, ensure compliance, and enhance resilience in their environments.
Visualizing Workload to Optimize Performance
To effectively manage their multi-cloud environments, organizations must carefully consider which workloads should be deployed in each cloud. This requires a workload placement process that determines the most suitable cloud for each application and database, based on factors such as performance, cost, and security.
Each cloud provider has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and understanding these differences is crucial for organizations looking to adopt a successful multi-cloud strategy. By carefully assessing the capabilities of each provider and weighing them against the specific requirements of each workload, companies can ensure that they are leveraging the most suitable cloud for each application.
Data-driven Decision Making
Choosing the most suitable cloud for each workload is essential for maximizing the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy. To make informed decisions, it is essential to start by assessing the workload’s data requirements. This is because databases typically account for the majority of cloud consumption and spending.
By evaluating the workload’s database technology and requirements, organizations can identify the cloud provider that offers the best fit in terms of security, availability, performance, and cost. This data-driven approach ensures that each workload is deployed in the most suitable cloud, optimizing performance and reducing costs.
When deciding on the most suitable cloud for a workload’s databases, it is important to consider the broader impact on other components of the workload, such as connected reporting and analytics applications. In many cases, the database decision will determine the cloud selection for these components. However, the complexity is compounded by the fact that modern cloud-native applications often leverage multiple databases. While co-locating these databases within the same cloud is not always possible, it is generally the preferred option. This decision typically comes down to cost, but co-location can significantly speed up testing and deployment, as well as reduce data access latency.
Streamlining Multi-Cloud Workload Deployment and Management
In a multi-cloud environment, containerization can play a crucial role in streamlining workload deployment and management. By packaging applications and databases in containers, organizations can achieve portability across different clouds without sacrificing performance.
Overall, leveraging containerization is an important strategy for optimizing multi-cloud environments. By using containers to package applications and databases, organizations can achieve greater flexibility, portability, and automation, all of which contribute to better performance, scalability, and resilience across their entire IT estate.
Containerization and its associated portability also have a significant impact on cost control in multi-cloud environments. Developers may be inclined to use the native technology available in a specific cloud provider, but doing so can result in a costly long-term agreement with that provider.
Magazine 
