Leveraging the Benefits of Multi-Cloud in a Data-Rich, AI-Driven World

Growing demand from businesses to benefit from the growing capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has led industry experts to predict a significant increase in investments in cloud computing.

Gartner predicts that worldwide public cloud end-user spending will exceed $675.4 billion (£531.6 billion) this year, with end-user spending on public cloud services expected to increase by 20.4%, up from around £441.6 billion previously. This growth is primarily attributed to advances in GenAI and application modernisation.

Many companies looking to adopt GenAI at scale are opting for a multicloud strategy. This allows the customer to mix and match the cloud services that best meet their needs, including access to the highest quality products, building resiliency into the cloud architecture, and strengthening their negotiating position with vendors.

Organizations adopting a multicloud strategy should consider a few key points to ensure a reliable, secure, and scalable solution.

James Moore

Vice President of EMEA Sales at DoiT International.

Aligning the cloud with organizational needs

Cloud diversity benefits IT by providing a variety of choices to meet specific needs. For example, some organizations choose to keep security-focused workloads in the more capital-intensive private cloud while running familiar business data and applications in cost-effective public cloud networks. Hybrid clouds are suitable when a high level of flexibility and agility is required. For example, when sensitive and critical IPs from the private cloud need to be moved to the public cloud at short notice to gain additional capacity or when costs need to be reduced.

Additionally, a multicloud approach allows organizations to match workloads with the most advanced technology available at any given time. GenAI is a rapidly evolving technology development that serves as a key example of a developing technology that organizations are eager to leverage. However, leveraging LLMs securely, effectively, and efficiently within the enterprise requires a complete reevaluation of organizations’ IT infrastructure and cloud strategies. As new technologies continue to advance, a strong multicloud strategy will be essential to reaping the benefits that these new tools will provide. In the context of multicloud, this means allowing customers to test and develop different providers and understand which one best fits their needs.

When creating your multi-cloud strategy, assess your company culture, DevOps practices, and technology stack. Then agree on clear, measurable goals that align with your broader business objectives, such as cost optimization. This in-depth assessment will shape your multi-cloud management plan, forming a robust, long-term blueprint for digital empowerment that integrates the essential components of people, process, and technology.

Ensure data security

Another common goal is to improve organizational resilience, ensuring that systems remain available in the event of a major incident or disaster. By distributing workloads across multiple regions or cloud providers, you can minimize downtime and ensure business continuity. And while adopting multicloud can expose an organization to a broader attack surface, the risk of significant damage can be reduced by implementing consistent security policies and compliance measures across all cloud environments, with measures such as encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and security monitoring tools. If the worst does happen, any data breach affects only a limited amount of data, because data and applications can be separated between different services.

Hyperscalers regularly introduce new security solutions designed to protect data, applications, and other workloads. For example, Google Workspace recently announced that it is proactively enhancing the security of its platform by requiring Google’s two-step verification (2SV) for all Super Admin accounts. This secondary factor can be a security key, a Google Authenticator prompt, or receiving a verification code via phone call or SMS.

Successful Workload Migration

Moving workloads to the cloud or between cloud platforms can be challenging. A critical part of the planning phase is deciding what to migrate. This requires a comprehensive application assessment to identify workloads that would deliver greater business value if moved to the cloud or another cloud environment. While public applications with global reach are good candidates for the public cloud, others may require an ROI analysis to determine whether the scalability of the public cloud will add value.

During the planning phase, many companies discover a lack of expertise within their team, which can cause challenges during migration. Partner companies can help you train and align the strategic goals of engineering teams to help you achieve your migration goals.

The Danger of Supplier Lock-in

Whether it’s your mobile phone provider, energy supplier or mortgage provider, having to continue using the same organisation can be costly. The same is true for cloud computing: businesses can find it difficult to switch providers without incurring significant costs, legal issues or technological incompatibilities.

A multicloud approach reduces your reliance on a single provider and allows you to operate on your own terms. For example, major cloud providers offer pay-as-you-go pricing, meaning you can theoretically spin up your environment, export your data and virtual machines, and retire whenever you want. You also have the flexibility to use a range of open-source cloud computing platforms and tools, reducing your reliance on proprietary platforms. Open-source technology effectively separates your technology decisions from your choice of cloud provider: developers can modify the source code to meet their specific needs as they deploy, provision, and manage workloads.

While multicloud offers many benefits, from flexibility and leading-edge products to improved resiliency and cost optimization, these benefits can only be realized through careful planning and optimized architecture. Legacy IT systems, on-premises infrastructure, and outdated hardware can all hamper an organization’s ability to manage multicloud operations independently. Partnering with a vendor-agnostic managed service provider (MSP) can help identify the optimal mix of infrastructure, solutions, and vendors. With the right expertise, your business can achieve complete workload agility and mobility.

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