Understanding the Benefits of a Multi-Cloud Strategy

Stats can tell the story — and a growing number of organizations are adopting a multi-cloud strategy. Specifically, IDC predicted in its IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2017 Predictions that more than 85% of enterprise IT organizations will commit to multi-cloud architectures by 2018. And, the drivers behind the trend are crystal clear. Benefits, such as avoiding vendor lock-in, cost savings, performance optimization, a lowered risk of DDoS attacks, as well as improved reliability, are all critical as businesses jockey for position in today’s new digital economy.  

Perhaps the most attractive benefit for some organizations is the ability to avoid vendor lock-in. When IT adopts a multi-cloud strategy it provides the organization with the leverage rather than the cloud provider. When it’s clear upfront that the workloads may end up transferring between providers, development teams can build apps that work across providers. This approach makes it easier to transfer between cloud service providers when pricing or differing capabilities make a different route more appealing.

At the same time, competing in today’s increasingly digital economy heavily depends on the organization’s ability to run workloads within the most appropriate environments – whether the goal is to take advantage of cost savings or capitalize on performance optimization opportunities.

Why is this important? Every provider has strengths and weaknesses and it’s not uncommon to leverage multiple providers to complete one customer transaction. A properly managed multi-cloud architecture gives IT the freedom to seamlessly shift the transaction as needed.

As cloud deployments have grown, so too has the likelihood of DDoS attacks not only taking a site down, but ultimately keeping it down.  However, a well-crafted multi-cloud architecture helps lessen the effectiveness of DDoS attacks by providing a level of resiliency not available with a single provider. If a cloud provider suffers an attack, this strategy lets IT instantly shift the load or only the impacted services to other cloud environments.

A multi-cloud strategy can also improve reliability. Specifically, with multi-cloud an otherwise passive cloud can seamlessly serve as the failover solution when the primary cloud has issues processing a requested service such as an e-commerce transaction. And, once the primary cloud is back to its normal function, the operations can automatically revert.

Each benefit associated with a multi-cloud approach can prove instrumental in establishing or maintaining a competitive advantage in today digital economy. Of course, realizing these benefits requires a solid strategy to map out opportunities as well as access to a well-crafted management tool. A solid tool should help simulate migrations, as well as provide the visibility needed to ensure seamless inventory, security, migration, and change management. The best tools also offer multi-cloud cost forecasting – a necessity when establishing a realistic budget.  

See how BMC Multi-Cloud Management helps optimize your current IT systems while ensuring a secure, cost-effective transition to the clouds of your choice. Learn more.