Multi cloud denotes freedom of choice, how should you devise your firm’s cloud strategy?

Today, the majority of business applications are cloud and/or SaaS products that run on different cloud platforms. As a technology implementor and advisor, we find this situation is increasingly challenging for our customers. Should they hitch their wagon to a single cloud services provider? What is the optimal strategy for multi cloud? How to achieve the right balance between private and public cloud?

Typically, organisations select applications on the basis of which software best meets their business requirements. The software vendors on the other hand develop products, inform customers that their solution is available on ‘X’ cloud platform and then it’s up to the customers to determine if use of the cloud service in question is suitable/acceptable to them. The result is that cloud applications are spread across multiple cloud platforms, multiple security certifications and of course multiple integrations!

So, from customers’ perspective, does this varied technology situation lead to complexities? Yes. Is it new, however? Not really. In reality, it is no different to purchasing and integrating multiple applications on-premises, except today, it’s all elevated in the cloud.

The balancing act of freedom of choice and security
A single, global environment would of course make implementation a lot easier for organisations, but we live in a world where freedom of choice is valued by customers across the supply chain, including vendors, suppliers, developers, intermediaries, advisors and implementors. Whilst such choices must be made carefully as there are commercial implications, the more vital issue is that numerous linkages and environments across the supply chain expose security loopholes that bad actors can take advantage of. The recent security breach that exposed personal data held at British Airways, BBC and Boots, amongst many others, due to a compromise at their payroll provider, is a case in point.
To overcome such issues, there are some managed services providers who enable organisations to deploy on-premises versions of business applications within a private cloud. This approach is very short term and must be adopted with the utmost caution. It’s only a matter of time before most software vendors only develop true SaaS model applications and discontinue support of on-premises systems, regardless of whether they are actually on-premises or in managed service environment.
Also, the brutal fact is that no individual organisation can afford the continuous investment that cloud platform providers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google make to ensure the highest possible levels of security. Relying on a managed services providers’ private cloud is a high risk strategy.

Multi cloud is a reality
The truth of the matter is that aside from the platform that organisations use internally, the chance that different applications will be running on varied cloud environments is high. Going back many years here, but this situation is quite similar to when main frame systems, such as the WANG VS, which were the mainstay of enterprise technology. These systems were proprietary, but provided a centralised control of dumb terminals, business applications and storage. Subsequently, PC networks came along and moved the power to a distributed model of personal computers and wide area networks. It was left to the creators of the documents to decide where they filed those documents, the naming convention they used, and the hierarchal (or flat) filing structure they utilised. Whilst this empowered the end users, it created many of the issues we see now, especially around General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), i.e., many versions of the same data stored all over the place with little idea of retention policies or even knowledge of the actual content. Of course, these issues led to the evolution of formalised document management systems, which unsurprisingly were adopted much earlier by the industries that produced the largest volumes of documents, including legal, finance, pharmaceutical, etc. The point is that we went from a highly centralised and controlled environment to a widely distributed one, with freedom of choice at its core, but that did come with its own challenges, from which we are still recovering.
Interestingly today, we are at the other end of the spectrum where we are trying to claw back some of that control as data, the lifeblood of business, has grown exponentially and become a security risk. Rather than housing all that data on-premises, we are taking it to the cloud, where it can be aggregated, de-duplicated, classified, and managed within the auspices of new data regulations.

Best practice and business analysis must underpin cloud strategy
As organisations devise their multi cloud strategy, all the fundamentals of wider technology selection and adoption-related decision-making apply. Analyse the organisation’s business requirements, identify the current processes in operation, which of those work and which don’t, in which processes can improvements be easily made, and so on. Based on these responses, determine which business applications are needed, in which environments they will work best, will integration across the application estate and the cloud environments be seamless, what the cost-benefit implications are, what alternatives exist, what combination of applications and clouds enable optimal use of data, how will the security protocols work across the various environments, where might the incompatibilities lie, and the list goes on.
Whilst multi cloud is a trend today, the same best practice principles and logic apply as for any kind of technology strategy. Multi cloud denotes choice and fundamentally helps overcome vendor lock in, and in many instances supports regulatory compliance, especially in the current landscape where governance mandates vary across regions and jurisdictions. Like any technology, it has disadvantages too – such as cost issues, and potentially, integration and security-related complexities. A detailed cost-benefit analysis ensures informed decision-making. Organisations must base their cloud strategy – be it single or multi cloud – on exactly that.