What is Multi Cloud?
Multi cloud is a cloud implementation strategy that uses cloud resources from multiple public cloud service providers. Instead of being tied to a single public cloud service provider, you can spread your databases and workloads across multiple providers. Public cloud service providers include Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
In the past, most computing was performed using local or on-premises servers. Over time, cloud computing services have become increasingly popular. Cloud computing allows you to access your data with ease over the internet. You no longer need to spend precious time away from your business managing mountains of data. Instead, cloud computing frees you to grow your business using the valuable insights gained from your data.
Hybrid Cloud vs Multi Cloud
A hybrid cloud uses a mix of both public and private cloud computing services. In this way, you gain the best of both worlds. For example, you may choose to use a public cloud to host large amounts of generic data. However, to access sensitive financial and health data, a private cloud may be the best option.
A multi cloud also uses a mix of cloud computing services, however, all the cloud services are hosted on a public cloud infrastructure. In other words, you can choose to shop around various public cloud providers based on price, availability, performance, and other factors. Then build a multi cloud model that best suits your needs using different cloud service platforms.
Multi Cloud FAQs
What are the benefits of multi cloud?
Cost Effective
There are many reasons why you might want to adopt a multi cloud strategy. The first is that multi cloud allows you to shop around for the best features and functionalities at the best price point. This allows you to cut your budget further than you would be able to if you got locked in with one cloud vendor.
Flexibility
If your public cloud service provider were to have an outage for any reason, you could potentially lose access to your data for a period of time. Or worse yet, if the cloud service provider is unable to restore your data successfully, you could potentially lose your data all together. A multi cloud strategy allows you to not put all your eggs in one basket. You can select from several public cloud service providers and build a multi cloud environment that works best for your business. With a multi cloud, you lower your risk of data loss, by spreading your resources across multiple public cloud service providers.
What are the Cons of the Multi Cloud?
Cloud Migration Issues
When adopting a multi cloud strategy, you must consider the issues associated with cloud migration. Cloud migration involves moving your databases and workloads from your on-premises server to a public cloud infrastructure. You perform this migration for each public cloud service that you intend to use. A single migration process itself is quite challenging. With a multi cloud strategy, this is compounded each time you perform a migration to a different public cloud. To achieve the best performance from your public cloud infrastructure, you will need to refactor or rewrite each application for the specific cloud that you are migrating to. This is no easy feat.
Data Silos
With a multi cloud, your data is hosted and managed on multiple platforms. This can lead to data silos. You gain many benefits using a multi cloud approach for your cloud computing services. However, this can be outweighed by the sheer number of places you now need to go to access your data. Furthermore, if you had to refactor your application to function on a particular public cloud platform, this modified application will not be compatible with a different public cloud platform. You end up with applications that are only able to work on a specific public cloud, but not on others, typing you to that public cloud service provider indefinitely.
What is an example of a multi cloud?
As an example, you can build a multi cloud using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model that is client-facing and an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for development. With a multi cloud, both the SaaS and IaaS models will be supported on the public cloud. The SaaS model would provide the most streamlined experience for your end clients. Your clients only care about applications that work and are easy to access. The IaaS model would allow your internal software team to test and develop new features for your business product or service. With a multi cloud, you now have the best of both worlds – a streamlined software on the front end, and a full-fledged developer environment on the backend – without interrupting your end client user experience.
Silk Optimizes Your Multi Cloud Strategy
The Silk Cloud Platform offers enterprises the perfect solution to their multi cloud strategy. Silk is a virtualized layer that sits between your workloads and the underlying public cloud infrastructure. You can easily lift and shift data between different cloud service providers without the added complexity of refactoring. If your plan is to refactor eventually, with Silk, you can still take advantage of an effective multi cloud strategy today while you continue to work through your refactoring process. This makes it ideal for large, complex, and mission-critical workloads such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server.
In addition, the Silk Cloud Platform offers a range of enterprise data services including zero-footprint snapshots, deduplication, and thin provisioning. This reduces the amount of cloud resources that you need to a minimum. In turn, this helps to minimize your cloud services bill since you no longer need to worry about too many snapshots ballooning through your allocated resources. And since Silk makes it so easy to replicate data, it’s ideal for a Disaster Recovery (DR) use case where updated clones of data need to be created often and easily failover from DR to production if needed.
Silk is always-on and available, so you never need to worry about not having access to your data in the cloud.
