Multi-cloud strategies suggest that enterprises run their applications and workloads in whatever cloud environment makes the most sense from a cost, performance and functionality perspective. That’s the theory anyway. In practice however, a multi-cloud environment requires a fair amount of tooling. Many enterprises grapple with integrating technologies created by competing suppliers in the hopes of achieving the elusive, single pane of glass.
Regardless of the challenges, a multi-cloud strategy has inherent benefits. Understanding problems upfront, and mitigating the consequences, is step one to realizing those benefits.
Problem: Cloud cost sprawl
Typically, the first migration in a company is initiated as a cost saving measure. Maybe you’re moving from CAPEX to OPEX, or joining a monthly subscription plan, so there’s a clear strategy and goal. As you move deeper into the cloud, developers see the potential of new applications, and opportunities for innovation. The shiny new tools and enhanced flexibility of the cloud can lead to unexpected and expensive surprises.
All too often, an organization moves to a monthly subscription model and slowly but surely, everybody increases and expands their use of services. Next thing you know, you’re getting huge bills from your cloud provider that nearly equal or exceed the cost of buying equipment. Cloud cost sprawl is the expensive result of unrestricted and unregulated use of cloud resources. It’s so rampant that an estimated 35% of enterprise cloud spend is wasted via cloud cost sprawl.
Solution: Cloud cost optimization
There’s more than one way to wrangle cloud use, achieve your goals, and maintain your budget while cutting out waste. Cloud cost optimization is a complex organizational process that runs parallel to cloud migration and cloud-based service use.
With simplified cloud billing, an understanding of how cloud cost sprawl happens, why cost optimization is important, and an ongoing optimization effort – large enterprises can save up to 70%. Through a combination of software, services and strategy, cost optimization helps businesses immediately achieve significant cost savings.
Learn more in the links below and schedule your free, 2-hour, Cloud Cost Optimization Discovery Session with 2nd Watch cloud experts to discover how best to get started.
- The 6 Pillars of Cloud Cost Optimization
- 5 Steps to Cloud Cost Optimization: Hurdles to Optimization are Organizational, Not Technical
- Managed Billing Simplifies Cloud Costs for Enterprises
Problem: Environment integration
With various types of environments coming together in multi-cloud, it can be hard to integrate, interoperate, and move data across the infrastructure for performance and use. Each environment has its own managing and monitoring systems that require certain expertise.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), including cloud providers like AWS, GCP and Azure, are one layer of the environment – and higher level services, or platform as a service (PaaS), is another layer. Platforms like Salesforce and NetSuite offer additional tools to build within specific domains, but the challenge is bringing everything together.
Solution: Expertise and tools
If you don’t have the in-house knowledge for a multi-cloud environment, outsourcing cloud management to an expert who also provides guidance and direction for cloud growth is a cost-effective solution. Regardless of who is in charge of integration, cloud providers offer tools and services to help monitor and manage the infrastructure as a whole. Recently, services have been introduced to directly address integration with other environments in a multi-cloud infrastructure.
For example, Google’s latest service, BigQuery Omni, lets you connect, combine, and query data from outside GCP without having to learn a new language. AWS is taking a more multi-cloud approach with ECS and EKS Anywhere. There’s also Anthos on GCP, and Arc on Azure – all services that allow organizations to run containers in the environments of their choosing.
See how cloud providers are embracing the movement toward multi-cloud to make multi-cloud integration easier.
- A Hybrid Approach to Modernization Using Google Anthos
- Top Enterprise IT Trends for 2021
- Cloud Crunch Podcast: Multi-Cloud – Is it Really Worth It?
Managed Cloud Services
Accelerate the delivery of innovative solutions and gain competitive advantage, without impacting current operations, using 2nd Watch Managed Cloud Services. Your dedicated cloud experts provide a simple, flexible set of Day 2 operational services to support cost optimization, management, monitoring, and integration within a multi-cloud infrastructure. Contact Us to make multi-cloud a success at your organization.
