By Tarang Puranik, Senior Vice President, Global Service Offering Head -Cloud Infrastructure Services & Head of Delivery for Europe, Infosys

With cloud computing continuing to thrive in 2023, multi-cloud adoption is the norm. Eighty-five percent of respondents to a Harvard Business Review–Analytic Services survey stated that their organizations used at least two clouds, and a quarter of them are using five or more.

Gartner defines a multi-cloud strategy as, "the deliberate use of cloud services from multiple public cloud providers for the same general class of IT solutions or workloads — almost always infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and/or platform as a service (PaaS), not software as a service (SaaS)." Some organizations have stumbled upon multi-cloud strategies 'accidentally', through acquisitions or because subsidiaries have adopted different clouds from parent organizations.  Often one cloud is the strategic or primary cloud, while others play tactical role.  Multi-cloud strategies sometimes pose governance and operational challenges, but can provide substantial benefits to businesses when adopted right.

A multi-cloud strategy: opportunities and obstacles

Multi-cloud architectures help merge the most beneficial features of different platforms and offer a robust overall solution. By giving organizations the freedom to decide where to deploy workloads, they can evaluate multiple cloud providers to handle specific tasks, minimizing vendor lock-in, allowing them to negotiate better commercial contracts, and lower cloud costs. Cloud contestability is another benefit, where IT teams can select cloud options based on application NFRs (non-functional requirements) and cost performance. Companies can access modern, modular architectures with micro services, to leverage services from multiple clouds. Multi-cloud frameworks also help with disaster recovery and business continuity,  as a technical issue with a single cloud provider could prove catastrophic. Organizations can address low latency issues by deploying applications close to the user base. Cloud solution providers (CSP's) need to adhere to local regulatory policies of the jurisdiction they operate in. Multi-cloud adoption allows organizations to effectively meet local data, compliance and regulatory requirements.

However, multi-cloud adoption is not for all organizations as it could mean governance challenges in terms of security and cloud cost. For instance, implementing uniform compliance policies and getting consumption cost visibility across various clouds is difficult. Technical issues such as complex network, connectivity solutions, integration and monitoring multi-cloud application architecture patterns is also challenging. In addition, establishing several continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines, could mean issues with observability leading to possible delays in transitions to site reliability engineers (SRE). Multi-cloud orchestration is also tricky, unless third party multi-cloud management platforms (CMP) are implemented successfully. Another hurdle is the colossal shortage of people and skills to manage multi-cloud environments. Since skill upliftment is an ongoing need, it could result in inefficiencies going forward.

Multi-cloud strategies: the future of enterprise

Before chalking out a multi-cloud strategy, it is vital that an organization look at the 4 C's – Compatibility, Capability, Compliance and Cost. A compatibility check analyzes the existing applications fitment for migration and assesses new technological requirements against the CSP's services. CSP capabilities must also be mapped against the organization's technology roadmap. Regulatory, compliance and NFR's must be weighed against local and global needs and finally, commercial constructs offered by CSPs, such as investments, hosting charges and software license portability need to be evaluated thoroughly.

As enterprises customize their cloud infrastructure, a multi-cloud management platform can be standardized and streamlined by considering four capabilities. Firstly, observability, or CMP capabilities to provide single pane of glass view or unified display for all cloud services in use. The second consideration is that of portability, or capability of moving workloads from one CSP to another, to address regional deployment needs or CSP exit requirements. Thirdly, interoperability must be evaluated to execute seamless operations such as security, data recovery, backup, and patching. Finally, businesses must consider cloud orchestration abilities to ensure seamless infrastructure across multiple clouds.

As organizations navigate their digital transformation journey, chalking out a clear strategy around multi-cloud will give them best-of-breed solutions offered by CSPs accelerating their cloud and digital journeys. A multi-cloud approach helps minimize business risk, by empowering organizations to scale their cloud requirements, and giving them the power of choice, to pick what is vital to their business success.

AUTHOR:

By Tarang Puranik, Senior Vice President, Global Service Offering Head -Cloud Infrastructure Services & Head of Delivery for Europe, Infosys

Tarang Puranik is a Senior Vice President, Global Service Offering Head -Cloud Infrastructure Services at Infosys Limited and the Infosys Head of Delivery for Europe.

Tarang has 30 years of experience in the IT industry and has been with Infosys for over 24 years. He has been in the IT Industry since 1993 post his bachelor's degree in computer science engineering from VNIT, Nagpur, India. He has played various leadership roles across service lines and industry segments with focus on consulting, systems integration, and cloud infrastructure.