Cloud
computing solutions
has become an incredibly popular model for modernizing IT portfolios.
With exclusive benefits like gaining agility and speed-to-market,
more and more companies are turning to public cloud software.
Hybrid
cloud systems are a means to shuttle business applications
between public clouds from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft
Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and private clouds running
internally, or even hosted off-site by a provider.
Previously, many organizations chose one
cloud services provide. Yet, because this approach lacks distinctive
functionality, organizations are now recognizing the benefits of
multi-cloud. Improved organizational flexibility, better performance
and efficiency, and avoiding vendor lock-ins, are just a few of the
benefits multi-cloud offers.
1.
Adopting a Hybrid Cloud Environment
One trend that will see continuous
traction in 2020 is procuring cloud services from two or more vendors
at a time. AWS is popular for customer-facing apps, while Microsoft
Azure Software
Services for business services and GCP for analytics
compliment the execution of specific business scenarios.
Some chose to hold apps closely using
private clouds, or, shuttle apps back and forth between public and
private systems. This is often in the interest of security or
financial reasons, with companies rolling back apps from public
clouds to internal systems, known as repatriation.
The big picture, however, points to an
urgency for a strategy that ensures the entire ecosystem works
synchronously, especially as the use of multiple clouds and
on-premises cloud installations become more common.
2.
Find the Right Fit
When your eyes are bigger than your
stomach, you might put too much food on your plate. This is the case
for companies who rely too heavily on the public cloud, who often
lose money after the first 12-18 months.
Over-provisioning resources you won’t
consume will ultimately backfire, as is the case with some
application developers who accidentally leave cloud workloads running
into the weekend. As a result, multi-million-dollar charges are
incurred.
Governance can help mitigate these
over-spending risks. Crafting a strategy that optimizes functionality
across cloud network (both public and private), is one such way to
ensure this risk mitigation.
A solution known as “FinOps” is a
combination of analytics software and business management practices
that, upon migration to the cloud, monitors and calculates the actual
rate of cloud consumption.
3.
Modernize, Migrate, and go Cloud-Native
You’re probably familiar with the
lift-and-shift approach for migrating apps to the cloud, which isn’t
enough to drive agility if certain factors aren’t in place.
Upgrading legacy applications, for example, is fundamental when
moving your data center to the cloud if tackling speed-to-market
initiatives.
Modernizing apps, whether migrating as-is
or re-architecting entirely, is vital for the attainment of
competitive, advantageous software. Containers and microservices also
work to make apps portable and capable of breaking-down.
Cloud
native systems like Kubernetes-esque orchestration services
(think AWS, Azure, and GCP) automate deployment, scaling, and
management of containers, and ultimately enable rapid-fire change and
continuous delivery.
Challenging aspects of going cloud-native
include the need to manage clusters of containers running in a
multi-cloud schema. Stop-gap measures, like using VMware to run
virtual servers in AWS or Azure, can help overcome these issues.
Irrespective of the architecture your
enterprise chooses to build, don’t sacrifice long-term
transformation goals your business needs for short-term cost savings.
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