Cloud computing 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 provider. 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 for business services and GCP for analytics compliment the execution of specific business scenarios.
Some chose to hold apps closely using private cloud computing, 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 computing, 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 computing (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 computing, 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.
