Remove Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Complexity and Take IT to the Next Levelv1.0

Approaches and tools that will ensure success

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Market Framework: The Use of Hybrid and Multi-cloud Environments is Exploding
  3. Using a “Single Pane of Glass”
  4. Considerations: Building a Multi-cloud Strategy
  5. Key Players
  6. About David Linthicum

1. Summary

The days of the single cloud are gone. Driven by the breadth of technology options, potential cost savings, and the need for business agility, more than 92 percent of businesses are already moving to a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy. However, enterprises face critical choices, and a failure to consider common risks can diminish, or even eliminate, the benefits of hybrid and multi-cloud.

The purpose of this report is to assist C(x)Os, application architects, and IT decision-makers identify common patterns of implementation failures/successes and provide a framework for evaluating hybrid and multi-cloud platforms. Report topics will include:

  • The use of hybrid and multi-cloud environments is exploding, providing better and more productive options for enterprise IT. However, this also means dealing with complexity, and the automation of hybrid and multi-cloud management.
  • To manage cloud and traditional resources through a “single pane of glass” and maximize multi-cloud efficiencies, IT must embrace Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) and cloud services brokers (CSBs), as well as other significant operational tool sets to be successful.   
  • Hybrid and multi-cloud technology vary a great deal from provider to provider, but common patterns are emerging. The use of policy-driven governance is the dominant and most desired approach, as is third party automation of governance, and integration with cloud security.
  • Those who build their own multi-cloud strategy need to first consider the business and technology requirements. This naturally leads to the cloud platforms they are likely to leverage, and that leads to governance or brokering solutions that are the best fit.  
  • Success is measured by the ability to remove complexity while automating much of the management and operations processes. Security will be on the critical path as well, with deep integration needed to ensure that the multi-cloud systems will surpass any existing on premises security.   

Key findings

  1. The use of multiple clouds precipitates the need for governance and operations tools. Indeed, they are critical in the path for success with leveraging more than a single public or private cloud.   
  2. Infrastructure is becoming a commodity, with storage and compute being consistent across public IaaS cloud computing platforms. This trend will continue, and is enhanced by the availability of government and management tools such as cloud management platforms (multi-cloud management) and/or cloud services brokers.  
  3. Automation is the single most important concept that enterprise IT can invest in, including the ability to automate cloud operations (CloudOps) across multi-cloud.   For every dollar invested in automation, 100 dollars will be returned over a 5-year period of time.
  4. Enterprises are falling behind with core metrics in measuring the effectiveness of hybrid and multi-cloud. Cost overruns are common, with enterprises not considering all the hidden costs of these cloud computing architectures.   
  5. Hybrid clouds are moving away from paired public and private clouds, to paired public and legacy systems. Private cloud operating systems, such as OpenStack, are falling out of favor with enterprises.  
  6. The use of connectivity and middleware services to connect public clouds and legacy systems is becoming more important. Enterprises should invest time and money now into finding the right middleware solution for both hybrid- and multi-cloud.
  7. By 2025 multi-cloud will be the norm, with more than 2 public clouds in service of the enterprises being a consistent best practice. This may lead to the combining of some IaaS providers.

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