How to Implement a Multicloud Strategy Built for Your Business Needs

How to Implement a Multicloud Strategy Built for Your Business Needs

Organizations increasingly find themselves operating across multiple cloud platforms, often as a result of both intentional decisions and organic growth.

A multicloud approach offers benefits such as cost savings and workload flexibility, but it also introduces challenges including data silos, integration complexity, and security and governance issues.

What is multicloud?

Multicloud is an environment in which data and applications are distributed across multiple cloud services, such as SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS from providers like AWS, Azure, GCP, and industry-specific vendors.

Multicloud is distinct from hybrid cloud, which refers to using a mix of private and public cloud infrastructure alongside on-premises resources.

Benefits of multicloud

• Flexibility and reduced vendor lock-in, enabling easier disaster recovery and provider changes.
• Best-of-breed solutions by combining strengths of different cloud and data platforms.
• Cost and performance optimization by shifting workloads and placing data geographically closer to users.

Challenges of multicloud

• Greater architectural, operational, and governance complexity across providers.
• Higher skill requirements and potential increases in workforce cost.
• Potential for higher overall costs and reduced pricing leverage with multiple vendors.
• Limited unified visibility and control without consolidated monitoring and management.

Data and analytics use cases

• Geographically diverse business units using different cloud services but sharing data through open standards and common tools.
• Different organizational functions (for example, marketing and customer transactions) sharing data across separate cloud platforms.

Your multicloud strategy

A successful multicloud strategy must align with overall business and data strategy, with input from technology, security, finance, legal, and business leaders, and should address people, data, technology, and security dimensions.

Key focus areas

• People: Define roles, access policies, training, and cross-cloud governance structures.
• Data: Establish master data management and a single reference point to reduce silos and inconsistencies.
• Technology: Rationalize platforms, favor tools designed for multicloud, and consider open-source where appropriate.
• Security: Implement cross-cloud security policies, clarify shared responsibility with providers, and address added management complexity and risk.

Prepare for change

Because business needs, technologies, and data landscapes evolve, multicloud strategies should be revisited regularly and adjusted to keep supporting digital transformation and analytics goals.

Does your organization need multicloud?

Consider whether multiple cloud services will meaningfully enhance flexibility, efficiency, and analytical capabilities, and whether the benefits outweigh transition and management costs.

Key questions include expected impact on analytics workloads, support for AI and machine learning, competitive advantage, and alignment between workloads and the strengths of specific cloud environments.

Additional resources

You can deepen your multicloud planning with resources on cloud migration, comparing cloud environments, cloud case studies, and cloud-first data architecture best practices.