Kurt Haberkamp, VP of customer success at MariaDB plc, discusses how businesses can reduce complexity when switching from single-cloud to multi-cloud strategies.
Many enterprises now have multi-cloud strategies, while others cling to a single provider. Although IT leaders would love to find a ‘one size fits all’ solution and avoid adding complexity to their digital infrastructure, unfortunately, this is not always viable. Whether or not you pursue a single or multi-cloud strategy ultimately comes down to what you do, how you want to do it, and what results you want to achieve.
For example, a single cloud provider has been more than enough for the likes of Netflix and Spotify, who already dominate a huge share of the market and choose to prioritise simplicity in their operations without worrying too much about vendor lock-in. They have managed to avoid the associated risks that can come with multi-cloud strategies (including security complexities) by foregoing some flexibility, which is a fair trade-off for them.
However, for many others, flexibility is absolutely critical for staying competitive in crowded marketplaces, and using a single cloud provider is far too restrictive. In the software industry, for example, customer expectations are driving applications to market quicker than ever, and providers need to be able to shop around for the best services.
In industries such as retail, for example, the risk of network outages tends to put businesses off sticking with one provider, given this would wreak havoc on the entire business if it came to fruition.
Most importantly, business leaders understand how to assess their wants and needs and the associated risks. So, let’s explore this in more detail.
Single vs multi-cloud
The greatest benefit of a single-cloud implementation is simplicity – there is only one vendor’s details to worry about. A single cloud strategy may be the best choice if your business doesn’t depend on real-time transactions and isn’t susceptible to downtime and outages. You will only have one set of standards to learn and one set of procedures to follow – and, importantly, you will only need to maintain one release pipeline for the CI/CD stack.
On the multi-cloud front, though, cloud preferences can be extreme – even tribal! For example, some logistics companies refuse to work with AWS simply because they have a logistics business. For other verticals, strong opinions about Google Cloud or IBM may exist.
Unlike in the build aspect of development, there are no universal standards when it comes to deployment. This can cause another headache within multi-cloud environments, as multiple versions of the same app need to consider different standards. This is particularly difficult for applications running at scale.
Nevertheless, having a multi-cloud strategy is helpful for companies offering services because it insulates the organisation from price increases and vendor lock-in while also offering high availability. Ultimately, making use of more than one cloud can improve businesses’ operational resilience in the event of something going wrong.
This last point is particularly important for financial institutions in Europe. Despite the traditional regulatory and compliance arguments in favour of single-cloud, many are tending to favour multi-cloud strategies ahead of the impending Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which is due to take effect in early 2025.
However, for every cloud you add, you also take on another set of configurations, features, networking, and security approaches. Ultimately, this means businesses will need to take on more talent and start tracking upgrade schedules and policies about Kubernetes version control.
The other drawback is the additional training, oversight, and understanding a multi-cloud strategy requires. If an organisation’s budget doesn’t allow hiring the required expertise and existing staff must fill the gaps, the unrelenting pressure will quickly get old. Burnout and human capital issues are big risks as organisations expand their multi-cloud footprint.
Choosing a strategy
Depending on the nature and size of a business, application and business owners (as well as the teams in charge of deployment) need to weigh the benefits and risks of having a multi-cloud strategy. This is where focusing on a business rather than a technology solution can make life easier.
Keeping customer priorities front of mind is critical. With users increasingly using smartphones as their go-to computing device, high performance, availability, and reliability is a must. Businesses need to focus their spending and strategy on the things that will help them best retain and attract customers.
Additionally, consider the overall organisational needs. The choice to transition to multi-cloud or not tends to boil down to a cost-benefit analysis: how much business would be lost if the higher SLA costs were absorbed vs. how much business would be lost if the company decides to go multi-cloud but doesn’t have the right skills yet to do it?
Reducing multi-cloud complexity
Many organisations have adopted a multi-cloud strategy, but not all have been best prepared for the complexity this brings – particularly with IT resources already stretched to the max.
Before making the move away from single cloud and towards a multi-cloud strategy, companies need a strong understanding of cloud provider technology differences and how customers interact with them.
This starts with which cloud strategy is going to provide strong orchestration, networking, and problem-solving skills so that when an issue arises, there’s a quick route to troubleshooting.
Choose to work with software vendors who have the ability to work across multiple clouds to reduce complexity. For example, in the database space, AWS RDS only works in one cloud, AWS. If your organisation has a multi-cloud strategy across AWS and Google Cloud, for example, then you may want to consider a database vendor that can manage your database environment in more than one cloud.
