Multi-Cloud Strategy: The Better Way to Security, Availability, and Scalability in 2023

Multi-cloud continues to be the most pervasive cloud strategy chosen by technology practitioners and decision-makers.

Never heard of it? Or are you on the verge of adopting multi-cloud?

Either way, you are at the right place. 

By the end of this article, you will know everything about the strategy, its benefits, what may hinder the adoption process, and how to handle it.

And if you need to persuade your organization that multi-cloud is the way to move forward, we have some stats to back up your statements. 

Let’s roll!

What is Multi-Cloud?

Multi-cloud refers to a cloud computing strategy in which an organization uses multiple cloud service providers to meet its various computing needs. 

Instead of relying on a single cloud provider, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), a multi-cloud approach involves using a combination of these providers and others. This strategy can also include utilizing private clouds or on-premises infrastructure alongside public cloud providers.

The key objective of adopting a multi-cloud strategy is providing the flexibility needed to operate in the most suitable computing environment for each workload.

Source: Stream

Multi-Cloud use cases

The percentage of enterprises taking advantage of multiple cloud platforms and services is rising every year. The reason is that the multi-cloud strategy allows companies to:

• Accelerate app transformation and the delivery of new apps: Businesses are opting to launch applications on public, private, and edge cloud platforms based on what aligns best with their business goals and application requirements. The previous “Cloud First” approach has now evolved into a more adaptive “Cloud Smart” strategy.

• Avoid vendor lock-in: Growing worries about the overall expenditure on cloud services, maintaining control over data location, vendor reliance, and the risk of vendor lock-in are prompting enterprises to persist in diversifying their infrastructure across multiple environments.

• Deploy applications and services at the edge: In sectors like logistics, retail, and manufacturing, achieving the next level of automation, efficiency, and enhanced customer experiences necessitates the distribution of applications to the edge, placing them in closer proximity to physical devices and end-users.

Unlocking DevOps to seamless CI/CD: Multi-cloud can be beneficial for DevOps practices, enabling teams to use the best-suited cloud services and tools for their continuous integration and deployment pipelines.

Top 5 Benefits of Adopting Multi-Cloud

Whatever your use case might be, there is no doubt that a multi-cloud strategy brings a lot to the table. 

Some of the use cases mentioned above highlighted how your business can benefit from adopting multi-cloud. To build on it, here’s another five reasons to go “multi”:

1. Flexibility and Choice: Multi-cloud provides the flexibility to choose the best cloud services and resources from various providers based on specific workload requirements. 

2. Cost Optimization: You can optimize costs by selecting the most cost-effective cloud provider for each workload. Multi-cloud also allows for leveraging competitive pricing and taking advantage of discounts offered by different providers. 

3. Security and Compliance: Multi-cloud enables organizations to implement a layered security approach. They can use specialized security features provided by different cloud providers to protect their data and applications. Additionally, data replication across multiple providers enhances data backup and disaster recovery capabilities, contributing to overall security. 

4. High Availability and Performance: By strategically deploying workloads across multiple cloud providers and regions, you can improve availability and reduce latency for end-users, resulting in a better overall user experience.

5. Resilience and Redundancy: Distributing workloads across multiple cloud providers reduces the risk of downtime and data loss due to provider-specific issues or outages, ensuring business continuity.

A Multi-Cloud Strategy by Numbers

We can provide you with 10, 20, 30 benefits and advantages of the multi-cloud strategy, But we can all agree that there’s one thing that cannot be beaten when it comes to making a decision:

SOLID DATA.

And luckily, HashiCorp joined forces with Forrester for a third year in a row to examine the state of multi-cloud strategy. 

Forrester conducted an online survey of 963 global technology practitioners and decision-makers, 93% of whom work at companies of 1,000 employees or more across a range of industries. 

Then, they identified these respondents and the organizations they represent as high,

medium and low maturity based on their cloud practices across five technology and organizational dimensions: security, applications, infrastructure, networking,

and platform team operations. 

The bottom 25% were identified as low maturity, the middle 50% as medium maturity, and the top 25% as high maturity.
But before diving into the numbers, you should bear in mind one of the most pivotal conclusions of the survey:

Organizations with higher maturity are better optimized for agility, efficiency, and scale in the cloud.

Now, about the data.

High-maturity organizations double down on multi-cloud

• 94% of high-maturity users said either that it’s helping them achieve their business goals or that it will in the next 12 months.
• Even amid macroeconomic pressure, 56% of respondents said they’re increasing their cloud spend.
• 62% of respondents from high-maturity organizations boosted their spending by an average of 16%.
• Although many companies boost their cloud investments and hope to save money with multi-cloud, 94% of respondents report avoidable cloud spending for various reasons.

Factors driving the multi-cloud adoption

As it turns out, the benefits that we listed earlier are among the top drivers of multi-cloud adoption:

• reliability (51%)
• cost reduction (48%)
• security and governance (45%)
• digital transformation (45%)
• scalability (45%)

Source: HashiCorp

The main culprit in operationalizing multi-cloud

We can all agree that a multi-cloud strategy delivers a wide variety of benefits.

However, there is a big hurdle standing between a lot of companies and reaping the benefits of adopting a multi-cloud:

The shortage of skilled cloud talent. 

And while high-maturity companies tend to benefit the most from the modern cloud strategy, the entire maturity spectrum is suffering when it comes to finding and hiring top talent. 

When asked what factors complicate their organizations’ ability to operationalize multi-cloud, skills shortages (27%) was the most commonly selected response, followed by related issues such as siloed teams (26%) and lack of training (25%).

Source: HashiCorp

Rely on a Limitless Talent Pool

Obviously, building a team of seasoned cloud developers is a complex issue that may hinder your organization’s growth. 

But what if instead of wasting time and resources on assembling the most skilled team one by one, you can hire an entire group of experts immediately?

A team like OpsHero. 

OpsHero is a team of experts with 15+ years of IT experience that specializes in services like: 

• DevOps
• DevSecOps
• System Administration
• Cloud Consulting
• Migration to Cloud

We can help you with a specific project or join your team part-time/full-time. Either way, you get access to all our DevOps engineers, who have a wide range of experiences in different spheres of business.

Book a free consultation with us, and let’s get this ball rolling.