Three misconceptions about multi-cloud

Three misconceptions about multi-cloud

There’s so much to think about when it comes to cloud adoption, especially when it’s at scale. It’s not just about the blueprint or the technology or the infrastructure. To get the benefits of agility, innovation and cost savings, you need to be the maestro of multi-cloud management and operation.

Multiple clouds might be a fact of life, but that doesn’t mean we’re all getting the most from them. You need the right skills, user experience and security, as well as consistency across your operations, processes and people to truly drive benefits from the cloud.  This is often difficult to achieve when you’re coming from a fragmented starting point, dealing with transforming legacy as well as deploying new ‘born in the cloud’ applications whilst managing multiple clouds (public and private).

Misconceptions about multi-cloud

And as with any new, pervasive trend, there can be a lot of misconceptions. Here are some of the key ones we’ve been hearing about and how you can spot the facts amongst the fiction:

• Misconception one: you can run or transform everything in the cloud and get cost savings. To avoid falling into this trap, you need to be clear on what you want to use the cloud for and what can be delivered via the cloud. That means getting self-aware, knowing the apps you’re running, how they interact and what environments are best for each of them. And just because something works in a proof of concept, doesn’t mean it will be the same once it’s scaled up.
• Misconception two: you have the right skills and culture in-house to go it alone. We’re moving from a traditional environment with siloes and technology stacks to a cloud environment without boundaries. Cloud and network are becoming ever more integrated, and as such, you need people with the skills not just across the different clouds, but across network, traditional IT and security.  Without these skills realising the benefits of the cloud could be difficult, leaving you with increased costs, poor performance, frustrated users and potentially non-compliant services. 
• Misconception three: you can operate cloud in the same way as your traditional IT / legacy.  Managing the cloud is different. You need to think not just about a brilliant technical blueprint or architectural fit, but how you dynamically change and optimise the management of your workloads in the cloud.  This requires new shared responsibility matrix, operations, skills and processes in order to realise the benefits.  Managing resources in a traditional way in the cloud could impact your costs with bill shock, lead to poor performance and user experience. 

Getting the right cloud

From what we’re seeing in the market, there are two main cloud routes:

1. Your business units are leading your cloud initiatives – they may be driving innovation and usage, which is good, but you need to make sure you’re not opening yourself up to unnecessary risks and control issues.
2. Cloud strategy is being driven centrally - but getting the right foundations to put the right workloads in the right cloud and assuring performance without increasing costs (bill shock), can be complex.

But it's rare to have all the skills in-house to go it alone. You'd like the choice between public, private and hybrid cloud, to have a flexible network with security, delivered in a consistent way, globally.  With the right partner, you can reduce complexity, be secure, improve consistency, and be compliant in a constantly changing environment, wherever you are in the world.

With our experience, we can help you avoid potential cloud traps. We have sprint projects – speedy, proof-of-concept packages – that can test and validate your cloud strategy, whether you’re starting you cloud journey, already on it or reviewing it.

Get some tips and examples from our experts on how to rollout and manage multi-cloud projects from our recent webinar . You can also find out how we helped Hotelbeds with their cloud transformation.