Multi Cloud Management

Stay Competitive in Digital Economy using Multi-Cloud Management Platform

It’s of doubt that statistics tell the actual fact. A number of organizations are implementing multi-cloud strategy for saving costs, optimizing performance, reducing risks and enhancing reliability. As per IDC FutureScape, Worldwide Cloud predictions (2017) over 85% IT businesses would recourse to multi-cloud architectures by 2018. Multi cloud management platform helps an organization to stay competitive in the digital economy, executing workloads in an apt environment.

What is Multi cloud Management?

Multi-cloud management is a technique of building consistent workflows to manage infrastructure, security, connectivity, and service discovery across multi cloud management platforms. Cost effective multi cloud-management offers the visibility to avoid challenges, resulting in a complex multi-cloud architecture. Well-defined multi cloud management plan facilitates businesses to accomplish the subsequent objectives.

• Self competency: This abolishes the conventional practices associated with IT resource provisioning.

• Automated Workflow: Multi cloud data management enables workflow automation. IT companies are able to take necessary measures for managing computing, without any human interference.

• Cloud study: Undertaking analysis through multi cloud monitoring tools, businesses can use the best services according to requirements. Further, while using the metrics, organizations could alter cloud providers and migrate from public to private clouds.

• Reduced DDoS attacks: Through multi cloud deployment tools, there are lesser chances of DDoS attacks, providing a level of resiliency, which is not available within a single provider. In case of an attack, the strategy of multi cloud platform management allows the IT to instantly shift load or impacted services to other cloud environs.

• Enhanced reliability: Some of the best multi cloud management platforms enhance reliability. Through multi-cloud platform, a passive cloud could seamlessly serve, when the primary cloud faces problems to process a requested service like for instance an e-commerce deal. As soon as the primary cloud gets back to normal, the operations are automatically reverted.

How does multi cloud work?

Multi cloud works when an enterprise uses several cloud platforms, each providing a specific application service. To manage multi cloud encompassing a public, private, and hybrid cloud, an enterprise can obtain its goals. IT companies are seeking multi cloud management vendors for resolving challenges that need the use of third-party tools.

Multi Cloud Data Management Challenges, Tools, Features & Practices

It’s true that multi cloud deployment tools eliminate the crucial challenges of cloud computing, such as vendor lock-in, latency as well as higher cost. Enterprises are also leveraging the unique capabilities in artificial intelligence, computing and augmented reality. However, developing software applications could be a bit challenging on multi-cloud architecture. This is because different clouds and on-premises resources make use of different APIs as well as management interfaces. To take an instance, Amazon S3 supports Amazon S3 API, whereas Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage don’t support the same. Application developers often face difficulty in managing multiple APIs and management interfaces for avoiding vendor lock-in of a single API, along with added development, support, and time costs related to the support of several APIs.

Through proper multi cloud platform management, IT companies could successfully manage multi-cloud challenges. As per industry experts, the real value of multi cloud management provides the opportunity to blend and get the most cost-effective and innovative solutions. Low cost multi-cloud service providers are providing bespoke solutions to the challenges, so that the IT companies can change as per business demands.

What are the Challenges of Multicloud Management?

** Expensive -** Several companies have to bear huge expenses of using cloud services owing to ineffective multi-cloud management. Since organizations use multiple services from various cloud providers, sometimes it becomes difficult to utilize these services as per demand. However, the companies have to pay for the services that are not used.

Speed & Performance - IT teams have to ensure the speed and performance of applications delivered from multifaceted multi-cloud environments. The scale at which IT is required to monitor data and detect issues can’t be successfully managed just by humans. In such a case, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning become a necessity. While developing an e-commerce application on multi-cloud environment, performance becomes a major challenge.

Automation – Workload management spanning across different platforms creates the need to address real-time processing and instrumentation. Organizations developing applications in a multi-cloud environment, are slackened by their manual processes to create and modify workflows and get applications into production.

Other challenges include Cloud Sprawl creating resource visibility problems affecting cloud bill, Migration involving multi data centers, mobile users and remote locations, back-hauling cloud traffic to central internet access point, Compliance - breaking the planning and approval process and Data Security, penetrating access to valuable resource by attackers.

<u>What are Multi Cloud Management Tools?</u>

Multi-cloud environments require innovative tools for optimizing performance, controlling costs and securing complicated applications and environments, irrespective of whether they are within the data center or in the cloud.

• BMC - BMC addresses multi-cloud management challenges such as migration, service management, performance, visibility, automation, as well as security.

• AppFormix - AppFormix provides comprehensive visibility into multi-cloud environment to get rid of potential issues, making operations simpler and effective. This helps in visualization and analysis of physical and virtual environments. AppFormix transforms fresh data from varied resources into a format that can be instantly used.

• DivvyCloud - DivvyCloud’s multi-cloud platform facilitates customers in managing Azure, AWS, VMware, GCP and OpenStack. Developers get the liberty to select clouds that best match company’s requirements, without policy automation and compliance for each cloud from IT.

Another multi cloud management tool is Embotics supporting VMware, vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Other tools include Zenko - an Open Source Multi-Cloud Data Controller, Cloudyn - an enterprise-grade SaaS solution and IBM Cloud Manager for monitoring and managing Kubernetes environments.

Features to be considered while selecting multi-cloud management platform

• Service provisioning

• Service monitoring

• Service performance

• Service governance/policy

• Service orchestration

• Monitoring analytics

• Integration with Security

What are the Practices for managing multi-cloud set-up?

• Mapping architecture as per requirements in system-management to avoid gaps in data needs

• Standardized consumption in multi-cloud environment, including analytics, storage, AI, etc.

• Integration of supplier ecosystem with a single pane of glass management functionalities

• Applications with all dependencies, enhancing portability and simplifying management

It is evident that multi-cloud management is a solution where several clouds from diverse service providers are used for accomplishing separate tasks. To optimize cost, enterprises are looking for robust but cost effective multi-cloud management platform. So, why are you waiting for? Choose one of the best multi cloud management platforms to reduce dependency on single provider and stay competitive in a digital economy.

_______________

_______________