The last few years have been dominated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure in the public cloud computing arena. The explosive growth in the adoption of cloud computing amongst companies worldwide has been unprecedented and is expected to continue over the next few years. However, as organisations start to mature their cloud capability over time and the use of cloud platforms becomes embedded, a new era of cloud computing in the enterprise workplace is starting to rapidly unfold.
It’s no secret that the traditional model of delivering IT is a thing of the past but many organisations are still reluctant to relocate key business systems to cloud leaving an obvious problem. As a result, the task for today’s CTO/CIO is becoming increasingly more complex when setting a future-proof technology strategy and making key decisions that support it. Up until now, the two key considerations when embracing cloud computing have really been about agility and efficiency but now there are two additional considerations that have come to the forefront over time – security and portability. This presents a significant challenge in finding the right balance across a range of private and public cloud capabilities and many organisations are struggling to find an answer.
Here at Prodera Group, we’ve had the benefit of observing changing trends in cloud computing over the past few years and have helped many customers navigate this ever-changing and complex world. Through the valuable insight that we have gained, we have recently identified a major shift in the enterprise cloud computing paradigm that we are calling the ‘era of multi-cloud’.
What does it mean for businesses?
Organisations are now publicising their long-term business goals openly and how the align to a wider technology strategy. In most cases, technology underpins these goals and objectives – but there isn’t one single path to successfully achieving them. IT leaders are now proactively looking at multiple approaches simultaneously to encourage more innovation, maintain greater levels of efficiency and drive agility – this includes considering multiple cloud computing opportunities and not tying the organisation to one single model (or provider!).
The era of multi-cloud means that organisations now feel empowered to utilise a range of different cloud computing options – from adopting true hybrid cloud combining both private and public cloud capabilities through to consuming multiple public cloud providers concurrently. This gives organisations the ability to ensure that their applications are hosted in the most optimal place that works for them thus resulting in improve agility and greater efficiency. Security controls can then be applied appropriate to business need and the type of application as opposed to having to retrofit a single, traditional security model to all applications in the organisation’s estate. With information security being one of the highest priorities for IT leaders right now, cloud security has become a major topic of conversation across the IT community over the past year.
Today, we are seeing many of our customers become smarter in the way they deliver IT services to their users, customers and partners. Many IT leaders simply want to quickly harness the power of cloud computing quickly and effectively rather than letting it become an obstacle. While this approach provides flexibility, it has the potentially to introduce new technical challenges and unseen complexity. Therefore, it is imperative that leaders carefully consider the strategy they undertake when really going after cloud computing in the era of multi-cloud.
If your organisation is looking to embrace the multi-cloud era or struggling with its existing cloud strategy, then Prodera Group can help. Please visit our Cloud Computing services for more information.