Multi-Cloud: It’s Not Just The Architecture That Has To Be Right

On the way to data-based business models, companies with hybrid infrastructures and a multi-cloud architecture can achieve important goals such as optimization, agility and IT security.

So much for the analysts’ promise. For this to work, companies have to rethink “cloud readiness” and rely on a courageous data fabric strategy, including multi-cloud. Cloud services and cloud technology support IT organizations and specialist departments in solving their requirements more efficiently because they make better use of IT resources.

Many companies focus on using the cloud to automate their processes and break down silos. At the same time, they have to keep their IT environments under control, which are becoming more and more complex due to cloud consumption. Eighty-seven per cent of companies are confronted with this. They rely on the multi-cloud, as the 2020 multi-cloud study by IDC found. A good half of the study participants are already using the hybrid cloud productively.

Multi-Cloud: From The Data To The Business Idea

With the trend towards complex multi-cloud infrastructures, the question of IT systems and applications’ “cloud readiness” arises again: The type of outsourced data is crucial today. After all, everything revolves around them: the data should lead to new business models. Therefore, a company must first classify the data. An existing framework is ideal for deciding which data should be moved to the cloud or stored again there.

Then it comes to the migration and new development of applications in the cloud. In this way, a company can gain insights and values ​​from the data. Whether this happens efficiently depends on the ability to move workloads between on-premises and the various clouds quickly. Because regardless of where the data is stored, access to it must be reliable to analyze and monetize the necessary data records as required, securely and compliantly.

Develop And Apply A Data Fabric Strategy

Those who develop a data fabric strategy consistently place data at the centre of their entrepreneurship. Companies have to know their requirements to implement an individual data fabric approach. Architecture and various data services always form the basic building blocks. The applications connect the endpoints in on-premises and cloud environments and equip them with uniform, comprehensive functions. This enables companies to manage their data and the connected environment more easily. Transformation processes are implemented faster.

With user-friendly management software that integrates other consistent data services, the IT department always has access to the data and controls it. The IT team can also provide data in very unique and complex multi-cloud environments at any time where they are needed. A cloud monitoring solution such as NetApp Cloud Insights helps internal IT to make the multi-cloud environment transparent.

Data Centricity Pays Off

Hybrid environments and multi-cloud infrastructures are complex and ideal for putting data at the centre of all activities. This is exactly what a data fabric strategy implements in short to long term, efficiently incorporated into business-based, competitive business models. Conceptually, a company is setting the course for transparent environments and consistent data management, which stands for an optimized distribution of workloads across different clouds – also from a cost perspective.