What Is Multi-Cloud Strategy? Beginners Guide And Examples Of It

Most businesses today want the advantage of flexibility and choice of multiple cloud vendors to get the best cloud services. Who can blame them? The idea of being stuck with a cloud vendor who no longer matches your needs is scary. Many organizations alleviate this fear by implementing a multi-cloud strategy. What are some examples of multi-cloud strategy? Why should I implement it? We have heard these and a lot of questions. Today, we tackle most of them.

What Is Multi-Cloud And Multi-Cloud Strategy?

Multi-cloud is an approach and not a kind of technology. It is the practice of using more than one cloud service from more than one cloud vendor. If your organization is using more than one cloud or cloud provider – public or private – it is multi-cloud.

A multi-cloud strategy is the implementation of multi-cloud. It is when you purposely decide to use two or more cloud provider services. When we tell you examples of a multi-cloud strategy, we talk about cloud provider services like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and others. You may use Google Cloud to serve users from one region and Azure for your customers in another region.

Examples Of Multi-Cloud Strategy

If you are a big organization and you are unable to meet all business requirements with one cloud, then you can implement the multi-cloud strategy. Besides, if multi-cloud meets the proximity requirements of your users who are distributed globally, you need to implement it.

A multi-cloud strategy is also ideal for companies where the workload is immense, varies, and needs to be distributed. You can use two or more cloud services from providers who suit your business requirements. Though there are a number of multi-cloud security challenges, namely relating to complexity, compliance, and regulation, these challenges can be mitigated with well-planned management and governance of the network. 

Take a clear example of a company that uses AWS (Amazon Web Services) as its primary cloud service. Later, it decides to move to a multi-cloud environment by using Google Cloud Services for disaster recovery. This company benefits from the flexibility of choosing the best cloud service for a specific workload.

What Are The Advantages?

With a choice from multiple cloud vendors, businesses are able to pick the best services from each for their specific needs. There is no need to limit to features of a single provider. You can choose one provider for one task and a second for another solution.

Multinational companies can use the multi-cloud strategy for global reach. A single cloud vendor may not be available in all your regions of operations. With a multi-cloud strategy, you can use cloud services from the second vendor if one cloud vendor fails. Using a single cloud vendor is like putting all your eggs in one basket.

What Are The Disadvantages?

On the downside, using multiple clouds comes with challenges related to data protection, configuring, and management. On top of that, you need excessive cloud engineering expertise. The multi-cloud strategy has higher skill requirements compared to using a single cloud.

Conclusion

The multi-cloud strategy is the new trend that many organizations follow. With the examples of multi-cloud strategy, benefits, and challenges, you need to think carefully to be sure that it is what you need. Working with several clouds is worth it, but if you cannot handle possible issues, you can stick to a single cloud provider.