What are the Key Elements of a Successful Multi-Cloud Environment?

More and more organisations who currently run VMware on premises (as a private cloud environment) are considering their Disaster Recovery (DR) plans and the costs associated with having their own DR datacentre fully populated and configured and ready to take over in the event of an unplanned major outage on premises. Rising costs are one of the main drivers of VMware partners looking to run VMware on a public cloud or as a managed Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud (such as AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud and Dell Technologies Cloud IaaS).

However, one of the main difficulties with moving to a public cloud environment (even as a DR solution) is the lack of internal expertise with the chosen public cloud provider or the complexities of implementing and managing such a move.

I strongly believe that the ideal technology toolkit for managing a multi-cloud environment is one which spreads its mantle over the entire IT estate. This blanket provides for the organisation’s overall security posture, provisioning of resources, monitoring, remediation, migration, capacity planning and financial governance of both on premises AND in the cloud.

So what are the Key Elements to a Successful Multi-Cloud Environment?

I would like to suggest five key outcomes that an effective multi-cloud solution should provide:

1. A unified view of the entire IT estate
   • A single point for monitoring resources and resource use in all locations
2. A centralised control pane
   • A single management service for the operations teams to set policies, provision resources, monitor performance and identify opportunities for optimisation (and possibly identify any IT skills gaps)
3. Integrated security and governance controls
   • To ensure compliant infrastructure provisioning, end-user controls, data protection, and application configuration
4. A developer-friendly interface
   • As we move to a more DevOps environment – which enables self-service provisioning of resources for application development and deployment
5. An observability platform
   • That continually captures logs and alerts for faster (and ideally, automated) root-cause analysis and remediation

Insufficient attention to managing the complexity of a multi-cloud deployment can slow down or even derail IT modernization initiatives. For multi-cloud to work as advertised, unified management is a non-negotiable.

A successful business outcome requires a radical new approach to application development and IT operations. Digital transformation also involves a cultural shift that brings together business imperatives, development and innovation, infrastructure optimization and pervasive security. Whether the journey begins with a tactical migration or a strategic plan for wholesale modernization, broad and deep visibility into the entire environment is a prerequisite for attaining operational efficiency, accelerating innovation, ensuring performance and managing risk.

VMware Cross-Cloud Services is an integrated portfolio of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to build, run, manage, and secure all your applications across a multi-cloud environment.

Why not join our upcoming VMware Web-Chat in April where we will discuss some of the solutions and challenges of a multi-cloud deployment. My part of the talk will highlight topics such as changing current IT business processes, workflow automation and the adoption of Cloud-Native Applications

Perhaps you’d prefer to talk to us about your concerns – our consulting division are always happy to chat about challenging issues and suggest workable solutions, and our training division are here to fill any gaps in your internal IT skills you may uncover.

References:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/learn/cloud/iaas.htm

https://www.vmware.com/cross-cloud-services.html