Cloud Strategy

With businesses and consumers relying on the public cloud more than ever, it’s important that market transparency and resilience is improved. Enrico Fuiano, Senior Solutions Marketing Manager, Cisco Cloud Marketing, takes a look at the resilience of cloud strategy noting that IT organizations have adopted cloud primarily in two distinct ways: some standardize cloud infrastructure to improve data center efficiencies, thus reducing total number of suppliers across their entire IT value chain; others instead implement a ‘best of breed’ tactic, applying complex and heterogeneous IT environments which allow for the optimization of IT infrastructures related to specific applications required. The question Fuiano asks is, as cloud service adoption increases, will the range of cloud providers being utilized by IT decision makers increase or decrease? The study sponsored by Cisco and completed by IDC highlights some significant results.

Multiple Cloud Providers

Suggests Scalr CEO Sebastian Stadil, “In most enterprises, multi-cloud infrastructure emerges as a result of organic adoption. One business unit, department or team uses AWS and another uses Azure and there you go: a multi-cloud organization...” But the IDC findings further note that mature organizations demand a diverse choice from multiple cloud providers based on policies, location, and governance principles. Moreover, those organizations best able to obtain the most value from cloud providers are increasing their enthusiasm for a diverse range of cloud providers.

Speaking exclusively with CloudTweaks, Fuiano states, “We continue to witness how sophisticated enterprise class environments rely on the use of multiple cloud providers to achieve their business objectives. The study that IDC conducted confirms that organizations prefer to put in place inherently resilient cloud strategies. This allows them to better mitigate risks and optimize their choice of cloud providers based on their specific IT service requirements...”

Facing the Challenges

Unfortunately, multi-cloud environments often increase complexity and managing a convoluted portfolio of cloud-based applications can be a challenge. Suggests Fuiano, Cisco CloudCenter application-centric technology assists multi-cloud users by allowing them to:

• Build cloud-independent application profiles quickly and easily that define requirements for deployment and management of an entire application stack.

• Deploy the application profile as well as related components and data to any cloud environment or data center with just one click.

• Apply an extensive range of application lifecycle actions to set policies for in-place Scaling, assist with cross-environment bursting or high availability and disaster recovery, and stop deployment.

Because cloud administration and governance are so important, it’s necessary for administrators to be able to centrally manage cloud accounts, regulate costs, and provide data regarding use. Says Fuiano, “IT organizations understand that their role has changed. They have to act as ‘brokers of IT services’ to deliver IT at a faster pace. The combination of Cisco CloudCenter with our Cloud Professional Services portfolio can enable our customers to make that transition. The key is to deliver application-centric services while maintaining central governance, security, and control…”

For businesses utilizing the cloud efficiently, benefiting from a choice of contractual terms and transparent pricing as well as the assortment of tools and applications available, multi-cloud infrastructures are likely to dominate. However, the recent IDC global cloud study indicates that while cloud adoption has indeed achieved mainstream levels this year, with 68% of surveyed organizations already using either private or public cloud for more than a couple of small applications, less than 3% of organizations have implemented optimized cloud strategies. We’ve perhaps still a way to go before proficient multi-cloud strategies are the main order of the day, but top Service Providers are already gearing up to ensures organizations have the support they need when it’s required.

By Jennifer Klostermann