Authored by Sarad Shrestha, Director – Sales, Huawei Telecommunications India Co. Pvt. Ltd.
The prevailing shift towards multi-cloud adoption underscores the significance of an IT framework that efficiently centralizes data storage, application deployment, and data sharing across diverse cloud platforms. The ongoing trajectory of digital transformation drives swift enhancements in enterprise IT architectures, with sectors like finance, carrier services, healthcare, and the Internet already embracing multi-cloud deployment to leverage established best practices.
Trends Observed
Combination of multiple public and private clouds is the best choice for enterprises : Amid cloud evolution, a multi-cloud approach, combining multiple public and private clouds, emerges as the favoured strategy. This approach facilitates advanced IT infrastructure for large enterprises and economical digital management for smaller ones, circumventing complex architectures. As services diversify, single-cloud platforms encounter complications due to vendor disparities and security concerns, prompting a shift to multi-cloud setups. Public clouds entice with cost-effectiveness and flexibility, catering to various data requirements. However, concerns over data management and privacy arise. On the other hand, enterprise-built data centres ensure autonomy, control, and operational freedom, fostering initiative in cloud construction. Multi-cloud adoption prevails, enabling enterprises to optimise IT technologies and mitigate vendor risks.
Enterprises work to eliminate data sharing, mobility, and unified management bottlenecks across clouds: Enterprises combat data sharing hurdles, pursuing unified multi-cloud data management and mobility. Dispersion obstructs access and application, forming data silos. Centralised multi-cloud architecture addresses this, enhancing sharing and deployment. Acceleration engines boost cloud app rollout. Unified management and data mobility streamline provisioning, global scheduling, hybrid-cloud recovery, backup, and tiering. These strategies enhance storage, management, and resource sharing, driving digital transformation.
Advice for CIOs
Migrate innovative services that have uncertainties, emerging services like OA, and archiving data to public clouds, while retaining core services in their on-premises data centres
Enterprises optimize multi-cloud use by migrating emerging services to public clouds while keeping core services on-premises for control. Leveraging public clouds for innovation and scalability, including OA and archiving. Trials for functions like disaster recovery enhance resource sharing, but data volume and tiering impact costs. In-house IT platform R&D is crucial for service competitiveness. On-premises core services prevent vendor lock-in and boost digital competitiveness.
In multi-cloud setups, enterprises should adopt a centralised IT architecture for data storage, application deployment, and a unified data management platform across clouds to optimise data sharing.
Enterprises embarking on multi-cloud ventures should adopt a central data storage and application deployment architecture while prioritising unified data management across clouds for optimised data sharing. When building a unified data management platform across clouds, consider the following:
● Exploit the technical strengths of diverse cloud vendors to hasten application development, opting for an architecture with decoupled application storage for seamless data sharing.
● Encourage storage vendors to integrate professional storage onto public cloud platforms via software-hardware integration or pure software, facilitating effortless cross-cloud evolution.
● Create a holistic multi-cloud data management platform for broad data insight, global scheduling, hybrid-cloud DR/backup/tiering, sorting data into relevant storage tiers with efficient mobility, enhancing legacy system utilisation and maximising legacy data's value.
Enterprises and storage vendors actively collaborate on innovation projects based on the latest cloud technologies like containers
Amid advanced tech, enterprises prioritize quick app deployment via microservices and widely used containers. Shifting containers from stateless to stateful demands integrated, persistent storage. Collaboration for cutting-edge cloud tech between enterprises and vendors unlocks multi-cloud benefits. On-premises storage with cloud-like capabilities ensures seamless data migration for sustained IT evolution.
In conclusion, the shift towards multi-cloud deployment signifies a transformative evolution in enterprise IT architecture. Adopting a blend of public and private clouds enables businesses to harmonize scalability, cost-efficiency, data security, and innovation. Unified data management, strategic cloud orchestration, and collaborative exploration of cutting-edge cloud technologies form the foundation of a robust multi-cloud strategy. As global enterprises fervently embrace this paradigm shift, they ascend to unprecedented growth, invulnerability, and digital prowess in the dynamic landscape of the digital era.
