How Does Multi-cloud Differ From A Hybrid Cloud

How Does Multi-cloud Differ From A Hybrid Cloud?

The IT markets are still abuzz with the arrival of the cloud. Although the revolutionary technology surfaced more than a decade ago, enterprises are still reaping its business benefits in numerous forms. However, the cloud has brought forth more than just data storage and security advantages, it has created a whirlwind of confusion among organizations as a new set of words are being daily devised to describe the many cloud varieties. Initially, the IT sector became aware of private cloud infrastructure that supported only data and workload from a particular enterprise. With time, the cloud-based solution evolved and even became public that was managed by third-party providers such as AWS and Google Cloud, and Microsoft. Today, the cloud has transitioned to support multi and hybrid infrastructure

What is Multi-Cloud?

The multi-cloud infrastructure is curated specifically for a particular workload using the mix-and-match strategy from various cloud services. But multi-cloud does not permit the connection or orchestration between these different services. Instead, multi-cloud refers to the distribution of cloud assets, software, and applications across several cloud environments. The major use of multi-cloud architecture for many organizations is the ability to utilize two or more public clouds or private clouds to eliminate dependency on any one cloud provider.

Challenges around Multi-Cloud

• Siloed cloud providers – Often different cloud vendors become an issue in cloud monitoring and management as they provide tools to track workload only in their infrastructure.
• Lack of sufficient skills – Multi-cloud is a fairly new architecture and the cloud market still has not achieved a level where there are individuals with multi-cloud skills.
• Selecting different cloud vendors – Undoubtedly, organizations often face challenges while shopping different cloud providers that would work in unison with one another without running into complexities.

Why Do Multi-cloud?

In every enterprise, each team or department has different organizational functions, workload, and amount of data generated. Their requirements also differ in terms of performance, security, and privacy. Subsequently, the use of multi-cloud in such a business environment offers organizations to meet the distinct needs of its departments surrounding data storage, structuring, and security. Further, companies need to be future-proof and enable their IT to grow as their business scales up. The multi-cloud strategy supports that change and business growth. It is not just a business enablement strategy, but also an IT-forward strategy.

Digging further deeper into the multi-cloud and its multiple business benefits, organizations gain a competitive edge in the market, both technically and commercially. Such companies are also experiencing geographic benefits of using multi-cloud as it addresses app latency instances and concerns to a high degree. However, two other major concerns compel enterprises to deploy multi-cloud within their premises—vendor lock-in and cloud providers outages. Multi-cloud strategies are a positive enabler for preventing vendor lock-in, a technique to avoid failure and downtime at single points, and a mechanism to consume unique services from several cloud solution providers.

In a straightforward statement, IT enterprise CEOs and CIOs are pursuing the multi-cloud strategy as it offers improved flexibility with complete control over the business data and workload. Often, business decision-makers even opt for multi-cloud solutions in tandem with a hybrid cloud approach.

Moreover, we have a short list of 8 tips to lower Multi-Cloud spending.

What is Hybrid-Cloud?

A hybrid cloud is a combination of on-premise private cloud and third-party public clouds. It can also be defined as a private and public cloud along with traditional data centers. Simply put, a hybrid cloud is the result of two or more cloud combinations. The mixture could be two private clouds, two public clouds, or one public and one private cloud.

Challenges around Hybrid Cloud

• Security – With a hybrid cloud model, organizations need to simultaneously manage different security platforms while transferring selective data from private to public clouds or vice versa.
• Complexities associated with cloud integrations – A high degree of technical skill is required to integrate private and public cloud architectures without introducing multiple complexities in the process.
• Complications around scaling – As data expands, the cloud also needs to scale. However, changing the hybrid cloud architecture to match data expansion is quite tedious.

Why Do Hybrid Cloud?

No matter the size of the organization, their transition to the cloud, simply put, cannot be done in one simple and uncomplicated swoop. Even if they envision migrating to a public cloud hosted by third-party providers, there is a need for proper planning with the necessary migration period to ensure that cloud deployment is as accurate as possible. However, before jumping to the cloud, enterprises need to make a list of resources, data, workload, and systems that will move to cloud while others will stay intact in-house or in data centers. In common terms, this interoperability is a classic yet strong example of a hybrid cloud.

Also, unless enterprises are established within a cloud since their early years of operations, they are likely to take a journey that incorporates strategies, preparation, and work for supporting cloud infrastructure as well as legacy infrastructure simultaneously.

Many enterprises have also explored the option to build and deploy an entirely separate cloud environment for their IT needs, which runs alongside their traditional data centers to minimize interference between internal operations and cloud tools. But the complexity in such an arrangement increases rather than reducing due to the need to run a variety of functions simultaneously in multiple environments. In such a scenario, it is beneficial for every organization to ensure that they need to develop and deploy integrated platforms that offer practical architecture for business operations.

Which Cloud-based Solution to Adopt?

Both multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud offer different benefits to organizations, which is often confusing. Which cloud solution is best for which department or workload? How does adopting one option would help organizations for years to come? What is the process of selecting one of these two so that they contribute to business success? All of these questions are answered in the next segment that discusses how these two cloud solutions differ from one another and which is the ‘right’ option for an enterprise.

How does multi-cloud differ from a hybrid cloud?

Although there are specific distinctions between these multi-cloud and hybrid clouds, in the commercial space, these two terms are often used interchangeably. The difference is further expected to grow in the future as multi-cloud infrastructure becomes the norm among many organizations.

• As already known, the multi-cloud strategy uses multiple different public cloud services that are often from various third-party cloud solution providers. Such an approach helps organizations to achieve different cloud solutions for different departments.
• Unlike the multi-cloud model, hybrid cloud components usually work in tandem. Subsequently, the data and processes tend to intermingle and intersect in a hybrid environment as opposed to multi-cloud where they operate in silos.
• Multi-cloud provides organizations with added peace of mind by minimizing dependence on a sole cloud provider, thereby limiting costs and improving flexibility.
• Practically, an application running on a hybrid-cloud infrastructure uses load balancing along with web and application services from a public cloud while the database and storage reside in private cloud architecture. This cloud-based solution has resources that perform the same function in both a private cloud and public cloud.
• Practically, an application running on a multi-cloud infrastructure may run all compute and networking activities on one cloud provider while using database services from other cloud services. For instance, in a multi-cloud environment, some applications might leverage resources that are only in Azure while some other separate applications might use resources only from AWS. Similarly, another example could be of public and private cloud; some applications might use resources only in the public cloud while others utilize resources only in the private cloud.
• Besides differences, both these cloud-based solutions offer enterprises the capability to offer their business services in a way that is efficient and effective.

How can Cuelogic help companies decide on which model provides a balanced approach?

Both multi-cloud infrastructure and hybrid-cloud infrastructure work their wonders in the corporate landscape. The future is likely to be more cloud-based as data is ever-increasing and no organization would just depend on one cloud provider to store and secure their business-sensitive information. However, companies are often confused about which cloud-based solutions model fits their business requirements. Cuelogic can drive away that uncertainty. With a customized solution, years of expertise in cloud deployment, best selection tools, and data security, Cuelogic offers assistance in matching the organization’s needs with the right cloud model to ensure that they receive the best cloud solution without complexities. Cuelogic’s cloud-specific expertise comes handy in determining which solution aligns with organization needs while eliminating the intricacies that often come along with cloud deployment and migration.