Cloud Computing services have been dominated by the most popular and big tech companies in the world such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, and IBM. But every cloud service provider has some strengths and drawbacks that make it difficult for one cloud solution to meet all of an organization’s needs.
Implementing a multi-cloud strategy allows companies to have more flexibility to optimize costs, speed, and performance.
In this article, you will learn what Multi-cloud strategy is, its pros and cons, and how it will reduce the cost to run your infrastructure and applications.
Let’s get started.
What is a Multi-cloud strategy?
Multi-cloud strategy refers to the use of more than one cloud service (multiple cloud services) from two or more vendors. Companies implement a multi-cloud strategy to distribute computing resources for different services they provide to minimize the risk of downtime and data loss.
According to a survey from Tech Target, among the 260 enterprises EMA surveyed, 61% of respondents reported using two or more public cloud providers.
For companies working in AI and machine learning projects, it is recommended to consider adopting a multi-cloud strategy to help leverage the unique and affordable services offered by the different cloud service providers to manage your infrastructure and applications.
For example, a company can store, process, and analyze their datasets in two cloud service providers and then build and deploy a machine learning model into another cloud service provider.
Note: A multi-cloud environment can be public, private, or a combination of both.
On-Demand Cloud Pricing Comparison
The above table show prices in three different performance levels (low, mid, and high) based on GPU.it also shows two utilization assumptions: low(10%) and high (100%).
Advantages of Implementing Multi-cloud strategy
If you plan to implement a multi-cloud strategy, here are some of the advantages that you will benefit from it.
1. Prices affordability
This is one of the most important advantages of implementing a multi-cloud strategy. Cloud service providers offer different prices and tiers, therefore, you will have different offers to select the service that your application requires based on the prices.
For example, if running your machine learning application require a lot of computing resources to make a prediction and provider a fast response, you can deploy your model where computing resources are cheaper or affordable compared to other cloud service providers.
"Today, 92 percent of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy in place or underway, and 82% of large enterprises have adopted a Hybrid Cloud infrastructure. On average, organizations are using 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds."- factioninc.com
2. Prevent downtime.
A few hours of downtime can cause millions of dollars of revenue loss, moreover, it can cause loss of customer’s trust. Implementing a multi-cloud strategy can help the company to run their applications 24/7 which offers an extra level of reliability because downtime of one cloud provider will not necessarily affect services from other cloud providers.
3. Lower Latency
If you depend on one cloud service provider, sometimes it can cause delays for the users to access data and applications if they are located far away from the cloud servers. Using a multi-cloud strategy can help you avoid delays (called latency) because servers closest to the users can serve the requested data within a short period of time.
4. Avoid vendor lock-in
Without a doubt depending on all services on one cloud service provider can come up with its difficulties and challenges. If the vendor decided to change the price model or features you will be in trouble. It can also be expensive and consume a lot of time to move to another vendor.
Running your applications across multiple cloud service providers can help you avoid being dependent on a single cloud service provider.
5. Flexibility to access spot instances.
Spot instance is the amount of spare, unused capacity in the cloud that can be available at a lower price than on-demand instances. You can use spot instances for your applications or workloads that require quick storage, a massive amount of memory, or a fast network.
For example, most AI and ML applications can require more computing capabilities making spot instances the best option.
But some cloud service providers such as AWS do not always have that capacity for spot instance that matches your request. If you rely on a single cloud service provider, your application will not run as expected.
By implementing a multi-cloud strategy, you can avoid such kinds of challenges because you will have options to instantly select spot instances from other cloud service providers.
Disadvantages of Implementing Multi-cloud strategy
Despite its advantage, a multi-cloud strategy also comes with its own downsides.
1. Require more talents.
It’s important to have the right people before or when implementing a multi-cloud strategy. One person can not learn and understand the infrastructures, requirements, and specifications of cloud services from different vendors.
Most of the cloud services from vendors vary in different ways such as configuration, migration, and maintenance processes. Having the right talents is very crucial to benefit from multi-cloud environments.
2. Security Risks
It is easy to manage the security of your application in terms of data and access permission when working with a single cloud provider. It becomes more complex and challenging when you run your application on multiple cloud environments.
This may increase the likelihood of a security breach if you will not configure the security controls across multiple clouds.
3. Management complexity.
Implementing a multi-cloud strategy can add more complexity when it comes to operational management. The more cloud environments you use the more administrative tasks you will have to manage all environments since every cloud provider has its own unique ways to manage its environment.
If the cloud environments are managed poorly, the company can end up paying for unused services which will add more unnecessary costs instead of minimizing the cost.
Management Platforms & Tools for a multi-cloud strategy
Adopting and managing multiple cloud service environments is not easy, with the following management platforms and tools, you can easily migrate to multi-cloud environments.
1.Avi Networks – a multi-cloud service platform
The platform allows you to use multi-cloud application services across different data centers and cloud service providers. The platform support public and private cloud services offered by Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS.
2. Aipaca – a multi-cloud tool built for machine learning
When it comes to training and deploying Machine Learning models, Aipaca can help you manage multiple cloud environments for your machine learning projects. Aipaca offers a serverless MLOps tool called Aibro that makes Machine Learning cloud computing cheap, easy, and fast.
They currently support AWS cloud platforms and they are planning to support more cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud.
3. Centilytic s – a multi-cloud management platform
Centilytics is a cloud management platform that allows companies to manage their multi-cloud environments. Centilytics offer agility and cost savings, the company can also analyze, manage, optimize your cloud spending across all your accounts in one place. It also provides accurate recommendations for cloud optimization.
Final Thoughts
Despite the number of challenges/disadvantages of implementing a multi-cloud strategy most of which are manageable, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
The multi-cloud strategy empowers companies to select cloud services offered by different cloud service providers because some are better for specific tasks than others. Finally, companies can save a lot of money from cloud expenses.
In this article, you have learned what is Multi-cloud strategy, its advantages and disadvantages, and recommended platforms that can help you manage the multi-cloud environments.
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