One-Size Cloud Doesn’t Fit All: Multi-Cloud Arbitrage Brings Choice

Solace’s Jamil Ahmed offers insights on why a one-size cloud doesn’t fit all and how multi-cloud arbitrage brings choice. This article originally appeared on Solutions Review’s Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community enabling the human conversation on AI.

Recent large-scale global outages from even the largest cloud players, including AWS and Microsoft, have underlined the risks associated with single-cloud dependencies. From disruptions in flight bookings to delays in critical medical appointments, the consequences of these outages highlight the urgent need for a multi-cloud strategy. Organizations of all sizes recognize that a single-cloud approach can no longer adequately support the demands of today’s interconnected world, where customer demand for continuous availability and real-time operations is critical.

While the benefits of a multi-cloud approach extend beyond simply avoiding vendor lock-in, implementing such a strategy presents significant complexities from an enterprise architecture perspective. Adapting to multi-cloud requires a robust and adaptable enterprise infrastructure that can seamlessly orchestrate critical data movement across different cloud providers. By establishing this foundation, organizations can unlock the true potential of multi-cloud, enabling greater agility, improved adaptability to comply with evolving regulations, and ultimately, a more competitive edge in a rapidly changing business landscape.

Regulatory Change & Hyperscalers are Paving the Way for Multi-Cloud

Already, we have the basics for multi-cloud in place. There is now a healthy market of cloud offerings thanks to the multiple hyperscalers, with regulators further encouraging competition amongst them. Just this year, AWS announced that it will allow customers to transfer their data out of its ecosystem to another cloud provider with no fees imposed. Shortly after, Google announced similar plans for data transfer outside of GCP, with Microsoft now expected to lay out an approach for Azure.

These decisions follow provisions set out in the European Data Act which came into force in January, designed to promote competition by allowing cloud customers to switch providers more easily. Eliminating egress fees for data transfers to other cloud providers is a positive step towards open cloud ecosystems, aligning perfectly with the EU and UK regulations pushing for greater interoperability.

While it’s clear big moves are being made by large cloud providers, becoming truly multi-cloud will require bodies such as the CMA or EU in a GDPR-like format to really make a wave in the industry and help remove vendor lock-ins. There are no immediate plans in place, but businesses must make sure they are ready to react quickly to ensure they benefit from the cost and flexibility advantages.

24/7 Availability is the De Facto Business-Standard

Cloud outages have only highlighted the vulnerability of one cloud deployment. Even the largest cloud hosts – Google, AWS, Microsoft – suffer from outages, and having all your digital eggs in one cloud basket leaves businesses at risk of serious failure. It’s about building a fault tolerance, a buffer that enables your business to always remain operational. It will come down to how the workload is transferred or handled by another cloud provider.

Concerns about outages shuttering business operations are for good reason, with Oxford Economics calculating that downtime costs Global 2000 companies $400 billion each year, with each hour costing the business an average of $540,000.

The implications are huge. Take the recent CrowdStrike outage as an example that affected organizations such as financial services, airlines & operators, and healthcare organizations that rely on being operational 24/7. It highlighted the general IT dependency today’s businesses have, but if we dig a little deeper, then we see the impact of cloud-specific outages.

A Warning Sign – the Need for Multi-Cloud to Mitigate Outages

Large global businesses need to be accessible for customers no matter the time of day. Consider the Australian industry fund, UniSuper, when Google Cloud accidentally deleted the private cloud account of the Australian pension fund worth $125 billion. It left over half a million users without access to their accounts for a week – a fiasco that was only resolved by a single backup on another cloud provider, but the outage duration could have been minimized completely if it was truly multi-cloud all the time.

When a business is multi-cloud, the end user should never even be able to detect that a failure has occurred within the business. Any service downtime is avoided, as the failing is shielded by another cloud host. It’s this level of availability that remains at large a driver for multi-cloud deployment – if one server fails, businesses need the assurance that another cloud server will automatically pick up the slack and ensure the business itself is not adversely affected.

Not All Apps are Created Equal

For many, multi-cloud is a plan for the future, with 97 percent of IT leaders intending to expand their cloud systems further by using one or more clouds in their systems. But currently, too many businesses are preoccupied at the first hurdle – setting up their first cloud deployment. Only when businesses have this first adoption in place, they want to focus on ensuring apps are friendly at multi-cloud deployment level. This is how the risk exposure begins.

In a perfect storm, all clouds would be the same and shifting masses of information, data, and workloads from one cloud provider to another may be a simple endeavor. But the reality is much different. Large-scale organizations have various barriers to overcome when deploying tech stacks across multiple platforms. As explained by Gartner, there are nuances when it comes to features on offer by each provider, such as the operating system, programming language etc. and they range from minor to almost complete rewrites of the code.

The next challenge comes with ensuring the applications within the various clouds can “talk” to each other to ensure the seamless exchange of information. The solution lies in the underlying architecture that can seamlessly connect these different cloud providers together and enable the transfer of data-movement in real-time.

Enter the event mesh.

Multi-Cloud Adaptability – Any Time, Any Place

Between dealing with regulatory compliance changes and avoiding single provider lock-ins, many organizations have had no choice but to rethink their IT infrastructures and adapt to the complications of global operations. Being able to connect data in motion between various clouds and in real-time is a non-negotiable for global enterprises, and it’s where an event mesh can provide the interoperability businesses desperately need.

Within an event mesh, every transaction, business moment, or piece of data is an event – no matter where, and no matter what cloud the user is operating on. Businesses using an event-driven architecture have a powerful built-in event mesh which addresses this same challenge of “data in motion” by spanning all clouds and even on-prem locations as one seamless data movement layer.

That means that these businesses can now dynamically shift workloads across clouds by leveraging even relatively small and short-lived differences in separate cloud packaging, pricing, and performance advantages. Supported by its global deployment of event brokers within the event mesh, businesses can be confident that their underlying tech stack ensures a multi-region, multi-cloud agnostic approach.

Horses for Courses – Pick Processes for Best Multi-Cloud Fit

With today’s demanding consumer expectations around responsiveness and availability, the businesses that are the most responsive and available will out-compete the businesses that are not. A multi-cloud approach keeps them agile and available, even when it comes to operating in multiple regions.

For example, some applications will perform better across different clouds, so choose cloud deployments that are suitable for simple data storage versus those suitable for heavy AI-dependent apps. Some, of course, won’t work at all in geographic regions where sovereign data rules may apply. Having a multi-cloud approach will allow organizations to pick and mix according to their business needs, which in turn creates added flexibility for workload placement. For instance, allowing businesses to move applications to the lowest-cost environment and build leverage for when it’s time for cloud contract negotiations.

The benefits of multi-cloud go one step further, when trying to ensure best-of -breed cloud deployments for applications. It’s key to remember that although cloud operators all offer services in the cloud, not all services are equal in what they offer. By not locking in with a single vendor, organizations can arbitrage cloud services to get the best service for individual business needs. Being able to access the latest new technologies, not only makes innovating easier, but allows organizations to take advantage of promotional, merchandising, or product search capabilities from hyperscalers that in turn can accelerate revenue for the business.

The Multi-Cloud Train Has Left the Station – Board Now for Business Benefits

Recent high profile IT outages have highlighted the need for businesses to improve their resilience. While avoiding vendor lock-in is a significant advantage, the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy extend far beyond this. With hyperscalers increasingly offering a wider range of subscription options, businesses can benefit from the flexibility to select the most suitable and cost-effective cloud solutions for their specific needs. This allows for dynamic optimization to ensure always on applications and processes.

As a key part of this an event-driven architecture, facilitated by an underlying event mesh, ensures seamless and real-time data exchange across these multiple cloud environments. This not only improves operational efficiency but also provides a critical safeguard against service disruptions caused by outages from individual cloud providers.