The cloud has transformed the way companies work with data, offering greater flexibility and scalability. However, the growing demand for more dynamic and innovative solutions has led to the emergence of other models, among them the multicloud, which allows optimizing costs, improving performance, and ensuring greater flexibility.
As the name suggests, a multicloud environment is a cloud computing area that utilizes services from multiple cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In it, instead of being tied to a single provider, companies distribute their workloads among different platforms, aiming to optimize costs, performance, security, and flexibility.
Not surprisingly, the search for more efficient and personalized solutions within cloud computing continues to expand, with 49% of organizations adopting a cloud-first strategy, according to a report from the Cloud Industry Forum 2024. Of these companies, 98% use or plan to use at least two cloud infrastructure providers, while another 31% are using four or more.
With so much strategy in today’s world, multicloud has generated a $9 billion contract in the United States from none other than the Pentagon with Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google. What security authorities seek with this is the same as the planet’s leading companies: obtain the best from each provider efficiently, swiftly, and with superior cost efficiency compared to traditional computing models.
However, choosing the right providers and efficiently distributing workloads are crucial for the success of a multicloud environment. Detailed knowledge of each application and service is required, considering the services offered by each provider that meet the company’s applications and the geographical location of its customers.
This adoption of one or more providers within the multicloud must also take into account services and features, pricing, technical support, and security. Once this is defined, it is important to build a good distribution of workloads – considering requirements, costs, management, and backups – which also allows for qualitative and efficient resilience and observability, avoiding problems predictively.
It becomes clear that the complexity of multicloud is great, as managing multiple cloud environments can be complex, requiring specific tools and processes. Besides, it is mandatory to ensure data security across various platforms, especially when it comes to regulatory compliance, and integrating different cloud services may require the development of customized solutions. Without proper care, this environment may suffer from management and cost issues.
The demand for resources that prevent blockages within supply chains, with disaster recovery capabilities and that, in this package, bring better costs and services, will continue to rise. That’s why knowing how to work with cutting-edge technologies is as important as having the necessary knowledge to manage them – whether they are public, private, or hybrid in origin. Even Artificial Intelligence (AI) can only evolve in a multi-cloud environment, as 92% of leaders recently confirmed in a survey.
To simplify, think of the multicloud environment as managing a restaurant, where each dish comes from a different kitchen, with its own chef and unique recipe. If you know how to use this varied menu at the same time, in favor of your target audience, you will have the best in terms of performance and reliability in your operations. It is important to emphasize that this is a continuous process of improvement and strategic adjustments.
Although well “seasoned”, this meal will make the customer come back to repeat the experience, I have no doubt about it.
