Most enterprises today operate multi-cloud environments, whether due to ad hoc decisions made by different business units over the years or whether sourcing services from multiple cloud providers is a strategic choice. It’s thus not surprising that a recent survey reveals that nearly all (95%) businesses are treating multi-cloud as a strategic priority as they accelerate digital transformation in 2022.

Multi-cloud is simply about leveraging more than one cloud service provider in an enterprise’s cloud strategy. This could take the form of acquiring infrastructure-, platform- and software-as-a-service from more than one public cloud service provider. Or an enterprise can tap into a hybrid cloud strategy that combines services and infrastructure from multiple public and private clouds.

CIOs increasingly recognise that a cutting-edge multi-cloud strategy will enable them to innovate by running each workload on the cloud service that is best for the use case. A multi-cloud strategy enables them to benefit from better redundancy and avoiding vendor lock-in. It can also help them to standardise on DevOps tools and processes that are not tied to any specific cloud.

However, CIOs also realise that a multi-cloud strategy adds complexity to their environment—prompting them to search for smarter ways to manage multiple cloud providers. Here is our guide to some of the key challenges of managing a multi-cloud environment as well as some ways that enterprises can simplify the management of their cloud estate.

Latency and bandwidth demands: Companies will need to consider bandwidth when they work with multi-cloud architectures where data needs to be moved between different clouds. Ideally, they should try to avoid storing massive amounts of data in one cloud when it needs to be processed in another. Data compression can help when transferring data between clouds can’t be avoided.

Preventing data siloes: Enterprises will want to ensure that their multi-cloud architecture facilitates the free flow of data between different providers and systems. Smarter DevOps practices and containerisation via platforms like Kubernetes can help ensure interoperability when storing and managing data across multiple cloud vendors.

Cloud Security and Networking: Taking control of security is challenging when data, applications, and infrastructure are scattered across multiple providers and environments with different security standards, processes, and approaches. Organisations need to build expertise in managing risk across different providers as well as develop an identity architecture that can federate with most providers.

Keeping up with the rate of change: Cloud providers offer myriad products, services, and pricing options, with little uniformity between their offerings or terminology. What’s more, the market is in flux, with each provider constantly evolving its cutting-edge offerings. Enterprises need to constantly upskill their teams to ensure they stay up to date with the latest developments in an always-changing landscape.

Visibility into costs: The adoption of multiple public cloud providers makes it more complex to track, control, and allocate costs. Smarter FinOps practices and cutting-edge cloud expense management solutions can help an enterprise simplify cost management in complex multi-cloud environments.

At 1Neblula, we have built a smarter way to do cloud expense management. Contact us to learn how our knowledgeable team can guide your business towards FinOps practices that simplify cloud management and accelerate ROI.