As the hype surrounding multi-cloud continues to grow, Clive Longbottom shares his view on what enterprises will need to do to make the model work for them
The private versus public cloud debate became a moot point once enterprises came to realise adopting a hybrid cloud approach , that would allow them to blend public and private cloud resources, would probably be the best fit for them.
Many interpreted the concept – somewhat simplistically – to mean enterprises would run a private environment alongside a single public cloud from Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. What has actually happened, though, is that organisations are moving to embrace a “multi-cloud” model instead.
But what constitutes a multi-cloud environment? At its most basic level, it could be an organisation that has chosen to use software as a service (SaaS) systems from a number of suppliers. For instance, Microsoft Office 365, coupled with a customer relationship management (CRM) system from Salesforce.com.
This is unlikely to be the model that most end up with, though, because what will be required is a highly flexible technology platform that allows workloads to be moved, dependent on defined performance, cost and risk needs.
