The Role of Multicloud Adoption in Digital Transformation

November 26, 2018

Leading cloud service providers are stepping up in ways that make it easier for enterprise to adopt multicloud strategies, which are critical to digital transformation. Most are seeking to tap into the many advantages of being able to optimize their IT portfolio across public and private clouds. The intended payoffs include an increase efficiency and flexibility while lowering costs among many other roles that it can play in terms of outcomes for digital transformation. That’s why the RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report states that more than 81 percent of enterprises have a multicloud strategy.

For today’s digital business, PaaS, IaaS and SaaS (Platform, Infrastructure and Software as a Service) are operating at different levels within the broader business ecosystem of a single enterprise. The ability to separate different workloads into different environments depending on their specific requirements in these scenarios is paramount to achieving present and future business goals.

Cost savings will always be a major factor in multicloud adoption as businesses seek the best balance of spreading applications and workloads across both public and private platforms to solve specific needs. Those possible savings through a multicloud approach can be realized in ways that lower both CapEx and OpEx.

Even regulatory compliance can be a major factor in adopting a multicloud strategy. There are countless enterprises operating across numerous sectors that must comply with HIPAA, PCI, Sox and the new EU GDPR. To comply with these regulations, businesses must find the safest and most secure means for specific data sets in transit and at rest. They must also take into account the need to have data reside locally in countries of origin or other location-based requirements such as backup and disaster recovery.

IoT and the implications of AI in the enterprise are far reaching, and multicloud strategies are at the center of realizing that potential. For example, As businesses leverage AI and seek to better harness big data for actionable insights, colocation providers that can deliver cloud services supporting big data will help to minimize complex data center management needs.

The link between cloud adoption and connectivity becomes clear in a multicloud world as businesses seek out colocation providers that can leverage carrier neutrality and the broadest connectivity options. Everything from DevOps and SecOps to NetOps are major players in the world of multicloud. NetOps for example is playing a major part in cloud networking solutions that are transforming the network by enabling faster application and user service needs.

Then there is serverless architectures, containerization and orchestration. These are just some of the application and service possibilities advanced through a multicloud architecture. Leading cloud service providers and their panoply of cloud management services are responding to the needs of businesses operating in the multicloud world to further their digital transformations.

At the heart of it all are the growing abilities to increase performance, reliability, flexibility and lower costs in ways that meet unique business needs.