How to Develop a Multi-Cloud Approach to Data Management
Teresa Wingfield
January 26, 2024
A recent 451 Research survey found that an astonishing 98% of companies are using more than one cloud provider. Two-thirds of organizations use services from 2 or 3 public cloud providers and nearly one-third of organizations use four or more providers. Using a multi-cloud strategy involves using the services of multiple cloud providers simultaneously. It’s the dominant data management strategy for most organizations.
Top Multi-Cloud Advantages
There’s a long list of reasons why organizations choose to adopt a multi-cloud approach versus just being tied to a single provider. Here’s a look at some of the top reasons.
You Can Match the Right Cloud to the Right Job
The features and capabilities of cloud vendors vary greatly, so using a multi-cloud approach can let you select the best providers for your specific workload requirements. Differences in services for analytics, machine learning, big data, transactions, enterprise applications, and more are factors to consider when deciding where to run in the cloud. Product integrations, security, compliance, development tools, management tools, and geographic locations unique to a cloud provider may also influence your choice.
You Can Save Money
Pricing between providers can differ significantly. These are just a few examples of what you need to take into account when comparing costs:
- Providers price the same services differently.
- Resources such as compute, memory, storage, and networks have different configurations and pricing tiers.
- The geographic location of a data center can lead to differences in the cost of cloud provider services.
- Discounts for reserved instances, spot instances, and committed use can save you dollars depending on your usage patterns.
- Data transfer costs between regions, data centers, and the internet can add up quickly and you should factor these into your costs.
- The cost of support services can also impact overall expenses.
You Can Enhance Business Continuity
Multi-cloud strategies can enhance business continuity so your cloud processing can resume quickly in the face of disruptions. Below are some aspects of multi-cloud business continuity:
- There’s no single point of failure.
- Geographic redundancy enhances resilience against adverse regional events.
- Cloud provider diversification mitigates the impact of vendor-specific issues such as a service outage or a security breach. Traffic can be redirected to another provider to avoid service disruption.
- Data storage redundancy and backup across clouds can help prevent data loss and data corruption.
- Redundant network connectivity across multiple clouds can prevent network-related disruptions.
You Can Avoid Vendor Lock-In
Using multiple cloud providers prevents organizations from being tied to a single provider. This avoids vendor lock-in, giving organizations more freedom to switch providers or negotiate better terms as needed.
You Can Strengthen Your Compliance
Different cloud providers may offer different compliance certifications and different geographic locations for where data is stored. A choice of options helps improve compliance with industry standards and regulations as well as compliance with data residency and data sovereignty-specific regulations.
Some organizations choose to operate a hybrid cloud environment with capabilities stratified across multiple clouds, private and public. Sensitive data applications may be on a private cloud where an organization has more control over the deployment infrastructure.
Actian in a Multi-Cloud World
Despite these advantages, it’s essential for organizations to carefully plan and manage their multi-cloud data management strategy to ensure seamless integration, efficient resource utilization, and strong security.
The Actian Data Platform is a platform that meets multi-cloud data management requirements with features such as a universal data fabric and built-in data integration tools to process and transform data across clouds. You will also benefit from cloud economics, paying only for what you use, having the ability for the service to shut down or go to sleep after a pre-defined period of inactivity, and scheduling starting, stopping, and scaling the environment to optimize uptime and cost. Security such as data plane network isolation, industry-grade encryption, including at-rest and in-flight, IP allow lists, and modern access controls handle the complexities of multi-cloud security.
