6 tips to deploy a multi-cloud strategy after moving to cloud hosting

Enterprise decision-makers today understand Cloud Hosting’s power and the benefits of deploying cloud technology in their IT environments. To make the most of this technology, enterprises have started applying multi-cloud strategies to reach business goals faster and avoid vendor lock-in. In addition to these advantages, a multi-cloud strategy also allows cloud natives to reduce costs, lower the risk of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and manage data with ease.

With all these benefits, it is only natural for a cloud-native enterprise to likely-cloud tactics and takes its IT environment slightly higher. After staging Cloud Hosting, any enterprise should first mull over the applications they will deploy to build a multi-cloud strategy. However, there are some pointers you need to keep in mind before you get into the nitty-gritty of multi-cloud. Read more to know about the same.

1. Exercising IT due diligence

A multi-cloud strategy entails adding products or applications of more than two or three cloud providers, which is why you might want to examine your environment for loopholes regarding security, compatibility, and risks, if any. Exercising this due diligence in advance will expose crevices in your IT environment, if any, which can be sealed with the advice of a sound cloud hosting company. While migrating to a multi-cloud model, check if any risks in your current applications may deteriorate the whole architecture. Identifying new risks will help you understand security integrations that can be installed later. This will also help you store, consolidate and protect sensitive data better.

2. Upgrading your IT team

After performing due diligence on your environment, understand any gaps between the applications and your IT team’s knowledge. One of the prime reasons for this is that the public cloud needs different skills to manage the hosting environment. Right from your cloud architects, product managers, and automation engineers, everyone will need to be certified with the bare essentials expected of the applications used in the multi-cloud strategy.

Your team can be upgraded and educated about how the new cloud environment needs to be handled and maximized by heeding a trusted firm’s advice specializing in cloud hosting if you can train your team members in-house, nothing like it. But if you can’t, there is no reason that you should be avoiding this.

3. Performing an application audit

You can do this in the initial stage while exercising due diligence. But the reason it is here is that there may be applications that you cannot do without. For. e.g., there is a cloud application that helps you boost your website’s speed and is critical to driving time-to-value. Then, it would help if you kept such applications. So, if you are deploying a cloud-based IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS app, list your business goals. Then put all these apps in a bucket concerning time, speed, and security ( you may choose parameters that help you deliver value). After doing this, eliminate the unnecessary ones so you are left with only the most important ones. This clarity will help you optimize your multi-cloud strategy and reduce costs.

4. Service integration is a must

Understand this: you might be deploying cloud hosting for your website, but after doing so, if you are pulling in applications from various providers, do not forget to integrate all the services. You will inevitably need a single-plane dashboard that will provide you with business intelligence to make decisions. This is the whole point of deploying multi-cloud. To make the most out of the cloud. Your entire infrastructure and applications must coalesce and sync to work in the desired flow. You can choose the infrastructure you want without worrying about the applications by going multi-cloud.

5. Leveraging container systems

Container systems make it easier for applications to scale, develop and reduce the time to market. Hence container orchestration has become a solution to help resolve application-building woes. With a multi-cloud strategy, users and deployers alike can spend as much time as they want in building an application without worrying about on-time delivery. One of the key reasons is that creating container systems in the cloud is simple. E.g., Kubernetes, a container system, groups applications into logical units for easy management and delivery. This ensures that each application is utilized conservatively without taking more resources.

6. Backup and data management

If there were anything as important as security and risks while deploying cloud hosting, it took data and backup. Hence, when upping the ante with a multi-cloud strategy, taking a cloud backup and managing the data (and its access) is of prime essence. The reason is that multiple cloud applications may create discrepancies if there are any changes. If your data is not encrypted in advance, the chances are that your sensitive business information may be exposed to attacks. To avoid this, taking a backup is a must.

In closing

Keep an eye on costs. We may have said that multi-cloud will keep your budget in check, but don’t take our word for it since different cloud providers charge differently. You must draw up a budget and find a trusted cloud hosting service to justify your budget. We hope that you have enjoyed reading this article. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments section below.