And just when we were grappling with the notion of cloud, here comes multi-cloud which seems to have sparked a new debate. To be sure, multi-cloud is a cloud computing approach which uses multiple cloud computing services from different providers to achieve functions such as cloud repatriation. Think of this as an app aggregator only the role changes. Experts believe cloud repatriation can be a workload placement strategy in a wider multi-cloud strategy. This might help the public cloud’s rapid scalability and some may benefit from the growing possibilities at the edge. “ The growth that the cloud has seen is because it can be a powerhouse to drive digital transformation at an unprecedented pace. The drawbacks such as feature gaps, vendor lock-in, and high availability, among others, can be addressed by multi-cloud implementation. With cloud repatriation, different cloud vendors can offer different features at different prices. To take advantage of these variations, many organisations adopt a multi-cloud strategy. It is also implemented to address the issue of vendor lock-in and disaster recovery,” Amit Chaurasia, founder, Dataneers, a data and cloud engineering company, told FE Transform-X.
Industry experts believe for the last ten years or so, digital transformation and cloud have almost been synonyms of each other. In 2012, the cloud market was valued at $272 billion. The global cloud computing market was valued a $483.98 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.1% from 2023-2030, as per Grand View Research, a market research platform. “ In recent times, there has been a notable uptick in investments in intelligent automation, cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and observability, with a particular focus on India. Across diverse sectors, such as banking, e-commerce and healthcare, among others, businesses are actively incorporating AI, Machine Learning (ML), and automation technologies into their day-to-day operations,” Nalin Agrawal, director, solutions engineering, Dynatrace, a unified observability and security organisation, explained, adding that government initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’, among others are further believed to catalyse investments in these new-age technology fields.
From what it is understood, cloud repatriation in a multi-cloud strategy can enable businesses to reduce up-front capex and most importantly, give enterprises the ability to build in redundancy and safety. Experts believe it is important to use multi-cloud strategies rather than avoiding vendor lock-in, which is less relevant in the pay-as-you-go pricing model of cloud services compared to traditional data centre environments. However, it’s important to recognise that the flexibility of a multi-cloud strategy comes with certain costs. “Organisations may miss out on volume discounts achievable through larger contracts, as workloads are dispersed across multiple cloud providers. Additionally, there’s a significant investment in training engineers and architects to operate effectively in multiple cloud environments, both in terms of time and financial resources,” Sanjyukta Chauhan, a cloud consultant, said.
As it is understood multi-cloud means management of multiple environments and a reduced velocity is expected to have profound consequences for organisations. This reduction in velocity implies that the speed and agility with which a company is managing multiple cloud environments for its benefit are slowing down. “ Reduced velocity can extend the time it takes to bring new products or features to market. This can be a critical issue, especially in industries where being first to market is a strategic advantage. Moreover, these slowdowns in the deployment of cloud resources can lead to operational inefficiencies and increased costs, as companies may end up paying for resources they don’t fully utilise,” Trishneet Arora, CEO, founder, TAC Security, a global cybersecurity solutions provider, explained.
Interestingly, contrary to the safety modules it is believed that multi-cloud can provide about 83% of organisations that use a multi-cloud strategy experience security challenges, as per a recent study by the Cloud Security Alliance, a cloud security-based market research platform. The ‘multi’ in multi-cloud is expected to require managing multiple environments, establishing connectors, addressing various stakeholders, investing in training and skill development, and addressing challenges such as underutilisation or the lowest common denominator problem. Apart from this multi-cloud implementation requires data transfers across clouds which leads to data going out of the Cloud network which is called egress. Many customers misjudge the egress spending eventually increasing costs.
“It is likely that people will continue to see greater fragmentation in cloud service providers for a single enterprise as the specificity of the offerings gets more refined, followed by a trend of consolidation as the act of managing various cloud services and how effectively they communicate with each other becomes increasingly more complex,” Utkarsh Sinha, managing director, Bexley Advisors, a boutique advisory firm, concluded.
