In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are expected to include innovative solutions to manage their multi-cloud environments effectively. Experts believe one solution which has been making waves is Metacloud, a platform that promises to streamline multi-cloud operations. By leveraging a blend of technology and expert insights, Metacloud simplifies the management of diverse cloud platforms, providing a unified approach to handling the intricacies of multiple clouds. “The proliferation of cloud services has given rise to a new challenge for businesses – managing multiple cloud platforms effectively. This is where Metacloud comes into play. One of Metacloud’s standout features is its ability to centralise the management of different cloud services, including major players such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, among others,” Varun Mahajan, CEO, founder, QwikSkills, told FE-TrasformX, adding that this unified control allows businesses to seamlessly deploy, monitor, and optimise resources across various cloud providers, eliminating the need for juggling multiple interfaces and control panels.
Use cases of Metacloud
About 85% of businesses are expected to use two or more cloud platforms, and about 25% are using at least five cloud platforms, as per insights from Deloitte. Here comes Metacloud’s ability to provide a common layer of abstraction and automation to improve the simplicity and visibility of multi-cloud services. Metacloud is one of the trends identified in Deloitte’s Tech Trends 2023 report on the most important technology trends for 2023. Use cases include companies with complex IT infrastructures using Metacloud to harmonise its cloud operations, ensuring efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Also, in the healthcare sector, where data security and compliance are paramount, Metacloud can help ensure sensitive data remains secure and compliant with regulatory requirements. Financial institutions can use Metacloud’s centralised policy management and security controls to meet regulatory demands while optimising cloud resource usage.
Experts believe Metacloud involves building a compatibility layer with AI, data, security, operations, governance, and application development and deployment. Apart from this Metacloud can also aid in disaster recovery planning by offering a unified approach to backup and recovery across multi-cloud infrastructure. “Other use cases would be using Azure OpenAPI service along with AWS Lamda and building a cloud-agnostic DevOps pipeline, among others. Meta cloud is an actively growing field, and many startups are working on it as well. These include cost optimisation companies and disaster recovery companies, among others. These movements are expected to make cloud service less sticky going forward, and eventually interoperability standards and protocols will come. This can also have an impact on 5G and edge computing as well,” Venkat Vallabhaneni, managing partner, Inflexor Ventures, said.
The road ahead….
It is believed that cloud is a trend which is likely to stay. As the fragmentation in cloud service providers increases with more and more niche offerings, the rise of meta-cloud is a predictable next step, to bring those disparate services together with the aim of better managing them. “The peak of meta-cloud will incidentally be the crest of the off-prem move, with increasing complexities pushing a wave towards de-fragmentation and hence towards on-prem. This will likely coincide with a drastic reduction in costs which will make on-prem comparative with reduced Capex, that brings it more in line with off-prem opex,” Utkarsh Sinha, managing director, Bexley Advisors, highlighted.
Industry experts believe Metacloud provides cost management tools that allow organisations to track and optimise cloud spending, irrespective of the cloud provider used. Naysayers argue that implementing Metacloud incurs costs, which might concern smaller businesses, and staff may need time to adapt to the new platform. However, “The cost of implementing Metacloud can vary depending on factors such as the size of your organisation, the scale of your multi-cloud operations, and the specific services required. Costs may include licensing fees, ongoing maintenance, and integration expenses. It’s essential to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine the economic feasibility of implementing Metacloud,” Malay Parekh, CEO, Unico Connect, concluded.
