Today, we acknowledge how cloud is dominating boardroom discussions because of its immense benefits at fast speed, namely cost optimisations and improved efficiencies, which directly impact company bottom lines that were not possible earlier. It is evident that organisations are now realising there can be no single “default” cloud provider. Instead, they want the best cloud for each of their workloads. If Cloud A is best suited for desktop productivity apps and Cloud B excels in server-based databases, Clouds A and B it will be.
This year, customers will start demanding one thing, and that is ‘choice’. When deliberating on ‘Internet of clouds’ and on making the right choice, there are important aspects organisations must bear in mind.
Multi-cloud is the new reality: Companies will adopt the best public clouds. Some cloud providers are facilitating the trend by locating their respective cloud facilities close together to minimise latency. This ensures that clients using services from both providers get fast response times.
Making the right deployment choice: Making the right cloud choice is no longer limited to choosing a single cloud provider. The use of what we once called “hybrid”, now “distributed”, cloud is taking off.
In the distributed cloud model, firms run some workloads on outside public clouds and others in company-controlled data centres. This is done for compliance, regulatory, performance or other reasons.
This mix-and-matching is great for firms that must keep some data segregated, but also be able to leverage analytics into a public cloud as needed. This can be tricky since they must carefully balance technology deployed across on-premises, private, and public cloud infrastructure.
No one should confuse a cohesive multicloud and hybrid strategy. Previously, departments —even individuals — inside companies launched cloud services, sometimes without permission, or even knowledge, of IT. Today’s distributed cloud scenarios must be carefully designed to ensure interoperability and good governance from their inception. For example, Reliance General Insurance is conducting business successfully in a multi-cloud environment securing better results at lower costs.
The sovereign cloud emerges as the top choice: It’s a good thing that modern clouds come in more than one shape and size with different countries seeking out clouds of their own. India is already drafting a new Data Protection Bill that seeks enforcement of sophisticated policies for data protection, localisation, and data sovereignty.
Businesses must realise that failure to comply with data sovereignty rules can lead to significant fines, not to mention incalculable brand damage.
The takeaway is that cloud providers must meet business and government customers where they are instead of pushing for all data and applications to be forklifted into a specific provider’s cloud.
The writer is senior vice president – regional managing director, Oracle India and NetSuite JAPAC