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How a Hybrid Multi-Cloud Strategy Drives Business Efficiency

Most organizations today have adopted cloud computing. While some have a single private or public cloud platform, many have some combination of traditional on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services, and public cloud platforms. These hybrid cloud environments offer the agility and efficiency of the public cloud with the stringent regulatory and compliance requirements of the on-premises infrastructure.

But what happens when you have workloads running in an on-premises traditional infrastructure that might work better in a private cloud? Or when workloads running in one public cloud can provide better benefit by running in another?

Enter multi-cloud computing. Multi-cloud computing can include multiple best-in-class public cloud providers (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, for example), traditional on-premises environments (such as FlexPod), private cloud infrastructure with  public cloud services (hybrid cloud), or a combination.

Multi-cloud environments offer powerful benefits to organizations already using cloud computing and enables those that haven’t yet embraced the cloud to do so without having to put all their eggs in one basket.

Multi-cloud environments: the future of enterprise IT

Multi-cloud environments enable organizations to take a balanced approach to cloud computing by distributing their workloads across multiple clouds. This approach allows them to maximize their spend and eliminate the risks associated with having a single cloud platform.

The Cloud Industry Forum offers five reasons why multi-cloud is the future of enterprise IT:

  1. Cost optimization – Cloud providers offer different capabilities, prices, policies, etc. and they’re constantly changing. A workload that costs $20 in AWS resources one day may cost $10 in Google Cloud the next. Multi-cloud offers myriad options in pricing and functionality, enabling you to move workloads among resources to optimize ROI on your cloud investments.
  2. Better security – As in a hybrid environment, workloads with the most stringent security and compliance requirements can run in the private cloud, while less critical business data and applications can run in more cost-effective public clouds.
  3. Lower latency – Instead of accepting the latency inherent in cloud-delivered services at a distance, multi-cloud computing allows the data center closest to end-users to serve up the needed data with fewer server hops—critical for global enterprises with disparate locations.
  4. No lock-in – With single or hybrid cloud computing, bailing out your data and applications from vendors who’ve made it super easy to migrate you in can be a complex and expensive process. Multi-cloud computing enables organizations to match platforms and vendors to meet their changing cost and performance requirements.
  5. Better business continuity – For a single cloud platform, vendors typically offer at least 99.5 percent availability as part of their service level agreement (SLA). Having the ability to distribute workloads among multiple providers in a multi-cloud architecture, each with 99.5 percent SLA, spreads the risk and exponentially reduces downtime. Alternatively, you’ll have many more options to proactively mitigate risk when needed.

While the complexity, cost, and risks of a multi-cloud environment may seem to multiply, “the only real difference is the need to monitor a network of networks with tools that deliver end-to-end visibility across all network resources.”

Closing the gap on multi-cloud environments: NetApp Hybrid Multi-cloud Experience

NetApp helps unify your infrastructure, making your data available wherever it needs to be. By converging public clouds, private clouds, virtual machines (VMs) and microservices, you can strategically move workloads around to meet your business objectives.

Not only will you have the same experience with your data regardless of data type and where it resides, you’ll have the same data services with programmable APIs, frictionless consumption and no cloud lock-in.

 

For example, spinning up a traditional disaster recovery (DR) site often takes weeks, even months, with approvals, procurement, configuration, and implementation. But with NetApp, you can now natively replicate data to the public cloud of your choosing. Later, you can set up a virtual instance of a NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and replicate your data to another public cloud—a near impossibility natively unless you pay an exorbitant fee to free your data.

On-Premise

You can also quickly take advantage of a new business opportunity by spinning up resources for “surprise” workloads and then replicating data to where it needs to be.

While cloud providers are only too happy to spin up any amount of storage that you need, NetApp can greatly reduce this spend by enabling storage efficiencies like deduplication and compression strategies.

NetApp can also create storage efficiencies by moving your data to a tier that better suits your performance and cost needs. For example, if you need only occasional access to a data set, it can be stored on more cost-effective tier 3 instead of more expensive tier 1. While other suppliers offer similar capabilities, NetApp enables it to be done in the cloud.

NetApp in the cloud delivers the speed, agility, and costs needed for increased business efficiency. Quickly spin up new resources, optimize workloads on the fly, and pay only for what you need, while increasing resiliency and avoiding lock-in.

Logicalis: Helping you drive business efficiency

A long-time NetApp Star Partner, Logicalis can help you build a hybrid multi-cloud strategy that serves your business objectives. Through our partnerships with public cloud providers, our certified engineers can help you realize a data fabric that encompasses traditional IT infrastructure, along with on-premises private clouds and public clouds.

Start by scheduling a complimentary, vendor-agnostic Cloudscape Workshop with you and your stakeholders. With a current-state view of your environment, we’ll identify areas for optimization and provide:

  • An architecture design with service level definitions for your storage, compute, and data protection.
  • A total cost of ownership and financial model.
  • An implementation plan using your actual data.

To learn more download the Cloudscape Workshop datasheet , or call your Logicalis account executive. Or contact us for more information.

A respected industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience, Dennis Boutorwick is a NetApp Hybrid Cloud Sales Specialist at Logicalis, responsible for helping enterprise customers navigate the ever-changing landscape of hybrid IT and solve complex business problems through technology enablement.