How to Adopt a Multicloud Environment

According to Statista, multicloud strategies have become commonplace, with the majority of companies having already implemented a multicloud approach. The driving force behind multicloud adoption is that such environments offer great flexibility, improved efficiency and high resilience. Therefore, companies can benefit from a wide variety of resources provided by different cloud providers while minimizing the risk of being dependent on a specific vendor. 

Building and managing an IT environment across more than one cloud requires solid technology expertise, however. That is why organizations looking to minimize multicloud adoption risks and maximize the ROI of their cloud investments are increasingly turning to cloud management services. These include migration, maintenance and optimization and help organizations control their cloud computing products, services, and infrastructure.

In this article, we’ll explore the complexities of multicloud adoption and share some best practices to address them.

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Challenges of Multicloud Adoption

Increased IT Infrastructure Complexity

Building a robust multicloud environment demands complete IT infrastructure interoperability, careful data synchronization between business applications, as well as constant monitoring of corporate applications and workloads across multiple cloud providers.

When a company decides to adopt a multicloud strategy, it has to enable the compatibility of its currently functioning applications with other cloud environments they were not originally created for. In such a case, the company may need to replatform or refactor its solutions. Moving an application from one platform to another can involve changing the underlying technologies, operating system, database or other components. Refactoring implies a complete revamp of applications to make them cloud-native. The processes of replatforming or refactoring can be rather complex and time-consuming either way.

When a company has all its IT infrastructure components residing in multiple clouds instead of one, transferring and synchronizing data in between presents challenges, too. The geographical distance between cloud data centers makes balancing computational workloads across different clouds difficult, leading to increased latency in data delivery. In cases of poor data synchronization, this may cause data inconsistency.

What’s more, adopting a multicloud environment naturally implies higher operational expenses, as organizations must rely on more complex and expensive solutions covering multiple clouds to monitor and manage the health and performance of their IT ecosystems.

Security and Compliance Concerns

Managing security in a single cloud is already challenging, and the situation becomes even more critical with the adoption of multiple clouds. Securing data from external threats (e.g., malware attacks) and possible internal misuse (e.g., poor password management) across cloud environments is a rather demanding activity. Misconfiguration of cloud resources or inconsistent security practices across various clouds can seriously compromise data security and integrity. 

The primary security consideration of multicloud environments is achieving visibility into all the company’s cloud assets and activities. A straightforward approach of deploying multiple security management products across different clouds leads to fragmented visibility and, as a result, creates security risks connected with the inability to monitor the IT landscape for security breaches and detect potential threats promptly.

In addition, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements becomes more difficult in a multicloud environment, as organizations must oversee their compliance posture across a broad and complex cloud ecosystem. Without comprehensive data governance controls and procedures, the risk of non-compliance penalties increases significantly.

Best Practices for Multicloud Strategies

The complexity of using multiple clouds demands building and managing an interoperable cloud system from different providers and protecting your assets distributed in that system. With that in mind, consider the following best practices for adopting multiple clouds.

Standardize Processes Across Various Cloud Providers

Use the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach to effectively manage and provision your organization’s infrastructure. With IaC, you can replicate deployments across different cloud environments, reducing the risk of configuration inconsistencies and human errors.

Use Tools to Provision, Monitor and Adjust Cloud Resources

Implement a centralized infrastructure management platform instead of using multiple monitoring tools. It’s easier to monitor, control, and optimize cloud resources across various providers with a single dashboard than from numerous interfaces. For example, a company might use AWS for data storage, Azure for application development, and Google Cloud for backup and disaster recovery. By implementing a centralized platform, they can monitor and manage all these resources from a single interface, ensuring optimal performance, security and cost-efficiency. 

Standardize Data Collection, Storage, Processing and Disposal

Consider implementing a centralized data governance framework. Such a system helps you oversee all data management activities irrespective of whether your data assets reside in a single cloud data platform or multiple databases across clouds. For example, a healthcare organization might implement a centralized data governance framework to manage patient data across multiple clouds. They could start by cataloging all patient records and defining clear policies for data access and sharing. A data governance committee, including representatives from IT, compliance, and clinical departments, would oversee the implementation. Tools like a data catalog and data quality monitoring software would be deployed to ensure data integrity and compliance with healthcare regulations.

Follow Multicloud DevOps Practices

One of the best practices for multicloud DevOps is using cloud-agnostic tools for your CI/CD pipeline to ensure consistent deployment across any cloud environment.

Implement Robust Security and Compliance Practices

We recommend taking the following actions to mitigate security and compliance risks associated with multicloud:

• Monitor and manage your security configurations across all your cloud platforms from one place, such as a centralized security management platform.
• Enforce strong access controls and user permissions using identity and access management (IAM) solutions and multifactor authentication (MFA) across all cloud accounts. Identity management streamlines user access across multiple clouds by allowing users to authenticate with a single set of credentials. This also has the added benefit of reducing the complexity of managing user identities and ensuring consistent access policies across all cloud environments.
• As multicloud environments naturally expand your attack surface, deploy proper network segmentation. This measure helps reduce the impact of security breaches and potential threats. The smaller the attack surface, the easier it is to protect.
• Use a unified dashboard to oversee your compliance status and keep track of all changes in regulations, standards, rules and audits relevant to your organization.
• Implement data loss prevention (DLP) solutions to identify and prevent unsafe or inappropriate sharing, transfer or use of sensitive data across multiple clouds.

In practice, such a policy would look something like this: a financial institution decides to implement these practices to secure its multicloud environment. They could start by conducting a risk assessment and defining security objectives. Unified security policies would be developed to ensure consistency across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. IAM solutions and MFA would be enforced to manage access. Data would be encrypted, and DLP solutions would be deployed to protect sensitive information. Continuous monitoring would be achieved using security information and event management (SIEM) and intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) tools, while automated compliance checks and regular audits would ensure regulatory adherence.

To sum up, take a holistic approach to achieving success with multicloud. Since each company has unique evolving needs, you should regularly review and update your strategy to ensure your multicloud environment operates efficiently.

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Switch to Multicloud Safely

Multicloud environments offer significant benefits for companies across all sectors that seek flexibility, agility, and risk diversification. To maximize the return on investment from the multicloud technology, however, organizations need to be fully aware of the associated challenges and work out a well-thought-out adoption strategy. If your organization lacks the required expertise in house, consider partnering with a trustworthy cloud vendor who will help you develop a detailed implementation strategy and guide you through the complexities of the project with minimal risk.