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The multicloud paradigm is often imposed by the reality that IT departments face in their daily activities. It is not a planned adoption, but more a multicloud by default. That “by default” adoption brings in several challenges which customer must face and solve.
The first one is Management complexity. Having vital data for the business on-premises, and in different cloud platforms depicts a complex scenario as migrating applications from one provider to another is far from simple. According to Forrester’s Research (Forrester: Multicloud Answers the Enterprise Call for Scalable, Secure Infrastructure, January 2022), data management across multiple clouds is the leading obstacle of innovation.
Working on a multicloud environment, where each cloud provider has its own management interfaces, creates at least a limited multicloud visibility challenge. Managing multiple cloud environments requires IT departments to have a holistic view of where data lives, and what is happening with that data. This can lead to compliance and security issues.
Cloud providers offer a detailed description of their individual cost. However, the challenge is how difficult it is to predict how those initial costs will evolve over time. When new services are added, existing ones get additional features (such as backup or data replication), or the environment deployed grows (in terms of resource utilization), cost starts to differ from what was previously planned. Asset customizations as well as consultancy services from cloud providers also add to the cost deviation. This cost unpredictability is yet another challenge of the multicloud approach. IT organizations have faced budget contractions for more than a decade now.
This multicloud reality requires a well-rounded staff of skilled professionals. Multicloud management obliges involves operating a complex on-premises infrastructure and a number of different cloud providers interfaces. This skills gap creates an additional and unnecessary burden on the IT organizations’ already heavy payload. CIO Insights found that 79% of IT Departments incurred significant unplanned cloud costs (https://www.cioinsight.com/cloud-virtualization/how-unexpected-costs-create-a-cloud-hangover/ ).
Security has become one of the main concerns for companies worldwide. We can learn of important security breaches every week. Compliance with external and internal regulations and policies is also intrinsic to any organization today. These two aspects are not easy to implement and maintain and demand proper internal IT resources. When we incorporate different public cloud providers into the equation, the lack of consistency in security models and compliance obligations becomes evident.
All these challenges become real barriers holding many organizations back from achieving their innovation priorities and becoming leaders in their market segments.