Overview
Multi-cloud environments are growing in popularity because they provide business with the agility and flexibility to deploy anywhere while remaining cost efficient. Learn why 90% of companies worldwide will move to a multi-cloud platform in the next year.
Is Multi-Cloud the New Cloud Reality? Experts Say Yes
A data analytics platform built for a hybrid multi-cloud reality lets companies build the future of their business.
Business is all about the cloud. Global companies are moving more workloads to the cloud and taking a cloud-first mentality because they know it offers the agility, scalability, and data analytics environment needed to be competitive and meet today’s new business challenges.
More than half (55%) of organizations currently use multiple public clouds, with 21% saying they use three or more, according to IDG research.
Unlike a hybrid cloud strategy, which uses a mix of on-premises and cloud solutions working together, a multi-cloud environment leverages two or more cloud computing systems to perform various tasks, such as data analytics or low-cost data storage. The environment can include a combination of software as-a-service (SaaS), platform as-a-service (PaaS), and infrastructure as-a-service (IaaS). A hybrid multi-cloud combines both approaches.
COVID-19 Accelerated the Use of Multi-Clouds
International Data Corporation (IDC) expects 2021 to be the year of multi-cloud. It predicts more than 90% of companies worldwide will use a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs.
One driving force behind the trend toward multi-cloud is the need for greater agility as a result of COVID-19. “The widespread disruption caused by the global COVID-19 outbreak has reinforced the critical importance of businesses being agile enough to scale up or down with fluctuations in demand,” said IDC’s Jyoti Lalchandani. “A public cloud platform provides enterprises with an agile, scalable, and cost-effective IT infrastructure that supports their business processes.”
Many analysts expect a multi-cloud architecture to continue growing in popularity in 2021. For example, insideBIGDATA says, “It’s imperative organizations optimize its traditional advantages of reduced cost, scalability, and ubiquity of access with a low latent experience. Although numerous developments have arisen to reinforce these boons, their underlying motif is the multi-cloud phenomenon surging to the top of progressive organizations’ priorities.”
Gartner predicts that by 2021, over 75% of midsize and large organizations will have adopted a multi-cloud or hybrid IT strategy.
Why Choose a Multi-Cloud Strategy?
Cloud options today are dynamic and constantly changing. In today’s hybrid multi-cloud world, companies need a platform that delivers the flexibility to deploy anywhere, including public clouds such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
The top benefits of a multi-cloud approach include:
- Gaining portability. Companies can easily move to the cloud option that best meets their needs without being locked into any single cloud or vendor.
- Handling specific tasks. Organizations can pick cloud services for specific jobs or workloads. This allows, for example, a healthcare organization to use one cloud that’s HIPAA compliant for certain data, and another cloud for different data.
- Optimizing performance. Global companies with multiple on-premises data warehouses experience latency between systems. When every millisecond matters, clouds decrease latency for optimal performance.
- Boosting disaster recovery. Multiple clouds can protect critical business applications and data as part of a robust backup and recovery strategy.
The Power and Agility Needed for Modern Business
A multi-cloud deployment, like the one enabled by Teradata Vantage™ the cloud data analytics platform, gives organizations enhanced flexibility without getting locked into a single public cloud vendor. The modern cloud platform lets businesses optimize each environment based on their requirements.
This type of deployment spreads availability risk between geographically diverse cloud networks and separates workloads based on user requirements and the best available infrastructure. Teradata also reduces costs for a multi-cloud environment by constantly negotiating with competing providers to offer best pricing.
Plus, customers only pay for what they use. The Teradata approach ensures customers gain early access to the latest cloud ecosystem innovations, regardless of provider, to help them reach their business goals faster.